Category: Highlights from Fordham’s Judaica Collection

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Distinguished Lecture Series 2026

“Medieval Passover Haggadah: From Rituals to Illuminations” with Katrin Kogman-Appel

February 25-March 5, 2026

The Center for Jewish Studies is delighted to welcome Katrin Kogman-Appel as a Distinguished Lecturer. Professor Kogman-Appel will deliver three lectures and will hold two workshops with early printed books and facsimiles.

Overview of the 2026 Distinguished Lecture Series

A stand-alone haggadah is an individually bound book that is ritually used during the seder ceremony on the eve of Passover to fulfill the divine precept of telling the story of the Exodus from Egypt to the young. Originally the haggadah was part of the general prayerbook and around the twelfth century it began to emerge as a separate volume. In some contrast to the widely held impression that the Passover haggadah has been the most widely owned book among Jews since premodern times, the number of surviving haggadot, both handwritten and printed, is surprisingly low. This series of lectures tells the story of the stand-alone haggadah as a book genre in its own right and describes a century-long process of emergence that began until it finally became a common household item, around the middle of the seventeenth century.

Katrin Kogman-Appel is Alexander von Humbolt Professor of Jewish Studies, University of Münster. Until 2015 she was Professor, Vice-Dean, and holder of the Evelyn Metz Memorial Research Chair at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Beer-Sheva, Israel. She is a world expert on Jewish art of the Middle Ages with a focus on illuminated manuscripts of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Spain and Germany. Her many publications include: Illuminated Haggadot from Medieval Spain: Biblical Imagery and the Passover Holiday (2006); A Mahzor from Worms: Art and Religion in a Medieval Jewish Community (2012); and Catalan Maps and Jewish Books: The Intellectual Profile of Elisha ben Abraham Cresques (1325-1387) (2020).

Wednesday, February 25, 6PM
The Book and the Seder I: Medieval Evidence of Passover Rituals
Fordham at Lincoln Center
In person and online

What do we actually know about the performance of medieval and early modern seder rituals? How was the haggadah recited? From a written text? From memory? In this lecture, Katrin Kogman-Appel will study various medieval sources, both textual and visual, that offer information about the performance of the seder and the various ritual acts prescribed in the haggadah.

WATCH

Thursday, February 26, 6PM
The Book and the Seder II: The Birth of the Stand-Alone Haggadah and its Early History
Fordham at Rose Hill
In person and online

Part II explores how the haggadah differs from other books, particularly general prayerbooks. Why was it impractical to use a Siddur during the seder? In this lecture, Katrin Kogman-Appel will seek to answer these questions through a material-study approach. Not all stand-alone haggadot are the same, but rather, a whole range of different kinds of haggadot emerged since the twelfth century: tiny booklets, plain haggadot, extremely lavish haggadot with first-rate paintings, illustrated haggadot with less lavish but abundant marginal vignettes, and so on. In this lecture, we shall look at the early beginnings of the stand-alone haggadah and follow its developments into a whole variety of book types that emerged.

This lecture will be preceded by a hands-on, in-person-only workshop and open house focusing on Haggadot from Fordham’s Collection at the O’Hare Special Collections and Archives at 4-5:30 PM

WATCH

Wednesday, March 4, 6PM
The Book and the Seder III: The Functions of Illustrated Haggadot
Fordham at Lincoln Center
In person and online

In part III, Katrin Kogman-Appel will explore the role of illuminations in haggadot, considering ornamented and un-ornamented examples. Some haggadot were designed as ritual objects meant to guide the seder leader, who, by divine command, was obliged to stage a successful commemoration ritual, but was not trained as a ritual agent. Illustration cycles had a tremendous potential to enhance this function of guidance. Other haggadot were meant for study and were most probably owned by scholars. Yet others were plain and cheap and while they still assisted the seder leader in staging the ritual they did not offer any visualized guidance.

