Asterix and Obelix in the Pesach Haggadah
Post date: Apr 22, 2020 8:16:18 PM
What is the connection between these two popular Gaulic comic strip characters and the Haggadah you might ask. At first glance, there might not be any, but I was surprised to find them in several Haggadot; in the first two English translations and also in the very successful Cowen Haggadah. Let me explain.
Although the Hebrew Haggadah text does not contain any footnotes, English translators have felt the need to add footnotes to their translations. The first English translator of the Haggadah, A. Alexander (1770) added mostly explanatory footnotes, the second translation, created by David Levi, had the bible sources added as footnotes as well.
In typography, footnote indicators can be either superscripted numbers (1,2,3), letters (a,b,c), or certain symbols (*, †, ‡, etc.). Whereas numbers and letters are still used nowadays, during the early 20th century, there was a change in the norm to use symbols in Jewish sources. Typographical devices such as the asterisk (*), the dagger (†) and the double dagger (‡) had originally been used by David Levi (1794) and had been changed by the editor of David Levi, Isaac Levi (1808), into letters (a, b, c) but these inexplicitly reappeared in printed Haggadot, especially in the USA in the early 20th century (e.g. COWEN 1904). Although there is a most commonly used order when using these symbols, namely: *, †, ‡, §, |, ¶, the printers of these Haggadot were not consistent with this, see for example figure 1.
Figure 1 - Cowen Haggadah 1904
The Hebrew name for the dagger is צלבון (little cross) putting even more emphasis on its shape (Figure 2).
Figure 2 - Dagger Sign
I found this crucifix-like dagger in several early 20th century English Haggadot, especially in the Cowen Haggadah which was the first to be published for a mass audience. It became the most popular English language Haggadah in the United States in the first quarter of the twentieth century with a distribution of 295,000 copies by 1935. The Cowen Haggadah was the first-ever Haggadah translated into English by a woman and was not only controversial because of its use of the dagger sign as a footnote indicator - but the translation was also censored in order not to hurt the innocent ears of young children. The popularity of this Haggadah shows that apparently nobody saw the use of this sign as problematic at that time.
The use of this dagger sign in Jewish sources looks strange in modern Jewish eyes. Its shape, so similar to a crucifix, causes antagonism as crucifixes are shunned in Jewish culture. In modern Israel, Jewish schoolchildren are taught to write 3 ┴ 3 = 6 in order to avoid creating a cross and the accidental use of the cross sign in an equation like this will offend students. This already started in the early 19th century when missionaries distributed bibles in Jerusalem that contained daggers as footnote indicators. It caused chaos amongst the Jewish population (MacDowell, 2012) so the disappearance of this sign during the 19th century is less of a mystery than its original reappearance and apparent acceptance by a large Jewish American population for about 20 years and many reprints. I did not find any explanation for this.
But how is all this connected to Asterix and Obelix you ask. Well, the dagger is also called Obelus and Obelisk. And the two cartoon characters Asterix and Obelix are named after the two first typographical footnote signs asterisk (*) and obelisk (†), so we see how they appeared for a short time in early Haggadot.
