Mahzor (Festival Prayer Book) for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur According to the Rite of Asti, Fossano, and Moncalvo, Scribe: Jacob Joshua Katzigin of Asti, [Piedmont], 1800

A beautifully written exemplar representing a largely unknown Jewish rite.

With the expulsion of the Jews from France in 1306 and then again (after their subsequent readmission) about ninety years later, in 1394, many settled in the Piedmont region of Northern Italy. In general, these exiles were too few in number to establish their own independent communities, and so they adopted the customs of the local (usually Ashkenazic) Jews among whom they settled. However, in three specific towns—Asti, Fossano, and Moncalvo, collectively known by the Hebrew acronym Apam—the French transplants were able to maintain their ancestral rite, at least vis-à-vis the liturgy of the High Holidays (during the rest of the year, they prayed according to the Ashkenazic minhag of nearby Turin). As a result, nussah Apam, the usage of these three Piedmontese communities, became the only rite to preserve the special liturgical customs and poetry of medieval French Jewry into the modern period.

Probably because the total Jewish population of these towns, at their peak, did not exceed several hundred souls, their unique rite was never printed and survives today exclusively in manuscript form (though individual liturgical poems have been published by scholars). The present lot is a complete manuscript mahzor for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur according to nussah Apam that was likely created for use by a cantor, given its folio size and contents. Some of its more interesting features include: the recitation of the she-heheyyanu blessing on the second day of Rosh Hashanah prior to the sounding of the shofar only in cases where the first day was the Sabbath; the sounding of sixty (rather than one hundred) shofar blasts total; the reading of the poem Attah konanta olam be-rov hesed, by Yosei ben Yosei, in recounting the sacrificial service practiced on Yom Kippur in the ancient Holy Temple during musaf; plus several alternate texts of nishmat, yishtabbah, aleinu, kol nidrei, and many of the piyyutim and selihot.

This volume was expertly copied by the calligraphic hand of a member of the Katzigin (occasionally spelled Ketzigin or Chezighin; in Italian: Clava) family, whose constituents settled and at times rose to prominence in various Piedmontese communities, including Carmagnola, Casale Monferrato, and Turin. Jacob Joshua Katzigin is known to have created at least one other manuscript: a volume containing the ma‘ariv service together with sefirat ha-omer (Asti, 1795; see New York, Columbia University Library Ms. X 893 J 7293). The present mahzor later made its way into the hands of two brothers, Emiglio Abram and Moise Montalcini of Asti (see also Turin, Archivio Ebraico Terracini Ms. 1489), before being acquired by the great bibliophile, librarian, and bookseller Aron Freimann of Frankfurt am Main.

Provenance

1. Emiglio Abram Montalcini (f. i) 

2. Moses ben Joshua Hai (Moise di Salvador Vita) Montalcini, Adar 5579 (1819) (f. i, rear flyleaf)

3. Aron Freimann, Frankfurt am Main (Markon, p. 90)

Physical Description

128 folios (16 3/4 x 10 3/8 in.; 423 x 262 mm) (collation: i¹⁰, ii-vii¹², viii¹¹ [viii₂ canceled], ix¹², x¹¹ [x₁₂ canceled?], xi¹²) on paper (including 5 blanks); original foliation in pen in Hebrew characters in upper-outer corner of rectos; written in elegant Italian square (text body) and semi-cursive (some rubrics) scripts in dark brown ink; ruled in blind; justification of lines via dilation or contraction of final letters, abbreviation, insertion of space fillers, and use of anticipatory letters; most liturgical texts vocalized; Tetragrammaton formed as two yodin followed by a wavy parentheses; headers throughout; horizontal catchwords at foot; intermittent strikethroughs, corrections, and insertions in primary and subsequent hands; pen trials on blanks. Enlarged incipits (see especially ff. 50r, 52v); some headers placed within decorative panels; numerous letters charmingly flourished; stichographic and ornamental layouts of many piyyutim and other texts; floral motifs on ff. 5v, 52v. Slight scattered staining and smudging; minor thumbing and dog-earing; occasional short tears in lower edges; episodic abrasion of letters; ink biting, especially in latter half of volume; gutter strengthened at foot of ff. 83-84; short tear in outer edge of f. 105. Original(?) gilt-tooled brown leather over board, bumped, scratched, worn, and wormed; heavily worn along gilt-tooled spine; headband exposed; upper joints starting; upper brass clasp intact and catching on fore-edge, lower clasp partially lost; paper edges stained red; original(?) paper rear flyleaf and marbled pastedowns.

Literature

Elia S. Artom, “Il registro di un circoncisore Astigiano (sec. XVIII-XIX),” La Rassegna Mensile di Israel 16,6-8 (June-August 1950): 173-187, at pp. 185-186 (no. 149).

Yom Tov Assis, “Nusah APaM: A Medieval Liturgical Survivor,” in Jeffrey R. Woolf (ed.), Ebrei Piemontesi: The Jews of Piedmont (New York: Yeshiva University Museum, 2008), 49-53.

Daniel Goldschmidt, “Leket shikhhah u-pe’ah le-mahazor apam,” Kiryat sefer 30 (1955): 118-136, 264-278.

Rori Mancino, Comunità ebraica di Alessandria: Archivio Storico (1794-1998) (Turin, 2005), 62.

Isaak Markon, “Ma’amar al mahazor minhag apam,” in Salo W. Baron and Alexander Marx (eds.), Jewish Studies in Memory of George A. Kohut, 1874-1933 (New York: The Alexander Kohut Memorial Foundation, 1935), 89-101.

Maria Luisa Giribaldi Sardi, “La sinagoga,” in Asti: Guida alla sinagoga, al museo e al cimitero (Venice: Marsilio, 1999), 17-21, at p. 21.

Alberto Somekh, “‘E gioisca in Te Israele che ama il Tuo Nome’: Ancora sul Minhag di Asti, Fossano e Moncalvo e alcuni suoi manoscritti,” in Luciano Allegra, Agnese Cuccia, and Sarah Kaminski (eds.), Vita ebraica a Fossano dal Cinquecento al Novecento (Fossano: Fondazione Federico Sacco, 2010), 255-279.