REGISTER

Thursday, March 5, 2:00-3:30PM

Katrin Kogman-Appel will lead an in-person-only workshop on the earliest printed haggadah (Istanbul, ca. 1505) and other early printed haggadot at the Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary

REGISTER

All events are possible through the generosity of The Knapp Family Foundation, The Picket Family Foundation, the Shvidler Gift Fund to Fordham University, Fordham Trustee Henry S. Miller, the members of the CJS Advisory Council and individual donations from friends of the Center for Jewish Studies at Fordham.

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“Guiding Hands for Sacred Scripts: Torah Pointers, Art, and Contexts”

A new exhibit on view September 14-January 26, 2026, at the Walsh Family Library, 1st Floor Gallery and the Henry S. Miller Judaica Research Room on the 4th floor.

The act of beautifying or enhancing mitzvot and Jewish ritual is reflected in the rabbinic idea of hiddur mitzvah. One who enhances a holy act and a ritual object with an aesthetic and pleasing design is fulfilling this directive. As suggested in Psalm 29: “Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness.” Make each object functional, as well as beautiful, with fine materials, craftsmanship, and artistry, and you shall be glorifying God. 

According to the medieval rabbi Moses Maimonides, there is a special mitzvah to beautify a Sefer Torah, a Torah scroll, the holiest object in Judaism. Over the centuries, special elements were created to beautify the Sefer Torah. One of them is a Torah pointer, or a yad. Because the Torah scroll is considered so holy that it cannot be touched directly, the Torah pointer is used in the ritual reading of the Torah to create space between the parchment and the reader. 

The exhibit “Guiding Hands for Sacred Scripts: Torah Pointers, Art, and Contexts. Torah Pointers from the Barr Foundation Collection” highlights Torah yads from different regions and times. Some were created as functional pointers, but others, perhaps less functional, are works of art, inspired by the idea of what a pointer is. All, however, are connected to the idea of beautifying religious ritual and showing the importance of the Torah in the Jewish tradition. The exhibit also engages with common concepts inherent in Jewish art, the work of artistic chronicling and making art for ritual use, inspired by Jewish texts and traditions. The collection explores various materials and interpretations of the Torah yad and places them in conversation with historical artifacts, such medieval manuscripts, and printed books, and other Jewish ritual objects from Fordham’s Special Collections and Archives.

Above left: Moses Maimonides, Mishnayot mi-seder Ḳodashim  (Mantua: Yacov ben Naftali Ha-Kohen, 322/1562). SPEC COLL JUDAICA 1561 1. Above right: A Torah yad from northern Italy. Coral and parcel gilt silver. 19th century. This pointer echoes columns of gates frequently printed on the title page of Hebrew books printed in Italy.  Barr Foundation Reference 42.

Clay Barr began collecting Torah pointers over 30 years ago to honor the memory of her late husband, Jay D. A. Barr. Over the decades, she collected both visually magnificent and historically significant pieces—such a yad from 1781 made by a famous woman silversmith Hester Bateman, a humble wooden eighteenth-century yad from Alsace, or a magnificent coral yad from northern Italy—and contemporary yads commissioned from artists working as close to us as New York, and as far as the UK and Taiwan. Her collection includes works of well-known artists, such as Wendell Castle and Ghiora Aharoni, and others.

Above left: A Torah pointer by Hester Bateman (1708-1794). London,1781. Parcel gilt. Barr Foundation Reference 197. Above right: Wooden Torah Pointer with inscription. Dusseldorf, Germany. 1798. The lettering carved says: “’It is given to Rav Leib Shaier, his light should shine, the great gaon av beit din [head of the court of justice], and rosh mesivta [head of the academy], of the holy community of Düsseldorf, and his wife, the virtuous lady Rebetzin Hindhka, may she live long, 1798.” Rabbi Leib Shaier was a rabbi in Düsseldorf. When he died in 1826, the Hatam Sofer, a leader of newly emerging Orthodox Judaism, held a eulogy for him. Barr Foundation reference number: 46.

