A Haggah from Ruzhany that Survived the Holocaust returns to Jewish hands

                     Information to Date about the Ruzhany Passover Haggadah
        By Brian Zakem, Co-Coordinator of the Ruzhany Yizkor Book Translation Project

    The Haggadah was given to  Mrs. Tybie Abrams on December 10,  2010 in Ruzhany, by a young man who acted as a guide. They were in front of the office of the Mayor, no further identification of the young man is available. He told Tybie that his father told him to make sure this religious service book for Passover should one day be given to some Jewish visitor to Ruzhany, and that it had been found in the “home of the jeweler.”
  This remnant, approximately 60 pages, is now believed to be a Haggadah.
    In the process of researching the “Ruzhany Haggadah” with the help of research librarians at the Spertus College of Judaica, Chicago, complemented by the extraordinary digging for this sacred book’s facts of origin, with special thanks to Ms. Sharon Horowitz of the Library of Congress, this is what is now known about this partial document. So far, this work of “Judaica” is the only work I know about that has been uncovered from the Jewish inhabitants who lived in Ruzhany between their most probable first habitation since this privately, Sapahia family-owned market town was established in 1552 till the Jewish community’s “final” demise in the Shoah, November 1942.
    These pages, all of one Haggadah, consisted of an approximate total of 87 numbered pages, 13 pages of a Roman-enumerated preface incorporating at least 10 images/graphics of various sizes, beginning with its reproduced (copied)  cover page from the so-called “Great Haggadah of Prague,” first published in 1558. Tybie’s unbound copy, a loose-paged remnant, appears to be missing about 10 pages from its preface (in the Yiddish language) and 17-plus pages of the original text.
    According to the Yudelov Bibliography of Haggadot, Ms. Horowitz has to date identified four likely publishers and related information. As translated from the Hebrew these editions are listed:

1.    N. Levin, Publisher, Vilna, Lithuania, 1922. Printed by I. Notes and S. Szwajiich, edited by N. Niselovits, approximate size 6-3/4 by 4 inches.
2.    Second edition (same as above), 1923, same size.
3.    Third edition (same as above), 1925, size increased to 9 by 6 inches.
4.    Shelomoh Funk, Publisher, Vilnia, Lithuania. Printed by Express, 1931, edited by H. Niselovits, 9 by 6 inches.

    It is hoped that future readers and/or dedicated researchers will aid and contact Brian (bzakem@comcast.net) when they discover any materials that may confirm the actual origins of this so-called “Ruzhany Haggadah.”
    Additional facts and narratives concerning this particular and/or related Haggadah (i.e., its contents, how marketed, etc.) may illuminate and further uncover, as part of a meaningful memorial, some Ruzhany’s residents, their rich, very complex, Jewish multicultural, multiethnic and interreligious histories.

The following pictures of Ruzhany were taken by Tybie Abrams a cousin of
Edith
Vegotsky Taylor, Co-coordinator of the Ruzhany Yizkor Project.


Haggadah that survived the
                                Holocaust
Haggadah that survived the
                                Holocaust
Haggadah that survived the
                                Holocaust
Haggadah that survived the
                                Holocaust
Haggadah that survived the
                                Holocaust
Haggadah that survived the
                                Holocaust
Haggadah that survived the
                                Holocaust
Haggadah that survived the
                                Holocaust
Haggadah that survived the
                                Holocaust
Haggadah that survived the
                                Holocaust

 

Updated by RAF March 2012

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