As we have discussed on numerous occasions, Hebrew books contain a fair amount of non-Jewish iconography and imagery that is of non-Jewish origin.  See, for example, here, here, here and here.  Of course, Marvin Heller's article on Mars and Minerva appearing on Hebrew title pages, Marvin Heller, "Mars and Minerva on the Hebrew Title-Page," in Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, 98:3, Sept. 2004, reprinted in Heller's collected articles Studies in the Making of the Early Hebrew Book (which will be reviewed separately in the very near future), is the starting point for much of this discussion. There is an article in this week's Jewish Press that also discusses this issue.  The article is available here. 

It is, however, worth noting a few things.  First, the article discusses the hare hunt motif that is found in various Jewish books, most notably in the Prague 1526 haggadah and the Mantua 1560 haggadah.  This illustration appears in manuscripts as well, and in the Darmstadt Haggadah, it is not a hare hunt but a deer hunt.  The deer, of course, is a more well known Jewish motif and thus would obviate the issue of representing Jews as a hare.  That said, it is unlikely that the deer hunt in the Darmstadt haggadah can be used to explain the hunting motif as it is likely that the illustrations in that haggadah are of non-Jewish origin.  Indeed, Gutmann notes that the illustrations accompanying this haggadah have no connection to the text and are likely non-Jewish. 

Additionally, it is worth noting,with regard to the Prague 1526 haggadah and its illustrations, there is a book that is devoted to explaining the history and meaning of the Prague 1526 haggadah, Charles Wengrov, Haggadah and Woodcut, Shulsinger Bros., New York, 1967.  Wengrov discusses all the illustration in this, seminal, haggadah.  Additionally, he discusses the history of the various woodcuts, both in their forms in the Prague haggadah as well as the motifs they employ.  Wengrov's discussions encompass both printed and manuscript haggadahs.

Returning to non-Jewish iconography, a most radical but intriguing theory related to this topic can be found in Ruth Mellinkoff, Antisemitic Hate Signs in Hebrew Illuminated Manuscripts from Medieval Germany, Center for Jewish Art -Hebrew University, Jerusalem, 1999.  Mellinkoff offers a completly different theory for the bird's heads in the famous Bird's Head Haggadah. Mellinkoff opines that in reality these are not bird's heads but bird's beaks on human heads.  Thus, she offers that the bird's beaks are substitutions for large or beak-like noses.  She explains that in reality these illustrations are the work of a non-Jewish illustrator who was attempting to subtly use well know anti-Semitic tropes like large noses and, in some illustrations, pigs ears.  See id. pp. 11-29, 35-37.  Aside from the Bird's Head Haggadah, Mellinkoff provides other Hebrew manuscripts that apparently have similar anti-Semitic signs as well. 

We have discussed on multiple occasions the use of illustration of nudes to adorn the title pages of Hebrew books. It appears, again as we have seen before, that even though the appearance of such illustrations are really unremarkable, some will go to great lengths to either expunge or, in this case, explain away the appearance of such illustrations. In the April, 2008, Jerusalem Judaica auction catalog (provided below) they have a rather rare work of R. Yitzhak Hiyut (c. 1538- c.1610). [For biographical information on R. Yitzhak see Yaakov Elbaum, Pituchut Ve-HaSegirut, Jerusalem, 1990, p. 23 n.36.] This small book, some 18 pages, is comprised of R. Hiyut's sermon he gave on the first day of Passover in 1589. The editors of the catalog attempt to deal with the two nudes depicting Adam and Eve [the illustration of Eve is very similar to the one of Eve that appears in the Levush and the Prague Haggadah ] that appear on the title page. They explain

"that this 'Sermon' was [perhaps] printed on the intermediate days of Passover by gentile print workers. They allowed themselves to place immodest engravings on the title page. The print owner did not supervise their work on these intermediate days of the holiday. They chose the images of Adam and Eve with the apple of the evil inclination in their hands."

Thus, according to the catalog editors, the appearance of these illustration is due is basically an error, or if you wish, a rather interesting conspiracy theory.



Now, obviously, it is impossible to prove the negative, that is we have no way of saying 100% the above scenario did not happen, but I think at the very least we can show it is unlikely. First, perhaps the most straightforward item is that we have seen such illustration are not an anomaly - I have provided below one such illustration that appears on the title page of the 1577 edition of the Shulchan Orach.

Second, we are aware of cases of printing that did take place on either Shabbat or Yom Tov. The eminent bibliophile, Abraham Yaari, provides a list of such books. See A. Yaari, Mehkerei Sefer, Jerusalem, 1958, pp. 170-78. The method he employees in deciding which books were published on Shabbat or Yom Tov, is not conjecture. Instead, when a book was published when Jews were unable to oversee the printing, there was a much bigger problem than the title page illustration. When non-Jews printed without the aid of Jews, as one would imagine, the book was then subject to many typographical errors as the non-Jews, for the most part, could not read or understand Hebrew. Thus, typically, there would be a disclaimer somewhere in the book stating that there maybe such errors due to lack of Jewish supervision. In the case of this book of Derashot, there is no such disclaimer.

Finally, the entire assumption is highly questionable. That is, according to some one is allowed to print books on the intermediate days of a holiday. Famously, R. Yosef Karo's maggid explicitly tells R. Karo that he must write down what the maggid tells him even on the intermediate days. (For other illustration and a discussion of the above, in Hebrew, see here.)

For those interested in the topic of the permissibility of praying to angels and the controversy surrounding this topic see the post on Machnesi Rachamim and Plagiarism which has been updated a bit and now includes some interesting scans. One scan in particular, the title page, is a case of a very elaborate and somewhat unique illustrated title page. In the next couple of days I hope to return to this topic and debunk a popular explanation regarding a well-known illustrated title page.