Above left: Ghiora Aharoni, A stainless steel yad with a phrase from the Zohar. 2019. Barr Foundation Reference Number 223. Above center: Rory Hooper. Stainless steel arm pointer. London. 2017. Barr Foundation Reference 219. Above right: Wendell Castle. A table, hand and pointer. 2004. Barr Foundation Reference 2. The table is made of rosewood and maple woods. The hand is carved from signfoam with acrylic paint. The pointer is silver with a stained walnut handle.

In addition to the Barr Foundation Yad Collection, we are pleased to have on view the work of two artists, Ben-Zion and Mordechai Rosenstein, whose work we’ll highlight in the next posts. These 20th-century painters/sculptors sought to convey Jewish concepts through their devotion to art. Through the lens of modernism, Ben-Zion demonstrated that expressionism can be used for a sacred purpose. He aimed to make his deep knowledge of Jewish heritage accessible to a wider audience as did Rosenstein, who used bold colors and flowing Hebrew calligraphy to transform sacred texts and concepts to express their beauty with joyfulness and spirituality. 

This exhibit has been made possible by the Hadassah R. Weiner Fund for Jewish Art at Fordham and the Barr Family Foundation. 

The exhibit can be viewed at the Walsh Family Library on the main floor and on the 4th floor in the Henry S. Miller Judaica Research Room until December 18th, 2025.

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The COVID-19 Pandemic: Five Years On

Magda Teter

2025 marks the fifth anniversary of the COVID-19 pandemic. But March holds a special significance. It was the month when the world stopped. Friday, March 6th, 2020 was the last day we were on campus before the shut down. But when we left campus on that day, we did not know that we would not return to in-person instruction until Fall 2021.

That week, CJS held two events: On March 2, Stanisław Krajewski, from Poland, talked about Pope John Paul II’s meetings with Polish Jews, and, on March 4th, we hosted a standing-room-only presentation and discussion of Elissa Bemporad’s book Legacy of Blood: Jews, Pogroms, and Ritual Murder in the Lands of the Soviets.

On Monday, March 9th, 2020, the university suspended in-person classes and cancelled all scheduled events. We scrambled. The first couple of weeks, we shared with you readings, book and film recommendations, and in April we resumed our programs, on zoom. Zoom and a “webinar” was fairly new at the time so we called our new online events “Fordham’s Zoominars in Jewish Studies.” We curated a series of events on Jews and Epidemics in History, starting on April 22, 2020 with a conversation between Joshua Teplitsky and Magda Teter about “Epidemics, Disease and Plagues in Jewish History & Memory.”

Between April 2020 and September 2021, when we returned to campus, we hosted over 30 such events.

Here are links to our newsletter from March 2020, documenting the sudden turn of events: March 2nd, 2020, March 11th, 2020, March 16th, 2020, March 23, 2020, and March 30, 2020.

To commemorate the pandemic, as it is fading into oblivion, we are preparing an exhibit at the O’Hare Special Collections and Archives at the Walsh Family Library, looking at the historical artifacts from both past epidemics and the one we lived through. The exhibit is co-curated by Miriam Krakowski FCRH ’27, Patricia Scully FCRH ’25, and myself. Among the items we are showing is a handwritten Hebrew prayer from eighteenth-century Italy for halting an epidemic of smallpox that was raging at the time [below right].

And the 1559 edition a book Mehir Yayin by the Polish rabbi, Moses Isserless [above left] in which he discussed his experience of fleeing Cracow for a small town Szydłów to escape a plague as “an exile”:

I, Moshe, the son of my honored father, the communal leader Israel (may he live many good years), who am called Isserles, from Kraków, was in the company of those who were exiled from our city in the year 5316 [1556] because of the fouling of the air (may it not come upon you!). We were strangers in a land not ours, in the city of Szydłów, a place without a fig tree or vine and almost without water to drink except by contrivance, a city where one eats bread in scarcity and there is no tree to lean on. We could not celebrate Purim there with drinking and festivity to banish woe and anguish.I decided to arouse myself and gladden myself through my efforts. My wisdom stood me in good stead, for the injunctions of the Lord are upright and gladden the heart. I took honey and milk under my tongue, and I set myself to expound on the meanings of the Megillah [scroll of Esther].

