Die Pessah Hagada.

(HAGADAH).

J.S. Adler

Frankfurt a/Main

1841

Edited by Leopold Stein. Hebrew and German on facing pages. Three title pages. Three sheets of musical scores (two folding).

Yudlov 854.

The first Hagadah with Reform elements. Leopold Stein (1810-82) was Rabbi of Burgkunstadt (Franconia) who accepted the call to lead Frankfurt’s Reform Community in 1843. In addition to the traditional text, the Hagadah Stein prepared here also contains an abbreviated German-language “New Hagadah” (“Eine freie Bearbeitung der Hagada”) with freshly composed songs. This was essentially a modern dramatized account of the Seder-service featuring women’s voices providing a female perspective of the reported events. In regard to how Stein’s Hagadah reflects 19th-century sensibilities concerning contemporary political and social issues - including the role of women within the family, see B.M. Baader, Gender, Judaism and Bourgeois Culture in Germany (2006) pp. 129-31. According to Yerushalmi (pl. 96), the earliest Reform Hagadah was published in 1842 “not in Germany but in England.” Clearly the present Hagadah was unknown to him.