(FRENCH JUDAICA).

By the middle of the eighteenth century, Aix had become the cultural center in which the former traditions of the Comtat Venaissin communities were preserved. It was mostly through the efforts of the Crémieux and Milhaud families that this sacred patrimony was kept alive. Our prayer-book was based on Elijah Crémieux’s Seder Hatamid of a century earlier (see previous lot), with a wide selection of Piyutim for all the communities of the Comtat Venaissin. “...It was more a labor of patriotism than piety, for within a generation it is doubtful whether there was any synagogue at which services according to that time-honored tradition were still regularly held.” C.Roth, “The Liturgy of Avignon and the Comtat Venaissin,” Journal of Jewish Bibliography VII (1939), p.104. See EJ, Vol. II, cols.475-6. Of special interest are prayers for the local Carpentras “Purim” commemorating miraculous events that occurred in the community on the Ninth of Nissan 5442 (1681) and earlier on the Fifteenth of Kislev in either the year 1512 or the year 1715 (there exists some question which). See Vol. I, pp. 139-144