My contribution to #lockdownbestiary: R is for...HARE. Yes, I know that hares are not rabbits, but I have more to say about hares, so here we go. @LockdownBestia1 @eparpillee @manymanyplies

Today’s the last day of Jewish Passover so we’ll start with a hare hunting scene from this 15th c. Ashkenazi Haggadah illustrated by Joel ben Simeon Feibusch.

When the first night of Passover coincides with the end of Shabbat, the mnemonic YaKNeHaz keeps track of the order of the blessings. Kind of sounds like the German “jag den Has” (hunt the hare), right? Ashkenazim thought so and hence the hare hunt as a visual and bilingual aide.

Here’s a detail from the mid-18th c. Cincinnati Conegliano Haggadah (Ms. 450, The Klau Library, Cincinnati). You can view whole page here: http://huc.edu/sites/default/files/library/haggadah/HU000045.JPG

Elisheva Carlebach’s marvelous Palaces of Time (Harvard 2011) tracks such scenes in 15th and 18th c. sifrei evronot, calendar booklets. There the hare hunt is an allegory for Jewish persecution, (maybe) “migrat[ing] into Jewish manuscripts from Christian Books of Hours” (108).

Here’s one of my favorite details from a mid-18th c sefer evronot illustrated by Zechariah Shimon ben Jacob (Ms. 906, HUC Library). Full ms here: https://mss.huc.edu/ajaxzoom/single.php?zoomDir=/pic/zoom/MS_906

Sometimes the tattered pages reveal text and colors underneath, creating a collage effect. In this image, the hare appears to be coming out from the below.

Notably, in many of these scenes, the hare is hunted but not (yet) caught. This hare, for example, has run up a tree.

In fact, in the these manuscripts we sometimes find that the script flips and the hare is leading the hunting party, as in this image from Ms. 906. The horn here doubles as a hunting horn but also recalls the Jewish shofar, a symbol of redemption.

Not early modern, but the children’s poem “The Hare” (Arnevet) by the Hebrew poet Chaim Nachman Bialik (1873-1934) evokes some of the themes mentioned above. Here’s a link to the Hebrew (my translation follows in the next post): https://benyehuda.org/read/9053 

The Hare

Ahhh, by and by
The hunter will come
And grab me—
Who will save me?

I am trembling
I am scared—
I must run away!

The hare is tired
The hare is terrified
The hare despairs—

Save me! Save me!

By Chaim Nachman Bialik
Trans. Adriana X. Jacobs

And if you want to travel down another “rabbit” hole: The British Library has a copy of the 14th c. “Golden Haggadah” from Spain, where we find a depiction of Esau returning home after a day of hunting. His quarry: a hare. https://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/ttp/hagadah/accessible/pages5and6.html

I also highly recommend Marc Michael Epstein’s Dreams of Subversion in Medieval Jewish Art and Literature (PSUP, 1997), esp. chp. 2, “The Elusive Hare: Constructing Identity."

A number of these manuscripts have been digitized. I recommend the @JTSLibrary and @HUCinci libraries for this. I also came across some excellent gazelles, sea creatures, dogs, and cats along the way but that's a thread for another time.