From a World War II soldier’s mahzor (prayer book), to manuscripts from the Cairo Genizah, to a recently reunited prayer book from Portugal, the National Library of Israel’s impressive collection of prayer books and other holiday-related items immeasurably enhances our appreciation of the High Holy Days.
Dr. Chaim Neria, the NLI’s curator of the Haim and Hanna Solomon Judaica Collection, was excited to share a bevy of Yom Kippur-related artifacts, including rare prayer books, from its vast archive. It holds millions of items, both physical and digital, including books in Hebrew and those on Jewish topics; Jewish journals and magazines; Hebrew manuscripts; personal archives; and Jewish music.
In an interview with The Jerusalem Post, Neria explained how the NLI came to house thousands of prayer books, noting that “it fits into the overall mission of the library.”
He shared the extent of the library’s commitment to assembling a “very deep and broad” collection; ideally, it will include “every book printed about the Jewish people – and eventually have the best documentation of the Jewish people since the invention of printing.”
One reason the NLI has such a large collection of prayer books is that they were widely produced. “People needed them, and used them,” he noted. He even playfully pointed out that given their popularity, a printer would be making a “safe bet” if he produced prayer books.
The mystery of the Jewish soldier who fell on Yom Kippur, 1944
Neria began our tour by sharing a relatively “new” prayer book, where careful research and detective work by the NLI solved a mystery of a Jewish soldier in the US Army who fell on Yom Kippur, 1944.
A particularly peculiar two-volume Yiddish and Hebrew prayer book, printed in New York in 1942 by Ziegelheim Press, a publisher who had immigrated from Vienna to Manhattan before World War II and continued his work from the Big Apple, showed up at the NLI with many unanswered questions.
It contained the following inscription in Dutch with some Hebrew: “In memory of our son, David Meyer Wald, of the American Army. September 27, 1944 – Yom Kippur 5705, who fell in the liberation of Holland. May he rest in peace in the cemetery of Margraten, Plot Nn, row 9, grave number 222.
“Zelg and Hania Wald. Please commemorate his soul.”
The prayer books were apparently donated in memory of an American Jewish soldier initially buried in a cemetery in Holland. Researchers learned that David Meyer Wald was one of 8,288 soldiers buried in the American military cemetery near the village of Margraten, in southern Holland.
They later pieced together key aspects of his life: he was born in 1923 in Timkovichi, now in today’s Belarus. His family immigrated to the United States in 1938 and settled in Pittsburgh, PA. He served in the 325th Infantry Regiment, a unit belonging to the US Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, and was killed in Holland in 1944.
Wald was initially buried in Holland and re-interred in 1949 in Montreal.
Researchers at the NLI were puzzled about the prayer book until they discovered in 2007 that a Torah scroll was dedicated in memory of the same deceased American soldier by his parents. It was donated to the synagogue closest to his burial place in Holland. The Walds also donated two prayer books and perhaps other books to the NLI at the same time.
It is still unclear exactly how the books reached the NLI, or why it mistakenly contained another label – the Jewish Cultural Reconstruction, Inc., often abbreviated as JCR, which worked after the Holocaust to save books stolen by the Nazis during the war from Jewish libraries and from private collections across Europe.
Yet one thing was clear: the books were donated in memory of a Jewish soldier who gave his life fighting the Nazis and who died – on Yom Kippur – “for the sanctification of God’s name,” as stated on his gravestone in Hebrew.
This is a case, Neria noted, “in which one mahzor opened an entire story of an American soldier who died while liberating the world from evil. It gives new meaning to Yom Kippur, Jewish history, and the Israel experience. The story is very touching and unique.”
A remnant of one of the oldest Yom Kippur prayer books in existence
Neria took our tour further back in time – to the Cairo Genizah, which contains hundreds of thousands of complete Jewish documents and fragments of documents, including holy books, letters, and business and legal documents. They were all discovered in the attic of a synagogue in Fustat (the ancient city of Cairo) in the mid-1800s.
