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PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE COLLECTION
Details
Haggadah shel pesach. Amsterdam: Widow and orphans of Jacob Proops, 1781.
4to. (9¼ x 8¾ in.). Engraved titlepage with elaborate architectural composition surrounding text (verso blank), following page within typographic border of printer's flowers, woodcut device in center, a crown at the top center; 10 half-page copperplate illustrations; at end, a double-page folding map of the Holy Land (18 x 10½ in. approximately). (A small rectangular section clipped from lower margin of engraved title, scattered mostly marginal staining and browning, the map frayed at edges and with small separations along folds.) Contemporary (Dutch?) mottled calf, decorative gilt roll at edges of covers (covers detached, worn at edges, spine quite worn).
Third edition of the celebrated Amsterdam Haggadah, reset in a smaller format to facilitate its use at the Seder table, but incorporating the same series of copperplate engraved illustrations by Abraham ben Jacob as the 1695 edition. The important woodcut map from that edition is also present here. It depicts the territorial divisions of the Holy Land and carefully lists the 41 encampments of the Israelites on the journey from Egypt to the Promised Land. Yaari 199; Yerushalmi 75.
THE 1781 AMSTERDAM HAGGADAH, COMPLETE WITH MAP, WITH A DISTINGUISHED PHILADELPHIA JEWISH PROVENANCE
Provenance: Benjamin Nones (1757-1826). INSCRIBED AND SIGNED IN INK ON TITLEPAGE: "The Property of Banjamin Nones, Philadelphia, 5 April 1784." Inscribed again within small cartouches on the dedication page: "Benjamin Nones...from Bordeaux," and WITH MARGINALIA IN ENGLISH ON MANY PAGES probably in Nones's hand.
Born in Bordeaux, France, Nones emigrated to Philadelphia in 1777 reportedly at the urging of the Marquis de Lafayette, who was recruiting volunteers to serve the beleaguered American rebels against the British crown. Nones joined the regiment commanded by General Casimir Pulaski, may have served as a staff officer to Lafayette, winning promotion from private to Major. He joined Captain Verdier's regiment in the army commanded by Casimir Pulaski, was cited for gallantry on the field of battle at Savanah (December 1779) and later fought at Camden.
After the war, he settled permanently in Philadelphia, became a business partner of the famed Haym Solomon ("financier of the Revolution") and was naturalized on 9 October 1784, five months before he signed and inscribed this family Haggadah. Nones was named head of the Congregation Mikvah Israel in 1791, and was a strong supporter of Thomas Jefferson's Republican party. He was the object of a strongly worded mocking editorial published in the Federalist Gazette of the United States in 1800, and his eloquent reply, published in the Philadelphia Aurora on 11 August 1800, defending his Judaism and his republican principles, is often quoted "I am accused of being a Jew, of being a Republican, and of being Poor. I am a Jew. I glory in belonging to that persuasion, which even its opponents, whether Christian, or Mahomedan, allow to be of divine origin - of that persuasion upon which Christianity itself was originally founded, and must ultimately rest - which has preserved its faith secure and undefiled, for near three thousand years...I am a Republican!...I am a Jew, and if for no other reason, for that reason I am a republican..."