Joel ben Simeon, the Washington Haggadah and the Ambivalent Feminine

um good evening and welcome to the Library of Congress thank you all for coming my name is Sharon Horwitz and I'm a reference librarian in the hebraic section uh I want to welcome the newly appointed head of the hebraic section Mr yorum Bon I I am honored to have you attending the program um many thanks also to the music division for allowing us to use this beautiful room which is decorated with historic instruments created by Antonio stradivari uh the systematic development of Herra in the National Library began in 1912 when a Jewish philanthropist named Jacob Schiff bought a collection of 10,000 Hebrew Books pamphlets and manuscripts assembled by a book collector named arri dinard and gave it to the library today the section has more than 300,000 books in Hebrew Yiddish Latino and other hebraic script languages some highlights of the collection are more than 230 Hebrew manuscripts the digitization of which we are celebrating tonight an extensive range of periodicals uh 1300 original Yiddish playscripts and 900 Hebrew and Yiddish yiser books uh which are Holocaust Memorial books written by survivors of Jewish towns destroyed by the Nazis and of great interest to genealogists our work includes selecting books to add to the collection lending books to other institutions responding to requests for information both online and in person from members of Congress students professors and the general public two of our missions are to preserve and to publicize our Collections and one way we do that is by sponsoring programs like this one and now a word about tonight's speaker Mark Michael Epstein is Professor of religion and visual culture at vassor since 1992 currently he also serves as director of Jewish studies he's a graduate of Oberlin College and received his PhD from Yale and did much of his graduate research at hea University in Jerusalem Professor Epstein has published widely on various topics in Visual and material cultural culture produced by for and about use including his two 2015 book Skies of parchment Seas of ink Jewish illuminat manuscripts which won the National Jewish book award we have a small display of Passover hagad doe from the hebraic sections collections please look at the display if you haven't already uh one short item of business this program is being videotaped for subsequent viewing there will there will be a formal question and answer period after the lecture at which the audience is encouraged to ask questions and offer comments that may be video taped by Pro by participating in the Q&A session you are consenting to the library's possible reproduction and transmission of your remarks and now please join me in welcoming Professor Epstein hi everyone I'm so pleased to see some many of you here tonight I predicted perhaps two if my mother showed up um this lecture has been a long time in planning according to my correspondents I began discussing this with Anne brener in 2018 um much obviously has occurred in the interim but I am honored and delighted to be here I'd like to take this opportunity to thank Sharon of the hebraic section the African Middle Eastern Division of the library for her extraordinary efforts in making this happen and to welcome yuram who I know in many other contexts and I think you're really lucky to have him here in in uh DC with you I'd like to dedicate this afternoon's lecture to my master and teacher Abraham Ben Blum pero VMO Professor Dr Abraham grman a blessed memory who passed away yesterday um he introduced me to the subject of Jewish Women in the Middle Ages in his seminar on that topic at the Hebrew University which is the basis for the Hebrew version of the book he later published in English which you see here um will return to the image uh on the book cover as we proceed well it sure is something having taught at a liberal arts college for three decades when I started teaching I was 23 and my students were 18 to 21 I know I don't look at day over 59 but I'm but I'm 60 now and they are still 18 to 21 which is remarkable that means that we sometimes find ourselves at cultural linguistic loggerheads teaching at Vasser I'm positively steeped in gender fluidity and nonbinary expression but it's taken a while to get up to speed understanding they in the grammatical singular was tough and the terms themselves change and morph with a fluidity that Rivals I would say my students own once second I've lost my uh I've lost my pointer here give me a second this has never happened to me before okay okay yes um where is it it's on okay so one second I have to be able to see this no yes I need to move it to to actually to this screen okay one second um right um but it's it that's a shame I can't um now I do I've not had faced this technical problem before um which means I can't get to my notes ah give me one moment yes but it's a two-way street in order to demonstrate the alterity that exists between my Heyday and my students I sometimes be begin my class with a recollection of my late great mentor John Boswell Boswell was literally the first person to write a fulllength book about gay people well gay men in the Middle Ages Christianity social tolerance and homosexuality this was in 1980 and this is my beat up copy John and a new version of the cover John was a true Dynamo and a virtuoso in the classroom you wanted to watch him forever his class titled get this medieval Europe attracted upwards of a 100 undergraduates today if you titled A Course in that fashion even at an elite liberal arts institution you'd get maybe 15 John's connection with the audience was such that if he was talking say about how fabulous Elanor of aquatan was and someone sneezed in the 14th row John would pause his lecture look directly at that person person and say with absolute sincerity bless you I cannot tell you I say to my students how shocking it was just how shocking it was to hear these words from Professor Boswell's mouth when someone in the Middle Ages went on a journey he or she would hide what valuables they had with them shocking Sharon I repeat to silence in my classes why because they don't realize how totally off the charts radical it was for someone in 1983 to say he or she we were using the word he for everyone now that's amazing my students totally don't get that that was a shocking thing there's a long way from that shocking she to the ubiquitous and grammatically jar ing they a lot has happened in 30 years and the quote unquote shock of the new to paraphrase Robert hughes's title for his 1991 book on Modern Art has long been forgotten in the face of new quote unquote shocks of the new we are no longer talking about homosexuality trans issues are the hottest issues of the day and the Holy Trinity of sexuality gender and race is where it is at in 2024 but the opposite also appends when we view something from centuries long past that we find shocking we need to consider that this shock of the old was not necessarily shocking to its original audience we need to think about the reason it was not shocking and that reason is sometimes something we might not suppose confused yet help as they say is on the way for