The Most Unique Haggados in the Rebbe's Library

00:21 The Haggadah of Pesach was published over the years about three thou-thousand editions. About half of them we have in this library, about fifteen hundred editions. The first edition that was ever published that we know of is in Wadi al-Hajara in the year of Richman Beis, 1482. We don't have this edition. The first edition that we have is in a machzor that was published in Bologna in the year of Shin, 1540. Many of the machzorim of the Haggadah was published as a entity for itself and many of them was published as part of a siddur or a machzor. In the machzor of Bolog-of Bologna in the year of Shin, 1540, they had the whole Haggadah. That's the first Haggadah that we have. The Haggadah as published for a book as, as for itself, the first edition we have is from Venice, Shinhei, the year of fourteen, of the year of 1545. Many of the Haggadahs that was published, they added drawings of the hidden in Mitzrayim or coming out from Mitzrayim. The reason wa-for it was that when a person sits by the Seder and he is trying to live through what the hidden had passed in Egypt and coming out of Egypt, when he sees the drawing for himself, he is easier to live it through in person, in feelings. That task of printing a Haggadah with drawings of the hidden in Mitzrayim wasn't a easy one. In order to do that, they had to do, to take a wood and to have a artist

03:07 cut in the wood according to that picture of that drawing and then they would incorporate that wood cut into the page of the words of the Haggadah and when, when they published, they put it on press, they pressed the page together with the drawing. The first Haggadah with drawing we have is from Venice, Shinpei Tes, 1629. We don't have the whole Haggadah of that edition. We have only several pages and not regular several pages. It's the pages of proofreading of that edition. When they have prepared each page, they would press on one piece of paper this page for the proofreader to be able to check if there are no errors, typo errors. How do we know that this is not from a printed one, only from a proofreading? Is because the sh-the order of the pages shows that. They have pressed on one side of a page and then five pages later, they had to proofread, so they pressed it on the other side of the same page, so we know it's not a regular Haggadah. It's a proofreading Haggadah of the print house in Venice in the year of Shinpei Tes, 1629. Sometime a person that has the ability to pay a artist and a scribe, he would pay the, the scribe for writing a special Haggadah for him. Usually it was on parchment and then he would incorporate in it drawings of activity of the hidden in Mitzrayim or as coming out of Mitzrayim. One of such Haggadah we have that was written

05:59 by a famous artist that lived in Kitze near Presburg in the year of Tov Kuv Hof, 1760. These are just some samples of special Haggadahs we have in this collection of the library. As mentioned before, we have altogether about fifteen hundred editions of the Haggadah that was published over the years.