Haggadah and History: A Panorama in Facsimile of Five Centuries of the Printed Haggadah Yosef Hayim yerushalmi The Haggadah is the heart of the Passover Seder, one of the most enduring and powerful of all Jewish rituals. Haggadah and History offers a panoramic view of the evolution of this centerpiece of the Jewish experience, from the beginnings of Jewish printing in the 15th century to the present day. Every page is a microcosm that reflects an outlook as unique and precious as the individual Jewish community that produced it. Taken together, these editions represent the diverse history of the Jewish people across generations and continents. The two hundred facsimile plates beautifully reproduced in this volume were taken from rare printed Haggadahs found in two of the world's outstanding Judaica collections: the libraries at Harvard University and the Jewish Theological Seminary. This visual history is complemented by an introduction that explores the history of the printed Haggadah, and detailed commentary by Professor Yerushalmi on each reproduced plate. From medieval Italy to 20th century Baghdad, form a Vichy concentration camp to an Israeli kibbutz, Haggadah and History tells the story of a people for whom the memory of the Exodus from Egypt always remained vital. Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi is Salo Wittmayer Baron Professor of Jewish History, Culture, and Society and director of the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies at Columbia University. A native of New York, he received his Ph.D. form Salo Baron at Columbia in 1966. For the next fourteen years he taught at Harvard University, where he was Jacob E. Safra Professor of Jewish History and Sephardic Civilization and chair of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations. His other books include From Spanish Court to Italian Ghetto ; Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory; The Lisbon Massacre of 1506; and Freud's Moses: Judaism Terminable and Interminable.