The exhibit includes both Jewish and non-Jewish works. One volume contains four works by Abraham de Santa Clara, which commemorate the plague that hit Vienna in 1680: Mercks Wienn, das ist : Dess wütenden Todts ein umständige Beschreibung, in der berühmten Haupt und käiserl. Residentz Stadt in Oesterreich, im sechzehen hundert, und neun und sibentzigsten Jahr, mit Beyfügung so wol Wissen als Gewissen antreffender Lehr. Zusammen getragen mitten in der betrangten Stadt und Zeit [Merck’s Vienna, that is: A detailed description of his furious death, in the famous capital and imperial residence city in Austria, in the sixteen hundred and seventy-ninth year, with the addition of both knowledge and conscience of the teachings encountered. Collected in the midst of the troubled city and time], T bound with Lösch Wienn, which was published a year later. While Merck’s Vienna describes viscerally the impact of the plague on everyone–it spared no one: neither priests, nor women, nor learned men, nor married people, nor soldiers, Lösch’s Vien addressed the survivors and admonished them not “to forget about the many thousands of deceased relatives and friends who, a year ago, during the harsh plague period, ended up miserably beneath the earth without the usual funeral service, without the company of friends, etc. Many of whom presumably died in the burning flames of purgatory.”

The third work by Abraham de Santa Clara, inspired by the devastating plague and bound with the other two, was  Die grosse Totenbruderschaft (1681), or “The Great Brotherhood of the Dead, that is: A short outline of mortal life with an attached catalog or list of all those gentlemen, brothers, women and virgins, sisters who are from the highly praiseworthy soldiery of the dead.” The Great Brotherhood of the Dead lists the people of prominence who died during the plague of 1679-80. In this book, Abraham de Santa Clara argued “that after death the prince royal is as frightfully noisome as the newborn child of the peasant.” 

Another short book bound in this volume is  Abraham a Sancta Clara’s Oesterreichisches Deo Gratias, das ist, Eine ausführliche Beschreibung eines hochfeyerlichen Danck-Fests (Vienna: Pet. Paul Vivian, 1680) A detailed description of a highly solemn festival of thanksgiving “for the gracious averting of the extremely severe punishment of the plague in the imperial capital and residence city of Vienna, on June 17th, 1680,” included is  “a short sermon which was delivered before a crowded assembly in the middle of the city near the columns of the Most Holy Trinity.”

The exhibit shows an impact of modern pandemics on Fordham as well: the flu pandemic of 1918-1919 and COVID. Some of the remnants are still around us, even as we try to forget. Below are photos I took around New York and Fordham this February and March, documenting these ever present reminders of what we went through five years ago.

The exhibition would not have been possible without the generosity of Eugene Shvidler, whose gift to Fordham’s Jewish Studies program helped start Fordham’s Judaica collection and Fordham’s former trustee Henry S. Miller, whose gift to Fordham’s CJS assures the continuous acquisitions of Judaica and internships for undergraduate students interested in working with the Judaica Collection and learning how to curate exhibits. We are also grateful to the Director of Fordham Libraries, Linda Loschiavo, for her support and to Gabriela DiMeglio and Vivian Shen of the Special Collections and Archives for their tireless support of students’ work and their help with setting up the exhibits.

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“The Biggest Problem in Our Lives Today”: Bronx Students’ Wisdom for Us

Entrance to James Monroe High School, 172nd and Boyton Avenue. "Where Law Ends, Tyranny Begins, William Pitt"

A new pop-up exhibition in the Walsh Family Library

Bronx High School Yearbooks, 1919-1948

We live in a world engulfed in crises: global war, climate disasters, and political discord. Many of us feel despair. This exhibit highlights the wisdom imparted by Bronx teenagers writing in the 1940s. In their high school yearbooks, they share hopes and take responsibility for taking steps for the future. Some of their thoughts still resonate today, some show us how our society has changed since they wrote these words.

