Handwritten on parchment; dark brown ink and tempera; square Ashkenazic script. This 14th century Haggadah is fascinating because all the human characters are depicted with, y’know, bird’s heads, more specifically a Griffin. Some think this was a way of getting around the charge of idolatry. Another view is that the illustration was meant to be playful, unthreatening images as a counter to European blood libels which claimed that Jews used Christian blood to bake matzoh. I think Menachem was an artist who found a unique style.
Tonight begins the holiday of Passover in which Jews celebrate deliverance from Egyptian bondage.
In order to escape the shackles of slavery, the vast machinery of the mighty Egyptian state had to be crushed. Those who wielded absolute power were reduced to nothingness. G-d did this not only to diminish the physical power of a pitiless slave state, but to begin the process of making free the minds of the Israelites.
Slavery is an insidious institution, not only because it shackles the body, but it creates a mentality where the slave identifies with his master to such a degree that he becomes complicit in his own bondage. He loves his master and cannot imagine a world absent an overlord.
