Category Archives: Jewish Holidays

New Acquisition: Haggadah shel Pesah [happy Passover!]

Tonight is the first night of the Jewish festival of Pesah (Passover), celebrated every year from the 15th to the 22nd day of Nissan. This year, the holiday starts on the 22nd of April and ends next Saturday, April the 30th. Passover commemorates the biblical exodus of the Jews from slavery in Egypt. To learn more, click here.

The text of the Passover seder, a special family meal, is written in a book called the Haggadah. Our Library holds numerous copies of Haggadot according to different local customs. Among our recent acquisitions, is a copy of a sephardi Haggadah printed in London in 1813. This particular version is an augmented edition of Alexander’s London Haggadah of 1806, and is the first Haggadah with Spanish translation printed in London (source). The book was presented to the Leopold Muller Memorial Library on long-term loan by the Lewis Family Interests.

The Haggadah contains several engravings, among them a couple of folded maps, one of those being a ‘Plan explanatory of the Passage of the Red-Sea by the Israelites’, depicted below. All in all, feast for the eyes. Enjoy!

Hagadah shel Pesah ke-minhag sefaradim = Orden de la Agada de Pesah, en Hebraico y Espanol, según uzan los Judios, Espanoles, y Portuguezes, traducido del Hebraico y Caldeo. Por Senior Jacob Meldula, de Amsterdam. London : Printed by L. Alexander, Whitechapel-Road, A.M. 5573 [1813]

Why do we have to invite cats for Seder?

Forli Siddur, Italy, 1383 (London, British Library, MS Add. 26968, fol. 119v)


In some medieval miniatures of Seder feast, feline creatures appear under the table at the feet of the celebrating family.

What do these animals do at such an occasion?

The Pesahim tractate of the Babylonian Talmud discusses at length what to do if a mouse runs into the searched house with a bread crumb in its mouth (bPes 10b). The question is if the house has to be searched again or not.

In the Second Nuremberg Haggadah, the cat itself comments on its task: “Behold, I bite the mouse, lest he eat the grain” (הנני נושך בעכבר פן יאכל את הבר). Another image on the same folio depicts a man pouring the content of a bowl into a big vessel. The caption says: “One hides the leaven and the grain, lest the mouse drag it away.” Thus it seems that cats are “invited” to catch mice which might bring in some leavened bread crumbs to the searched and already ritually clean house.


Second Nuremberg Haggadah, Ashkenaz, 1460s (Jerusalem, Schocken Library, MS 24087, fol. 3v)

A fifteenth-century Italian prayer book shows how warmly cats were welcomed under the Seder table:

Prayer book, Italian rite, 15th century (London, British Library, MS Or. 11924, fol. 153v)


Sounds a bit contradictory with this, what Bernard Picart in his famous Cérémonies et coutumes religieuses de tous les peuples du monde (published with Jean Frederic Bernard between 1723 and 1743) says about cats and mice being “welcomed” during the preparation of the matzah.

“Nor are the Jews less scrupulous as to the composition of their unleavened bread, than in their search for the leavened bread and in the preparation of the grain… and the master of the house, or father of the family would do well, some way, to have a hand in making the unleavened bread; if he cannot, or must not set his hands to the paste, at least to stand by during so pious an operation; to give free course to such small bits of paste as fall off from the great lump, and full liberty to the cats and mice to eat them, still as they roll down upon the ground.”  (Bernard Picart and Jean Frédéric Bernard, The Religious Ceremonies and Customs of the Several Nations of the  KnownWorld, vol. 1 [London: Nicholas Prevost, 1731], 208)

The Religious Ceremonies and Customs

Cats under the Seder table appear not only in Ashkenazi and Italian, but also Sephardi context.

Sister Haggadah, Catalonia (Barcelona) 2nd or 3rd quarter of the 14th century (London, British Library, MS Or. 2884, fol. 18r)


Hag Sameakh to all those celebrating the Jewish holiday of Passover; bon appétit to your cats!