Seder Le-Shalosh Regalim ke-Minhag K”K Carpentras [prayers for the holidays of Pesach, Shavuoth and Sukkoth, including Hagadah for Pesach]. According to the exotic rite of Carpentras

(LITURGY).

Hertz Levi Rofe and his son-in-law Kosman

Amsterdam

1759

FIRST EDITION. Title within typographic border, Woodcut printer’s device (Yaari Printers Mark no. 60) on last page and f. 2. Contains five additional leaves of manuscript prayers and instructions preceding text and further three such leaves at end

Vinograd, Amsterdam 1776; Mehlman 354

The town of Carpentras in the Vaucluse Department, fourteen miles North-East of Avignon had a Jewish presence almost without interruption since the 12th-century. Abraham Monteil, editor of this prayer book, was a native of L’Isle (L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue), smallest of “the four holy communities” of Comtat Venaissin, the papal territory in Southern France that historically provided a safe haven for Jews fleeing the provinces of Languedoc and Provence, from whence they were expelled by the French monarchs. (The other three communities in this tetrapolis were: Avignon, Carpentras, and Cavaillon.) The Jews of the Comtat had their own synagogue rite, which by the close of the 18th-century was rapidly falling into disuse. See C.Roth, “The Liturgy of Avignon and the Comtat Venaissin,” Journal of Jewish Bibliography I (1939) p. 99-105; reprinted in Cecil Roth, Studies in Books and Booklore (1972), pp. 81-87; EJ, Vol. V, cols. 208, 859; Vol. IX, col.105; Vol. XI, col. 402. The Mehlman Catalogue notes two copies of this unusual prayer-book each containing different pagination. The present copy is similar to Mehlman’s more complete version with the later insertion of a number of leaves following publication. These nine rare post-publication leaves are as follows: f. [2], the approbation signed by five Carpentras Rabbis, after f. 21; two additional leaves with a new pagination starting again with f. 19; one unnumbered leaf between f. 30 and 31(and marked such, “belongs between f. 30 and 31;” one leaf between f. 33 and 34; four unnumbered leaves between f. 149 and 150 (and marked such, “belongs after f. 149”)