example take a look at these images a blandly smiling man thrusting bitter herbs into a woman's face as she turns away from his grasp or a woman who has been relegated not even to the rear end of messiah's d donkey a privilege reserved for men but to the donkey's tail behind her on the very end of the tail her young daughter holds on for dear life glancing at the ground behind them an anxious expression on her face and you can hardly see it a female servant grasps the Tail's Tippy tip damaged to the manuscript has erased her body and only her disembodied head in its cowl is very faintly visible when we view scenes like this we cannot help but feel shocked feel that something is wrong regardless of the rather Charming pink cheek protagonists even in an age of continuing and resurgent misogyny these images seem at least to me to be violent and disturbing these images appear in the Library of Congress his very own Washington hagada completed on the 25th of shabat 5238 corresponding to January 29th 1478 in Northern Italy by Joel Ben Simeon that is Yol Ben Shimon fish ashkanazi as he sometimes Styles himself in his cfans as signatures at the end of the book The hagada was purchased by a frim dinard in Mana In 1902 and likely came to the Library of Congress in 1916 along with the third dinard collection there's y's kaan much ink has been spilled over both the provenance and authorship of this manuscript In This Very venue back in March 2011 Katrine kajman Apple has lectured about the contents and configuration of the hagada and the life of the artist yo Ben Shimon and David Stern discussed the history of the hagad and its place and the place of its its place I should say among the surviving medieval hagad I won't repeat all that they've said through the excellent resources of the Library of Congress it's all available on the we web page for your delectation but suffice it to say that yo Ben Shimon is one of the very few named Jewish artists between betsalel the son of OAB Artisan of the Tabernacle in the biblical Book of Exodus and Mark shagal of vpsk and Paris very few named artists between those two in time we know that yoel was of ashkanazi that is Franco German origin and traveled widely spending some time in Italy hence unsurprisingly his Italian a style which is evident in this manuscript my concern this evening is yoel's women some people were raised by wolves you've heard about people Raised by Wolves I was raised by feminists as a result of that formative experience my femar is perpetually activated the kids today would say I'm triggered by images that seem to us to be even minimally misogynistic for me there's no minimum you know there's that hungarians like to say that um somebody's anti-semitic is someone who hates the Jews more than necessary right um you know right but for me there's no minimum standard we could be a little misogynistic you can't be misogynistic at all of course shockingly misogynistic images beg the question of what if anything there is to say beyond the violence abuse and eraser that we see art no doubt reflects with greater or lesser degrees of accuracy the material circumstances of its patrons we can learn something of how they dressed what their homes were like what they how they celebrated it but I can also reflect the way in which the patrons desired to present themselves what they wanted Their audience which includes us isn't that thrilling but they back then wanted us to think about them and the way they perceived the world their wishes dreams and aspirations as Bernard baronson so felicitously put and sometimes to us from where we sit those wishes dreams and aspirations don't necessarily look so pretty still for me the plausible reconstruction tentative as it may be of The Wishes dreams and aspirations of the Jewish patrons of this beautiful but sometimes frustratingly ideological retrograde work of art is the most intriguing and proper aim of the Jewish art historical project I can tell you that Joel moved right from Germany to Italy in a certain year and I can observe that as a result his style became wait for it more italianate but I'm not so interested in that what I'm interested in is the heart and mind of both the artist and the viewing audience and that's a bit harder to get at what do I mean by wishes dreams and aspirations in contrast to say realities there are many scenes of wishful thinking on the parts of illuminators and patrons in the Corpus of Jewish manuscript illumination we have medieval Spanish haad depicting armed Jews leaving Egypt at The Exodus right Kim the Jews left either in groups of 50 or armed right and this is Illuminating in a time and place where Jews were forbidden by civil law to bear arms so this is sort of wishful thinking we have the famous darhat hagata which depicts women teaching men in what can only be described as a Yeshiva like setting in a time and place where like the women's college in Gilbert and Sullivan's princess Ida the very idea of such an institution was maddest Folly a women's college madest Folly goinging what can girls learn within its walls worth knowing right um it's a point of Pride for me to be associated with Vasser the first college in the world that already in 1861 put the lie to Gilbert's slur and if Vasser College was the origin of Gilbert and Sullivan's mad Folly of a women's college you also see the source of abah Grossman's book cover in this image the record of some manuscripts on depicting reality is mixed terz and Mel Meer in their book Jewish life in the Middle Ages assert that this image from the rild miscellany illuminated in Ferrara around 1478 contains an error the artist commits what seemed to them to be an obvious FAA by showing a muuza on a door in an upright position when everybody knows that the mza is supposed to slant slightly to the left pointing inward toward the house everyone that is who is ashkenazic right um ashkenazim follow the sh the legal position of the famous scholar Rashi precisely I'm Rashi but saric and Italian legal decises permitted the placement of the misusa precisely as it is depicted in the illumination so in light of this information it is reasonable to assume that the reliability quotient of this manuscript the Roch child maer in matters of depicting Jews and their property has increased somewhat it is actually a depiction of the way we were right as Elliot harowitz put it in his article about this image um in Ferrara in 1478 right certainly but we need to be careful look at this depiction from the same manuscript of job's Pro property from the illuminations of the Book of Job in the same manuscript we see a beautiful Country Landscape which some is have described as accurately representing the sort of country estate owned by the social class of Jews like those who commissioned the manuscript but are these scenes intended to represent nature in a realistic or an ideal IED guys in this particular case it's clear that the depiction represents not the natural but a preternaturally bounous world the caption reads leish the lord gave job twice as much as job had before all his various tragedies thus the illumination is intended to represent the supernaturally augmented and