Gupho shel Pesach: Hagadath Pesach LeTinokoth Yisrael [“The Essence of Passover; or, A Passover Hagadah for Jewish Children”]

(HAGADAH)

Trebitsch

Berlin

1830

Vinograd, Berlin 554

This "Hagadah for Jewish Youth," titled "The Body of the Passover" (i.e., the carcass of the sacrifical lamb), is not exactly a Hagadah. A dialogue in western Yiddish, printed in the traditional Gothic "vaybertaytsh" type, it purports to record a discussion of the meaning of Passover, so complex that it stretches over the first, second, and seventh nights of the holiday, between one Rabbi Shlomo ben Menachem HaDarshan and his eldest son, Shmuel. A clue to this strange philosophical book's covert conversionist agenda appears on the title page, where the objective is clearly stated - arousing the hearts of the children of Israel to seek the way of salvation."By implication and innuendo (though never explicitly) one is led toward the possibility that the biblical sacrifice [the Passover lamb of the title] has been superseded by that of Jesus," J.H. Yerushalmi, Haggadah and History (1975) pl. 90 and pp. 72-3. Acording to Yerushalmi, few copies are extant of this unusual Hagadah edition - he knows only of the copies in Harvard and the British Library.