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Carved ivory casket with depictions of Cupid, Byzantine, 10th century

from The Walters Art Museum

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Mirror Case with Falconry Scene

Paris, France, 1325/50

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Somebody left this delightful tag on this post yesterday. As a general rule, I try to avoid talking politics or arguing with people who say stupid things on my posts, but given how upset I've been about the current situation at Columbia, I'm having trouble letting this go. Columbia University has one of the oldest Judaica collections in the United States, dating back to the 18th century, and was also one of the first universities in the country to develop a Jewish studies curriculum. The preservation and stewardship of this collection has been the collective effort of generations of Jewish scholars, and suggesting, even jokingly or flippantly, that it should be taken away just because you're scared of some students protesting is pretty insulting to all of those people.

(Not to mention that the "put it under glass" comment is just nonsense. Do you think the librarians are leaving medieval manuscripts sitting around unsecured? Do you think students are going to storm the Rare Book and Manuscript Library like it's the Bastille?)

Anyway, the only reason I even knew about that manuscript to post it in the first place is because I saw it in one of my classes when I was at Columbia. I've heard enough dumb and ignorant stuff about my alma mater in the news recently; I don't want to hear it on my blog, too.

[yiddishknights]

Albrecht Dürer. Knight, Death and the Devil. 1513. Engraving. 24,6 × 18,9 cm.

Rotterdam

[yiddishknights]

FLEUR DE LYS-SHAPED BOOK OF HOURS, in Latin, use of Rome (Paris, c. 1553). Illuminated manuscript on paper.

180 x 80mm. i + 117 leaves, each page with 24 lines written in a 'roman' hand in black ink within a liquid gold border in the shape of a half fleur de lys, spaces infilled with liquid gold fronds on blue or red grounds, line-fillers and one- and two-line initials of the same colours, eleven lobe-shaped miniatures. Nineteenth-century brown morocco gilt, semé with fleur de lys, doublures of red morocco gilt, edges gauffered and gilt (upper cover detached). [Christies Auction House, 2006 catalog]

source

[yiddishknights]

lmaoooo the way the false guinevere on her deathbed is like “arthur everything I told you is a lie” and gawain immediately turns to him and is like “my liege I fucking told you so”

[yiddishknights]

what if you lived in a society with strict and sometimes absurd rules regulating what behavior was honorable . and your perfect older brother was so good at it the best at it even but you just didnt get it because the rules dont make sense and theyre stupid and its not fair that he can play the game so well and you cant. and everyone hates you and calls you a piece of shit because you arent good at following the Rules like your brother and his stupid piece of shit boyfriend. and then you find out that the boyfriend is Breaking The Rules really seriously and you tell your brother and hes like shut up about it, just let him break the rules and get away with it. but your younger brother agrees that its fucked up and you should expose him so you do and everyone forever is like youre evil for this and everyone that died as a result is because of you. and you deserved to be killed by this guy for showing that he broke the rules. this happened to my buddy agravaine

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The Oldest Sephardic Haggadah (Circa 1350) ~ Considered the most beautiful Jewish illuminated manuscript in existence, and the oldest Sephardic Haggadah, the Sarajevo Haggadah, was produced in the mid-14th century in Barcelona, Spain. It was written on bleached calfskin and illuminated in copper and gold, and opens with 34 pages of illustrations of biblical scenes from creation through the death of Moses. It is preserved at the National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Sarajevo. 

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“The museum was ransacked during 1992’s Siege of Sarajevo, but the thieves, ignorant of the Haggadah’s worth, left it on the floor. It was removed to an underground bank vault, where it survived untouched, even as the museum sustained heavy artillery damage…The president of Bosnia presented it to Jewish community leaders during a Seder three years later.”

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-sarajevo-haggadah-cover

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The Mantua Haggadah, 1568, Italy.

[yiddishknights]

Girls don’t want boys, girls want a facsimile edition of the “Birds’ Head Haggadah” (Southern Germany, c. 1300)

Image from the Israel Museum: https://www.imj.org.il/en/collections/199815-0