Neria explained the centrality and importance of the city. “Cairo was the center of Jewish activity, partially because it was a city where many merchants and rabbis arrived; it was a religious center and also a center for commerce.” The synagogue in Cairo was similarly important in the history of nusach (traditional wording and music).
Among the treasures in the genizah is a fragment of a page from an ancient Yom Kippur prayer book. It was written in the late 11th or early 12th century by a scribe named Hillel Ben-Eli, a cantor from Baghdad who immigrated to Egypt and worked as the official scribe of the Cairo rabbinical court.
Certificates in his handwriting appeared between 1066 and 1108. He is one of the most important scribes whose writings were found in the genizah. The prayer book from which this fragment comes is the oldest in the NLI’s collections, and one of the oldest in the entire world.
Those familiar with the Yom Kippur liturgy may recognize the name of Rabbi Eliezer Kalir, one of the greatest poets in Jewish history. On one side of a page from the genizah is a paragraph from a piyut (liturgical poem) by Rabbi Kalir called “Please Answer My Whisper.”
According to Neria and his team, in the third line, one can make out the Hebrew words “[Honi] hamulat kodesh, umehallelim behadarat [kodesh]” (“[My riches] are holy noise, and they praise in [holy] splendor”). On the other side are prayers related to the Yom Kippur service in the ancient Temple.
Neria explained the importance of the poets who wrote the poems that have made their way to prayers we recite on various holidays. They include slihot (penitential poems and prayers read before Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur), kinot (elegies on Tisha B’av), and yotzrot (liturgical poetry read before the “Shema” on four designated torah portions).
“They even wrote new piyutim for each Shabbat.”
The discovery of the piyut from the genizah shows that, nearly 1,000 years ago, Jews gathered in synagogues and recited prayers similar to the ones that we recite today. And we are still familiar with these piyutim.
The Lisbon Mahzor that wandered the world
Neria completed our tour of the library’s prayer book gems by sharing one from Lisbon, produced in the period just after Jews were expelled from Spain.
“This was a very unique moment in history,” noted Neria, since the Jews had just been expelled from Spain and were briefly permitted to live in Portugal before also being expelled from there as well.
King John II of Portugal recognized a personal opportunity that would also benefit his country if he allowed tens of thousands of Spanish Jews to settle in Portugal, as the Jews possessed commercial skills and an important trade network.
Soon after, things began to worsen for Jews living in Portugal. There were new restrictions, Jewish children were seized and shipped to Portugal’s colonies, and families had to pay large sums to renew their right to remain in Lisbon. Often, Jews faced forced baptism.
Many of the Jewish community’s manuscripts – precious works of art – disappeared; others were smuggled out of the country.
The Lisbon Mahzor eventually reached the Jewish community of Aleppo and was guarded alongside the famed Aleppo Codex. The three-volume prayer book contained all of the liturgy for the Jewish year: one volume for daily prayers, and two others with the festival services for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.
In 1957, one volume of the Lisbon Mahzor was given to then-president of Israel, Yitzhak Ben-Zvi by the Jewish community of Aleppo, where it remained in the archives of Yad Ben-Zvi.
The whereabouts of the other two volumes remained a mystery until recently, when the missing volumes appeared in the catalogue of the Kedem Auction House. When the NLI learned of their availability – and knowing their incredible importance – it appealed to acquire them directly without public auction.
They claimed that they were treasures belonging to the Jewish people. The purchase was made possible with support from the Haim and Hanna Solomon Judaica Foundation, and the Zukier family.
All three volumes have now been reunited at the NLI and are accessible online.
Neria couldn’t contain his excitement as he showed off these treasures.
“This is why the National Library is here, to tell us about our roots and traditions – from 2,000 years after the piyutim from the Cairo Genizah were written (and read until today on Yom Kippur), to a soldier who died on Yom Kippur, with his parents’ words continuing to move us! This is a living tradition!”