enhanced property of job and not the real world at all we can accordingly learn very little from this illumination about the nature of Estates Jewish or otherwise in Northern Italy in 1478 the clothing of the peasants or the weather but we can learn how the patrons of this manuscript imagined a supernaturally lush and beautiful setting in the same way we can learn what heaven looked like for 15th century Christian viewers by examining the Gent alterpiece or how Jean Duke de wanted us to think about his perfect fields and pastures and his elegant Shepherds wearing clothes of the most Exquisite blue and expensive color generally reserved for the Virgin Mary alone the these fancy peasants are straight up fake news or Labor Relations propaganda you take your PE but certainly not a reflection of reality even maritz lib's famously quote unquote realistic depiction of yum Kiper in an East European synagogue right as nostalgic as it is you can hear you know right even that sort of nostalgia bordering on kit though it's a great painting is problematic Ezra Mendelson and Richie con discussed the strangely colorful and striped K ritual robe on the central figure the abbreviated Mita the separation between men and women so you can see the women and the inscriptions on the Torah mantle as elements that point away from real M and toward self referential and explicitly allegorical context for understanding this painting the central figure in the code of Many Colors is gotb himself betrayed like Joseph by his Brethren but most particularly by the woman standing at the far left of whom the uncurtained M allows us a full view right she was the woman he wanted to marry but her sister told the mother look at that woman o right told the mother that he was pished he was inappropriate because he was an artist and you know what Gotti did he painted the painting he went out in the rain without a hat grandparents here without a hat and he died of pneumonia and before he died he painted the inscription on this to scroll which is to the immortal memory of morit Godly right and exhorts us to play for his own pray for his own soul so I know this is being recorded so I can't make rude gestures but this whole painting it's in the Tel Aviv Museum of Art it's gigantic is a rude gesture in the direction of the community that it represents Joseph betrayed by his brothers so things aren't always what they seem to be to return to the Middle Ages in ashkenaz or Franco Germany first this rather Fantastical hagad has been the subject of rather extensive research on my part it's distinguished by the fact that the Jews in this these illustrations all have the heads of griffins this could be the subject of a whole another talk but I don't think one probably gets invited to speak at the Library of Congress more than once in one's career um so ignoring the elephant or the Griffin in the room let me simply state for our purposes that this image does not cannot be depicting a 14th century ashkenazic Passover Sader Jews in 14th century ashkenas were forbidden by Hal by Jewish law and custom to consume roast sheep or goats at the Seder although spartic Jews sometimes did so I have argued that this image must represent the Messianic Passover with a large Ram red to indicate that it is roasted the carban PES the Passover sacrifice had to be roasted and yellow horns to distinguish it from a lamb which might be viewed as a symbol of Jesus the text thanks God for doing miracles for our ancestors and for us which commentators of the period understand as rebuilding the temple in the future and restoring the Passover sacrifice since these things only occur in the Messianic ERA this is a depiction of the Seder that is to come there are other clues in this image that it represents Passover in the Messianic era but we'll return to examine it again a bit later also medieval but from sepharad from Iberia the Barcelona hagada accurately depicts the custom of the basket of mats being placed on the head of one of the children during the a passage near the beginning of the Seder for instance but are we to believe that the three books on the table represent a reality or are they an aspiration given the extreme cost of manuscripts the Barcelona hag was probably in its time worth the equivalent of $600,000 in a world in which people perhaps earned a dollar a year okay these were the elites of the elite the 1% of the 1% you didn't have three illuminated manuscripts so perhaps the image is aspirational perhaps it exaggerates on the other hand who's to say that they didn't own one illuminated hagad and the other books on the table were texts copied out by children as part of their educational experience right so it's very hard to look at a book and say this is the way the way we were to paraphrase Barbara um we also have a number of 18th century central European illuminators of the Sumptuous seder tables in Exquisite hly mil these May reveal something of life as it was but they also illuminate the manner in which the patrons of these Works desired to depict themselves it was well and good to be a court Jew when things were going well well but as soon as they stopped going well the same privileged Jews could become the victims of the Wrath and the whims of their patrons the monarchs and princes one of the most famous of Court Jews was Yos Zeus Oppenheimer when his princely protector died in 1737 Oppenheimer was arrested accused of treason and embezzlement under torture he broke down and confessed to the outrageous and scarless accusations leveled against him but refused to convert to Christianity he was hanged a year later with the words of the shma on his lips and his corpse was displayed in a cage in the Public Square of stutgart for six years for the next court Jew to walk under on his way to work every day his fate became a cautionary tale for Jews attracted to the courtly life his very name udus became a byword for The Perils of the position this illumination of the faal family and others like it are full of lavishness ostentatiousness and a sense of over the-top fancy dress drama with all the stops pulled out and although one could argue compellingly that they depict the world of the wealthy patrons as it was it also depicts the world as they wished it to be and Des desperately wanted it to stay these images serve to assuage the insecurities of the privileged class about their privilege and their fears of losing it at any moment the lavishness conceals beneath it an essential and underlying anxiety and even Terror the truth is that the realities of Jewish life differed from place to place just to give you an example of two places that yel Ben Shimon lived in Franco Germany ashkenaz and in Italy right oops contemporary Jewish women for instance are represented in ashkenazic manuscripts in the aforementioned Griffin's head hagad we have couples at contemporary medieval Passover tables the man and woman sitting at each extremity of the table and the women with their hands in their laps distinctly knock involved in the ritual for instance when there is a book on the table as in the example at the top it is in front of the man the text is legible this one says halma that that