This handwritten Haggadah with photographs was written according to our tradition by Rabbi Avraham Chaim Lubanov, one of the rabbis of Leningrad, during his time in a forced labor camp in Siberia, Russia, around 1940.
Rabbi Lubanov was born in Orsha , Belarus in 1881. In 1937, he was exiled to the "Varkuta" labor camp in northern Siberia. He was freed from the camp in 1943 through the intervention of communist party official whom he befriended in the camp who appointed him as last Rabbi of Leningrad [Later he was arrested again].
In the camp, there were no Haggadot for Passover, so the rabbi obtained paper somehow and wrote the entire text of the Haggadah in large and beautiful black letters. Each section began with a large red letter on a small piece of parchment, which adorned all the sections of the Haggadah. On the margins of the pages, he wrote instructions for conducting the seder in Yiddish.
Throughout the Haggadah, the author inserted dozens of photographs of ancient Haggadot in Hebrew script and early prints. He recorded the bibliographic source for each photograph alongside them. The puzzle is where he obtained these photographs. The nature of the photographs is in the style that was popular in the 1940s, black and white. The images are sharp and very beautiful, indicating that the author was a knowledgeable student well-versed in all areas of Jewish research. The last two images depict Jews sitting inside a tower closed from all sides, clearly hinting at the author’s imprisoned state.
Rabbi Lubanov died in 1969. His Responsa were smuggled to Israel & were published in the Kol Sinai journal.
The Haggadah was confiscated by the KGB agents and kept in the organization’s basement. Around 1983, the Haggadah was purchased from a KGB agent by Dr. Juniberg from Moscow.
It is a unique and extremely rare Haggadah!
32 pages, Large format 28 Cm.
Overall great condition, thick paper, edges of paper are stained and deckled (irregular) throughout, text block is detached from binding, original thick paper binding a bit torn and rubbed out at the edges and spine.
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