Replicas of the Sarajevo Hagaddah, a manuscript which has survived six centuries of wars, inquisitions and the Nazis, are to be sold to the public for the first time next year.

Representatives of the Bosnian community said they will produce 613 copies of the ancient book, which is the guidebook used during the Passover Seder meal, and will put them on sale in time for next year’s Passover celebrations at a price of around 1,000 euros.

The original manuscript is held at the Sarajevo National Museum where it is preserved using climate control conditions.

Spanish origins

The document originated in Barcelona where the Haggadah was presented to a couple at their wedding in the 14th century.

It left Spain in 1492 with the edict of expulsion which rid Spain of its Jews and reached Italy but was taken by a Rabbi to Bosnia. It was then passed down from generation to generation until one Joseph Kohen sold the manuscript to the National Museum in 1894.

The head of the Jewish community in Bosnia, Jacob Finci said that there will be the symbolic number of 613 replicas made. "We decided to print 613 replicas as there are 613 mitzvot, The printing will begin this month,” Finci said.

The Haggadah itself shows that it was used regularly at one point with wine stains and even a child’s scribbles in the margins of the manuscript.

The replicas of the Haggadah are being made to look as much like the original as possible with calf skin for the pages with a leather binding. The original was made with bleached calfskin which was the classic mode of manuscript making in the medieval period.

Lucky escapes

The Haggadah has seen quite a few escapes in its illustrious history. As well as surviving the Spanish expulsion and prying eyes of the Inquisition the manuscript almost fell into the hands of the Nazis.

During World War II, a Catholic museum director and his Muslim colleague saved the book from a Nazi officer who came to pick it up.

The two men spirited the book through Nazi checkpoints and carried it to a village in the mountains above Sarajevo, where a Muslim cleric kept it hidden beneath the floor of a mosque until the end of the war. It was then returned to the museum safe and sound.
When the war in the former Yugoslavia began in 1992, the National Museum was on the front lines. A museum official crawled to museum braving sniper fire to rescue the manuscript and take it to the National Bank which was deemed safer. The Haggadah returned to the National Museum in 2002 once the war was over and the museum repaired.