that statement that's made at the beginning of the hag that I cited before and the man is fully uh engaged with reading and using it the woman doesn't even dare to touch the table she puts her hands in her lap right the reality was different in Italy where we have prayer books commissioned for women some of them like the maravia um prayer book maravia was the daughter of Rabbi maravia was a known and named individual in such books the female patrons and gifes appear fully involved in R religious ritual as here where maravia in her incredibly Chic hairstyle and clothing penned in detail by our very own yel Ben Shimon right raises the cup of blessing for havdalah this is unsurprising in a cultural context where wealthy women apparently could have whatever they wished made to order including liturgy in place of the traditional blessings still recited in non-egalitarian Orthodox context today by men F four or five prayer books survive in the hand of the rabbi and Scribe Abraham Ben morai farol written specifically for women in them this blessing is amended right and we're talking about 1471 of course it's absolutely forbidden to change the the form of the prayers the coinage or template of the prayers but reality sometimes manages to intervene thank you God is is Right given that I'm married to someone who besides being a professor and Scholar of Rabbi is a female Orthodox ordained Rabbi a maharat it is unsurprising that the idea of never altering the prayers is a sword so to speak that I am unwilling to die on I say this every morning and AI says this we solve the problem and that in nutshell is the scene the cultural scene the religious scene in yel Ben shimon's late 15th century Italy in fact as my own work has consistently demonstrated the hagad the Liturgy for the Eva Passover since it was a service enacted in the home is a prime place to encounter gifting for women and perhaps female patronage it is entirely plausible to think that the D was commissioned for a woman with that woman's Yeshiva madest Folly going oh and although I made a point of the fact that in the relatively early ashkenazic Griffins head hagad men and women are generally segregated there are hints even in this manuscript that the Patron's view of women's practice and participation is more expansive than it might seem we will as I say return to it later if the sapharic or Iberian realm we have the famous golden hagad created around 1320 probably in Barcelona now in the British Library I've argued that the multiple one might say excessive depictions of women accomplished by including scenes generally not depicted in most hagad especially because they present an opportunity to include more women I've argued that the patron or gifty was a woman I even conjecture Ed on the basis of multiple scenes of the loss of children in the manuscript as well as the fact that it is women with babies who lead the Exodus and in another image cross the Sea of reeds while Moses and the men lag behind that the hagad was in fact made for a woman who had having spare Us lost a child the next illustration really brings that possibility home it's on the last folio and can only be described as a display of hyper fertility food is being distributed to a woman with seven children she has six children of the same age and height and in this her fertility mirrors that of the Israelite women in Egypt who each had six children at each birth right because there are six adjectives describing the fruitfulness of the Israelites in Egypt so the rabbi said that clearly it meant that they had they gave birth to six children every time they gave B gave birth and that's how you get from 70 people going down to Egypt to 00,000 coming out of Egypt you don't have you nobody's bound to believe that but it's cute um um but but she's also holding a baby thus exceeding in facundity even the hyper fertile Israelite women this image represents a sort of visual prayer on the part of the patron for recovery and reinvigoration after What Might Have Been a profound loss for her in fact the golden hagad was not the the only hagadah that implicates the viewer in a drama played out in the life of particular woman it's so-called sister thus designated because it includes many of the same scenes as the golden hagad albe it painted in a much less professionally manner professional manner is even more interesting in some respects because it is not the life circumstances of a female Patron or gifty that are exposed to the viewer but some aspect of the inner world world of a woman on the page perhaps corresponding to the patron or gift te Julie Harris is a truly gifted independent scholar who's produced some of the most cogent intelligent and creative work on Jewish art in medieval Spain writes about this brightly colored and Charming image in her article making room at the table women pant Passover and the sensory in the sister hagad besides the details of the architecture and the hanging lamps the books for the men and the two creatures under the table though whether they're pets or pests is difficult to ascertain there's a young woman seated at the Seder table who is looking directly at us with a finger to her mouth and her other hand in a dish Harris engages in a brilliant speculation about the role of the condiment she is possibly tasting for me it's her engagement with us that is most interesting has she been shamefully caught in the act right or is she inviting us to experience what she is experiencing it is such a compelling image inviting us in a way that is yet not specified right much of the Seder as Harris points out is a sensual gustatory experience but while there are sweet tastes at the Seder the home service is unique in Mand mandating the experience of a bitter taste although some Jews today use horseradish for maror the so-called bitter herbs there were many candidates for this important ritual item some have erroneously listed artichokes among them but we will get to that soon the talmud prefers Roma lettuce because it most accurately represents the project and process of the Egyptian enslavement it started out the rabbis tell us as a sort of Grand National Public Works Endeavor a WPA project as it were with the Egyptians and even Pharaoh himself donning hard hats to inaugurate the great building effort by the second day Pharaoh was gone on the third day the Egyptians dropped out leaving only the Israelites who continued to work out of a misguided patriotic desire to be more Egyptian than the Egyptians the point besides highlighting the potential Dark Side of assimilation was that enslavement was a gradual process it didn't happen overnight when one takes a bite of Roma lettuce one in initially thinks one is eating a delightful salad but the more you chew it the more bitter note not sharp like horseradish not hot right but nauseously bitter it becomes that's why in the illustration of maror in the Washington hagad the herb represented as a bunch of lettuce leaves rather than a horseradish route of course what's interesting about this image is its violence both enacted by the man thrusting the bitter herbs into the face of the woman while pressing down on her head his larger size and