Eugene Friedman, graduating in 1941, in the middle of World War II, from the Roosevelt High School on East Fordham Road, right across from Fordham, acknowledged “a critical period of world history,” he and his friends were living through, a period in which “civilization appears to be retrograding.” But he exhorted his classmates not to “be depressed by the trend of world affairs” and not to “question ‘What use [is] civilization, if destruction is running rampant, and all is to be destroyed?’” Friedman was, like many of his time, a believer in the progress of “civilization” and expressed confidence that the world would “resume its normal trend” after the war.

Senior Saga, Theodore Roosevelt High School, East Fordham Road, June 1941. Remarks by Eugene Friedman.

The crisis of the war made Dorothy Gerder from the 1944 class in Roosevelt High School aware of a shared sacrifice. She wrote of “a man in dirty overalls with a dinner pail…on his way to the night shift to build planes…. A woman, her hair silver gray…her sons out there somewhere serving Uncle Sam…. a little boy, his mouth wide open…he doesn’t know, but on his shoulders rests the salvation of the world….”

Senior Saga, Theodore Roosevelt High School, East Fordham Road, June 1944. Essay by Dorothy Gardner.

After the war students reflected on the destruction and hoped for a better future.

In her essay for the 1946/47 issue of Olinville Star, a semi-annual publication of the Olinville Jr. High School in the Williamsbridge section of the Bronx, the teenage June Gray declared, “The biggest problem in our lives today is the future. We discuss and plan what we are going to do. We know that unless we preserve our democracy, learn to leave with others, all races and creeds together, there may not be a future for any of us.” Although written decades ago, just over a year after World War II ended, June Gray’s essay resonates for our times. “Our age is a fearful one,” she continued. “The common understanding among men has not been achieved. This should be our goal.” Gray compared democratic and non-democratic countries: “Learning to be a citizen ina democracy is an endless job. One must constantly seek the truth and try to do what is good for all men. Learning to be a citizen of a non-democratic country is a comparatively easy task. Thinking is done for you by someone else….There are consequences to this. Freedom of opportunity, speech, religion, press and all the other freedoms, citizens of the United States of America hold dear to heart, are not known.” Gray saw the importance of knowing “true facts” as a way to “eliminate prejudice from the earth.” She called on her friends to “Remember–the world is getting smaller–we must learn to work together.”

Senior Saga, Theodore Roosevelt High School, East Fordham Road. January 1947

Hope and ideals for a better world are also tangible in the Senior Saga publication by the class of 1947, graduating from the Roosevelt High School, across from Fordham on E. Fordham Road. Dedicated to the United Nations, a recent organization created in the aftermath of World War II. The class, through the pen of the dedication’s author, Phyllis Rose, committed itself to the values assuring “world peace”: “to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, and in the equal rights of men and women of nations large and small; to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom; to practice tolerance and to live together in peace with one another as good neighbors.” The students promised to “strive to prevent injurious talk of intolerance and propaganda by listening only to what we know to be the truth, and by speaking only the truth.”

The Monrovian, James Monroe High School,  172nd and Boyton Avenue, June 1948.
The motto on above the entrance says “Where Law Ends, Tyranny Begins, William Pitt”
The Monrovian, James Monroe High School,  172nd and Boyton Avenue, June 1948.

And a year later, in 1948, Norma Reiss and Sheila Wachsler from the James Monroe High School asked “What kind of day will tomorrow be? Will the Sun shine on the countries of the world as they join hands to accomplish their ideals, witnessing for the first time in history, peace and equality for all? Or will the storms of hate engulf the mind of the people that they can no longer see the Sun?” They wrote ready to “take over responsibilities” and “become the leaders of tomorrow.”

The Monrovian, James Monroe High School,  172nd and Boyton Avenue, June 1948.