Yaron Deutscher
Post date: Mar 29, 2018 9:00:41 PM
This week, I met Yaron Deutscher at the Digital Humanities Israel meeting in Tel Aviv. He is Head of Digital at the National Museum of Israel (Jerusalem) and he showed us an exciting Haggadah project which will hopefully be finished by next year's Pesach. When Yaron told us that he was open to suggestions on which of the library's Haggadot to digitize and add to the project, I knew exactly which Haggadah to request.
When Alexander Alexander published the very first English translation of the Haggadah in 1770 (Yudlov #257), it was to be the only English language Haggadah for several decades. Only in 1794 did David Levy produce the second English translation (#371). David Levy's translation would be heavily edited (with mistakes) by Isaac Levi in 1808 (#516) and it was this translation which would be reprinted for over a hundred years mistakenly accredited to David Levy (e.g. the first Haggadah printed in North America "translated by the late D. Levy from London" (#779)). Isaac's translation was the gold standard of English translations well into the 20th century and has been reprinted in more than 4 different countries.
But what happened to Alexander's Haggadah translation? His son, Levi Alexander did his best to keep it alive and printed in 1808 (the same year Isaac printed his first Haggadah) a 4th edition "corrected and revised from the former editions, including that of the late David Levi". This edition was lavishly illustrated with pictures and maps and is a joy to look at. None of the previous English Haggadot were illustrated so Levi Alexander's Haggadah was the very first English translation with illustrations. Still, apparently, the Haggadah was too expensive to print and only two editions were produced. The very last Alexander Haggadah rolled off the press in 1809 (#592) leaving the field open for Isaac Levi's translations.
I would love to have this illuminated Alexander Haggadah in my personal collection, something that will probably never happen, but with Yaron's project, there is a way to print out the scanned Haggadot so that would be a good second best.
Although the pictures in this Haggadah are extremely exciting, they are seriously tainted by the fact that ALL of them are plagiarized from other books, something Levi does not admit. He even goes so far as to just change the credit line, deleting the original creator's name and adding his own! I have documentation about many of the pictures, e.g. the picture above is taken from Fragments, Illustrative of the Manners, Incidents, and Phraseology, of the Holy Scriptures by C. Taylor ( 1798, p. 140). Still, I think this Haggadah is definitely a great candidate for the Israel National Museum project. And I can tell them exactly where to find it on the shelves because I never miss a chance to go and visit it.
(More on this Haggadah, the maps in it and the way Levi Alexander plagiarized in מפות בהגדות פסח by אמיר כהנוביץ which can be found HERE.