elevation make him Tower over her increasing the atmosphere of Menace she for her part is wearing a blood red dress and glances toward the sword she is not grasping but rather balancing Point down between thumb and fingers it doesn't seem too farfetched to use the Yiddish term no I'm just kidding fetched right to view this as a scene not of enacted in the woman's case but potential violence I'll return to this image shortly but I want to present you with a short survey of how this theme is developed in Iberia and Franco Germany here's the famous illustration of the alleged artichoke used for maror in the late 14th century brother hagad I debunk this notion in my faim edition of the manuscript but there had been a long series of clickbaity blog posts on the topic what did Medieval Spanish Jews use for marrow at their seder the answer might surprise you right um these were responded to by me and my colleague professor leor jacobe of Baran University in the excellent safarin blog I mean if I could have one person in the audience today it would be Dan Rabinowitz the editor of thear safarin blog who does perhaps one of the greatest I know I know I know one of the greatest services to and I just winked at him the greatest services to um to to to Jews of the World by publishing this wonderful publication so we responded and the public oh the public right subsequently responded in more correspondence leading to other correspondence and still more blog posts and the upshot of the whole controversy like that old illustration which can appear either as a vase or two faces those who wanted to see an artichoke contined to see an artichoke and those who wanted to see a head of Roma lettuce saw ah head of Romain lettus of course those who saw the artist Chu had to cope with the fact that in none of the huge art Archive of halak that is Jewish legal sources and compendia of Jewish Customs is there any record of any Community using artichokes for maror ever yet in an annoying case of Life imitating art you can now find almost 10,000 Google results where people describe themselves as using arti chokes from maror quote on the basis of ancient illustrations in medieval haad do unquote so it seems by disproving that the custom had any history that leor and I unwittingly started a completely new custom that has become apparently widespread among non-h helically observant Jews anyway for our purposes this evening um however I am interested in the lower register of the central panel which depicts two elegantly attired seder attendees the text says Maro This Bitter herb the man at left points to the woman indicating in a Ard as old as the Stone Age that she's his I don't know his ball and chain his trouble and strife his old lady is is bitter herb she's my bitter herb right I like her though because she's sort of she got a hand on her hip she's holding up the glass like she's gonna throw it in his face like something something something right out of Truman capot in the swans okay but wait there's more it's not only those Spanish Jews who were nasty to their wives news flash misogyny occurs in in ashkenaz as well so in the T hag we have a rather quiescent woman who points to herself as the man touches the top of her head while extending her other hand in his Direction it might be a tender gesture who me how sweet were it not for the fact that once again he is calling her his little Roma lettuce leaf AKA aka the source of all bitterness in his life it's interesting that there's no moror in evidence in this image unless of course you count the wife but I'm bump I'll be here all night um although the frame contains the frame contains some gold some green leaves which might stand in for the bitter herbs one of the most interesting ashkenazic examples is in the so-called Hil and bik hagada here there's an actual conversation going on the the witty reparte goes like this the husband says there are two causes of bitterness in my life the woman responds using rbbi um language that when there are two cases of anything a third case must be induced to split the difference as we would say but instead of saying split she says stink thus demonstrating her audition in rinic sources and asserting that if he finds her bitter she finds he smells bad the husband's weirdly phallic hat is especially pronounced here sort of ort of amplifying the toxic masculinity toxic she says I'll tell you what's toxic you stink right very very interesting book okay let's talk about bitterness in yoel's other works given the fact that yel Ben Shimon was involved in several projects intended as gifts for women including projects that we might well label Proto feminists such as the Marvia sidor it might surprise us to find him in involved in the sorted business sorted you see what I did there sorted uh of the finger pointing my wife as my bitter pill analogy for others like the patron of the Washington hagad what was he you know did he have two minds about the question of of women after all maral's prayer book certainly doesn't depict the maror pointing joke but rather depicts a young man and a woman probably Marval herself ra raising the traditional Italian seder basket no seder plates in Italy instead of the usual exclusively male protagonists Evelyn con points out that yoel has quote infused the scene with a humorous note I would add romantic with the couple gazing into each other's eyes they're so cute I love them rather than at the basket and its contents you see and we might find ourselves similarly relieved when we encounter the raw child or Murphy hagada illuminated by yel and now in the National Library of Israel in Jerusalem here a man sits on a bench holding a bunch of maror as below him an elegantly dressed woman brings a matah to be baked by a livered servant in a gorgeous Red oven surrounded by wattled insulation but be relieved no more be uncomfortable be diseased take a look at the woman's hairstyle a very popular one in the second half of the 15th century made by tying up two braids in the center of the head particularly good for attracting unicorns um apparently okay right you see this hairstyle right but it also resembles an Echoes across the page the maror held by the seated man this chasmic or cross page Arrangement is common in medieval manuscripts the ey is drawn across the page to design elements that mirror each other and yel deploys it in the Washington hag depiction of maror as well let's get to the Washington hag's depiction of bitterness although it should be obvious it must be stated that the manuscript is its own thing each manuscript is its own environment meaning that each Patron told yel what was desired to be depicted maral's dad obviously wanted something more Progressive even Proto feminist for his daughter the Washington dagada seems to been made for a different kind of Patron but here's a question was it made for a patron at all or did your L simply have it on hand or have it in a shop for anyone with the gold to purchase it without a specific Patron in mind Katrine kajman Apple deduces that this was the case no specific Patron because while it has a Califon a signature indicating the date of completion it does not contain any statement