(LITURGY)

Asti

v.d.

Machzor Le’yamim Noraim [Festival prayers for the days of Awe]. Title within simple geometric border. ff. (2),44;(3),145, (1). Modern half-calf retaining contemporary gilt-stamped backstrip. Asti, 9th Sivan 1887 (viz. title). WITH: Machzor Le’selichoth Le’erev Rosh Ha’shanah U’le’erev Yom Kippur [Penitential prayers for the Eves of the days of Awe]. ff. (1),57. Recent calf-backed boards. Asti, 11th Iyar 1893 (viz. title). According to Aschkenazi rite. Scribe: Raphael ben Mordechai Moses Luzzatti.

Beautifully composed liturgical manuscripts by a scribe of illustrious lineage, from this Piedmontese city within which barely 100 Jews resided. The Northern French rite of Liturgy was never published because it ceased to be used due to persecutions and migration of its adherents in the 13th-14th centuaries. However, part of this rite continued to be recited in three communities in Piedmont, Northern Italy; Asti, Fossano and Moucalvo. The community of Asti, especially, held services with recitation of the additional French piyutim from handwritten Machzorim. The Machzor “APM,” as it is known which is derived from the acrostic of the three communities, was first described by Samuel David Luzzato (SHaDa”L) in Avnei Zikaron (Prague, 1841) p.167. Isaac Markon published on important article on the APM rite in; Jewish Studies in Memory of G. A. Kohut (New York, 1935) pp.89-101. D. Goldschmidt further described this prayer rite in Kiryath Sepher (1954-55) pp. 118-36, 264-78 and subsequently included this material in his scholarly Machzor Le’yomim Noraim (Jerusalem, 1970)