Riada talks about the magnificent Sarajevo Haggadah with David Stern - PART 1

Dignified Resilience with Riada Akyol

The Sarajevo Haggadah is the most celebrated Passover haggadah in the world—probably the most famous medieval illustrated Hebrew manuscript. In 2003, Bosnia and Herzegovina proclaimed it a movable national monument. Years later, in 2017, it was registered by UNESCO as documentary heritage to the Memory of the World Register, providing recognition to its importance worldwide. Scholars believe that when the Jews were expelled during the Spanish Inquisition, the book left Spain at the end of 15th century. It is unknown how this haggadah got to Sarajevo, though we know that in the 16th and 17th centuries, the book was in the north of Italy. Then it was brought to Sarajevo, in Bosnia. In 1894, Jozef Kohen's family sold it to the National Museum, and it was sent off to Vienna to be restored. Later on, yet again, the book survived not one but two World Wars, and also the brutal siege of Sarajevo between 1992- 1995. We’ll hear more about it all throughout this and the next episode. In this first part, we are joined by a world renowned academic expert on Hagaddah - Professor David Stern, and then in the second part, with Dr. Hikmet Karcic who is a Bosnian genocide researcher and the author of a recently published biography of Dervis Korkut, the Bosniak - Bosnian Muslim scholar who risked his life to save the Sarajevo Hagaddah in WW2 - and who is today celebrated as the epitome of goodness and dignified resilience. Many have also interpreted the Sarajevo Haggadah as a symbol of coexistence in Bosnia and Herzegovina, given how the Haggadah's story involves so many different cultures, touching Jews, Christians and Muslims alike. With Professor Stern, we talk about how we can contextualize the Sarajevo Haggadah within the framework of the Iberian Jewish book culture, on the structure of the manuscript, the history around it, and the sheer magnificence of it. Hope you enjoy this fascinating conversation and check out part 2 as well! David Stern is a Harry Starr Professor of Classical and Modern Jewish and Hebrew Literature and Professor of Comparative Literature, and Director of the Center for Jewish Studies at Harvard University and the author, most recently, of The Jewish Bible: A Material History published in 2017.