of patronage this was commissioned by you know mosha pipik right you know it doesn't say that as often or occasionally hagad do will I disagree I think it was actually commissioned by or for a woman the references to women in quote unquote conventional and it must be added apparently blatantly misogynist matter are in fact countered reposted parried in the very same iconography that presents those conventional misogynous tropes allow me to demonstrate the this image with its enacted violence on the part of the male figure appears directly across the page from another image in place of the male householder holding the matah found in nearly every other hagad and certainly in the works of yel Ben Shimon we see a monkey the monkey of course is Simeon which medieval best here is the books of beasts tell us is simanis a simulacrum of a human to compare a person to a monkey is as I need not tell you an insult the monkey sits on a p pillow just as the male human protagonist will in the other ritual illustrations and holds up a matah which in many hagad represents a sort of mirror right how you ask is a matah a mirror well it is in the presence of the matah that seder participants are supposed to quote unquote see themselves as if they had personally come out of Egypt so the Mata is spoken of as a mirror in various texts mystical and ritual placed in again chasmic relationship kiasma comes from the Greek Kai right you know the the um the the the letter that looks like an X right directly across the page from the male protagonist of the stupid maror jest the mon he provides an interesting commentary see yourself he seems to say holding up his matah mirror instead of Performing the ritual as even I a monkey can do with consummate dignity you are spending your time in a violent and self-centered reflection on bitterness it's not the Egyptian enslavement you're most embittered about it's your personal relationship come to your senses don't make a monkey out of yourself last you find this far-fetched and implausible something that's often said about my work and I love it um I would like you to consider an image that I think is very similar to these in the opening rubric illustrating this 14th century ashkenazic manuscript of the Tom mudik commentary by the Ros we see a most extraordinary J deposition a man sits studying a book at the bottom on a red and gold brocade tassel pillow at the top a squirrel Seated on a similar red and gold brocade tassel pillow nibbles on a nut the obvious analogy here is to study of Torah which in Rabbi and cabalistic sources is often compared to cracking the shell the apparent meaning of a text to get at the nut the sweet insights that it contains beneath the surface once again the relationship between the signifier and signified is expressed chasmic that is across the page these sort of K asically arranged analogous images serve to turn an apparently conventional iconography into a commentary on those very conventions the squirrel could simply be a decorative Whimsical or natural historical element like the many other images of animals on the page but once we notice that the man studying the book at the bottom of the frame once we notice that man and once we moreover note that he sits just as a squirrel does on a red and gold rade tassel pillow we realize that these figures are meant to be analogous it makes sense therefore that the squirrel's presence represents a commentary on the task of studying Torah and a prescription moreover for a method a true Sage penetrates Beneath The Superficial surface of any object of study to apprehend its more satisfying Inner Essence the monkey is matter out of place he's configured like the humans performing the rituals in the balance of the manuscript Seated on a red tassel pillow holding the ritual object in his hand he's J toiled however with the one human not performing the ritual as he should directly across the page it makes sense therefore that the monkey's presence represents a rebuke or a critique to a figure we can now see as a miscreant he's not a model Jewish men are not supposed to open up this book and be like him it's a model of what not to be don't be an ape well I hope that's at least a satisfying some kind of satisfy in subsurface analysis but here's a question we haven't even taken a stab at yes stab the sword the sword that the woman significantly does not grasp but rather peculiarly balances or steadies with her thumb and fingers most Scholars see this as a general reference to the sharpness of womankind in felicitous parallel with the man's action which asserts that women are bitter or sharp but given the other signifiers on this page and given what I will propose is the general quote unquote attitude toward women in the iconography of this manuscript I want to maintain a skeptical distance regarding the interpretation that this is about womanly sharpness even if it provides a convenient parallel with the man's gestural assertion what we can say is that while the man's gesture is explicit there's nothing you know like subtle about sticking a handful of bitter herbs into somebody's face and pushing her down right the woman's is much more ambiguous ambiguous gestures are not uncommon in medieval iconography which is what makes it so much fun to study in my forthcoming book people of the image Jews and art which will come out with Penn State University press sometime this year I've discussed details like the ambiguous pout of seora the wife of Moses in the golden hagad she's pouting why good question there's a similar ambivalent gesture in the work of Y Ben Shimon it appears in the Raw child or Murphy hagad the hagad describes four types of people with an aim to prescribing different pedagogical approaches to the story of Yas misim of The Exodus from Egypt these typological figures are something sometimes known as the four Sons or the four children I prefer to refer to them as people simply here the wise person notably not holding a book as is common and as we might expect points to himself what is this iconography articulating is it about the self-sufficiency of the truly wise perhaps but other possibilities present themselves as well the self- indication May so to speak point to these ideas there's an obligation to recite or ask the four questions or Expressions on the night of the Seder how different is this night from all other nights on all other nights of the year we do this I don't right um um to ask those four questions or to articulate those four Expressions um and the account the story of The Exodus from Egypt even to oneself if one neb unfortunately is alone for the Seder right thus he points to himself that's one explanation another is the wise person understands that one must tell the story of The Exodus as if quote unquote one had personally come out of Egypt one is reg required to regard oneself oneself as if one came out of Egypt another possibility is leave the for me and not for him for for for him the obstinate person another character asks what does all this stuff mean to you guys right since that person disinclude themselves from the collective we say that the Redemption from egyp eypt occurred quotee unquote for me and not for you if you had been there with your attitude that it's all about you people and not about me you would not have been redeemed right so so he's pointing to himself me and not you and then finally this is the one I think is the cutest um even so you the wise person are to present the obstinate person with an answer that knocks a teeth out of all their argument the word even so is off in Hebrew which also means nose right now these are only some possibilities for this ambiguous gesture the nose nose correct um given these examples we might consider that the woman in the Washington hagadas Maro illustration looking down contemplatively and sort of toying for that's what she's doing she's not grasping she's toying with the sword is considering doing something in the moments after we Ur encounter her during the violent assault by her husband right it might be something like Judith does to hres in art made for Christians and indeed art made for Jews it's a popular subject it might be that like the city of Venice configured as justia by Yobo yakobo de Fior she was enforcing Justice on her left hand side represented in Del fur's panel by the scales with punishment on her right side which Del F represented with the sword but Yo's woman has given up on Justice because there is no justice only violence in her present experience and she is considering though not yet enacting the administration of punishment Corporal and capital that's her Shifty look to pick up up a sword to slay the enemies of the nation or state is one thing to pick up a sword to slay one's husband is quite another so y El's woman does not pick it up not yet when something is visually articulated as being in potential as being implied incipient possible but not yet manifest it is a thought crime only and thus a relieving fantasy but not not yet a real reality I want to look at another image of y's women which is disturbing not for its violence which is presented um there but it's present I should say but Less Direct in the scene but about its apparently systematic use of hierarchy to disenfranchise women here it is famous famous scene as we noted at the start of the talk here we see messiah's donkey written by Messiah himself or perhaps Elijah an intense and dominating figure whose great expansively Blu garbed bulk uh takes up the majority of the donkey's back the poor Potter familias the quote unquote head of household must ride on the donkey's rump his small son clinging to his waist in jaw tensing fright behind them on the tail of the donkey are precariously perched the lady of the house for whom as I said I suspect this book itself was made and on the very end of the tail her young daughter holding on for dear life glancing at the ground behind them an anxious expression on her face and finally the last in this great chain of being the female servant barely visible hanging hanging on to the Tail's Tippy tip there is however one very crucial thing about this image it is not occurring in the world as we know it it is occurring in Messianic times in the aido in the future time because the here's the Messiah but there's one other clue that the era is Messianic the only person raising the cup of blessing on the donkey is the mat familias the woman I think is the patron remember we argue that this image in the Griffin head ha must represent the Messianic Passover because Jews were forbidden to eat sheep's or goat at the Seder in Ashan and remember I told you that there are other clues in this image that it represents the Passover the Messianic era that we would return to discuss no time like the present sorry um remember also that I said in the Griffin head ha men and women are generally segregated the women sitting with their hands in their laps not participating in the ritual but I mentioned that there are hints even in this manuscript view of women's practice and participation that are more expansive than it might seem well look here's the Passover the message Messianic era and the women are not relegated to the end of the table they sit at the same table with the men and significantly instead of sitting with their hands in their laps they fully participate raising the cup of blessing along with the men what Messianic era seems to mean in this illustration is full egalitarian participation of women let me repeat that because it might sound strange to you for the authorship of these conventional medieval images the Messianic era is not about gathering around the Messiah and some kind of green pasture in the sky some new Garden of Eden right the Messianic era looks like this it looks like this it looks like this it looks like this and this and possibly like this depending on whether men can stop being monkeys about the whole business thinking about these issues in this way it becomes clearer than ever that art is not about art is not based on actuality but on the wishes dreams and aspirations of a people distilling the wishes dreams and aspirations of a people or even of a community a family a person person this is even more important than being able to reconstruct the reality of their lives or the travels of an artist or the contents of their China cabinets it's nearly always more intriguing and Elusive while art is always to some degree a mirror in this case a mirror of Jewish life revealing the details of Jewish Home surroundings how Jews live what they wore what their household objects look like it is more more so and crucially so a projector images display for the patrons their Circle for posterity first and foremost the mental projections that is the wishes dreams and Ambitions of the people who commission them art in other words is to be understood as evidence of things patrons desire to say about themselves and to project to viewers everything we see that is apparently a representation is also an aspect Iration so what to do to conclude with the fact that these images of Joel's women in the Washington hagad could express positive values alongside their apparent misogyny is this too much ambiguity too much contradiction too much disjunction well if it is just get over it because that's the medieval mind for you on a Palm Sunday sermon of the 12th Century theologian anius of utan for instance the devil who according to First Peter quote skull suround seeking whom to devour is configured as a lion seeking to undermine Divine sovereignty through open persecution of the weak and defenseless in that same small book of sermons if you flip through a couple of pages to the Easter Sunday sermon of anus ofan he writes the lion is Christ who is called The Lion of the tribe of Judah so which is it is the lion the devil or is it Christ the answer yes yes both simultaneously and without contradiction H the medieval mind what a thing but to be honest not only the medieval mind all the great poets have known this it's not only what we see before us but we have the potential to see also and contradiction part and parcel of the story I'm not valorizing the observation that to the medieval mind contradictory values could be held in equal and S simultaneous esteem I'm not suggesting for instance that we in the 21st century justify women's subjugation or keep women down and out of full religious participation I'm merely reflecting on an aspect of medieval Consciousness like anor's love Lions these images assume positive or negative veence depending on the context and intent of the viewing audience and they could sometimes bear both kinds of meanings simultaneously and it just so happens that these images of women in yoel's Washington hagada could express positive values alongside their apparent misogyny as humans inhabiting to say the least a complex and confusing World it behooves us to learn to live with and appreciate uncertainty Paradox contradiction alterity for it is in the interstices the gaps between the things we know and understand and can relate to and the things we don't know don't understand and can't relate to that we can glean the most cogent and Lasting insights about our culture our religions our histories and ourselves thank you very [Applause] much yes I'm happy to entertain questions with the provisor that they are questions not dissertation excurses okay so if you have any questions actual questions I'd appreciate hearing them anyone the ushers will circulate among you with baskets okay um there's there's somebody over here this is the one with the nose uh thing not not that she has a no she held up a sign that said the nose nose so yeah who are you oh no you can't identify yourself it's fine okay right thank you this was so fascinating really want to express was it fun though was it fun so much okay that's all I loved it love just want to have fun I'm so old yeah so I actually have a question and and also like a a question that may be for consideration right so my real question doesn't have anything to do with the actual lecture but with the pointy hat that they always have now story I'm not telling it today invite me back pressure the Library of Congress talk to your Congressman ah all right I I think I actually know who that is um but the con uh conject not conjecture but anyways maybe it's kind of a question um regarding the Washington hagada and um your question of like who commission the hagada you kind of uh set my brain going when you mentioned that Simeon is a word for monkey and the artist is yoel Ben Simeon is it possible he is the monkey that's very cute that's a great idea we we that's very in Innovative as the British would say we our kid one one of our kids I don't remember which one had a friend named Simeon that we referred to as like a New York Times crossword puzzle clue when we wanted to talk about him we would say apik so that we' say are you going to AP like's house right you know so um that's a that's very very interesting that's all I can say it's very very interesting thank you but what I can say is you have the right kind of mind for this you know so go look at some manuscripts and and start thinking about them and write me all your conjectures and I'll steal them and publish them and make $18 okay who else oh there's a gentleman back there he doesn't look happy I'm a little nervous okay here yes sir hi thank you for this fascinating lecture okay yeah uh I'm Ariel seagull I help digitize a lot of these manuscripts though not not the Washington hagada uh but uh it's been a privilege but when I was looking through the washing haaga images one that caught my eye was of two women preparing a Passover hold on hold on see this what are the women up to here oh yes that one there they are okay there are your women and there's a parallel between another manuscript of y's there's the guy with a goer go ahead with a goer so they seem ambiguous or ambivalent offering the cup to him they're also preparing a roast possib not the Corban PES and then there's the the pup at their feet which I found adorable what what could you speculate about the symbolism here the reason why it's uh it's Freud said sometimes a cigar is just a cigar right so so it could be you know as as um as uh as Puba says in the makado merely corroborated with detail intended to give artistic very similitude to otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative but it may it may or may not be just you know detail um Katrine goes into at length uh the the goer and people on the periphery of society and all that stuff and it's it's interesting sociologically what I think is that in all of these images there is a sort of and I think this is timely for us in in these months anxiety trepidation trapped captivity and Redemption are all there's like a cycle of that so this woman here is like she's she's taken something from her cooking because he already has a drink so she's taken something from what she's preparing that white stuff whatever it is um and she's she wants to offer it to him but she's kind of scared to approach him because he's he has this disability that makes her feel weird you know it's like I want to be charitable and nice but I he kind of grosses me out it's very it's very strange her ambivalent expression right and it's very amazing that you notice that thank you I also find this of course trepidation anxiety you know teaching young people the number one disease in America is anxiety among young people and if we look you know in this illustration at the face of the girl right who's looking down and is she going to fall off does she have a place on the donkey you know um you have that and then our our friend from maror her trapped is so evident she can't look at him because he's pushing her head away I'm Sorry by the way if these images are triggering her in any way if you've experienced domestic violence because they certainly reson resonate uh with me but you know you have these the this Trinity of anxiety trepidation and trap this and the two last illustrations in the hag are about redeeming captives one is right from the from the the narrow place I called unto you and you have a prisoner right and then you have Daniel in the Lion's dead and I just think it's so um it it it's like this appeal to take us out of this narrow narrow place of our anxiety and to redeem that which is captive in in us and believe me this idea of people being held hostage Jews being held hostage was a very common thing in the Middle Ages right so people are C in the world you know is a very strong thing so I don't have an answer to what they're doing but I think it is part of what I would call the anxiety trepidation cycle in the the the hag I haven't gotten further than that but if you have further ideas I'd love to know them thank you we should have amen yes someone else no it's getting late so thank you so much my great pleasure thanks [Applause] okay go ahead do you also research what life was like in that period of time somewhat but actually that's that's somewhat irrelevant to these illustrations because this is the world as it was wanted was projected not as a miror there are plenty of people though who do what life is like and they love doing that they are archaeologists of the stud I'm an archaeologist of the mind and heart okay

Channel: Library of Congress

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Keywords: Library of Congress

Id: etfH7gZUC6I

Length: 74min 9sec (4449 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 16 2024