The National Library of Israel has acquired a rare 14th-century High Holiday prayer book from the Crimean Peninsula, a region annexed by Russia from Ukraine nearly a decade ago and still the subject of international dispute.
The handwritten mahzor, written in elegant script, contains liturgical poems for Yom Kippur prayers — Shacharit, Musaf and Ne’ilah — according to a liturgical tradition of public worship that has nearly disappeared. It originated in the city of Kaffa, today known as Feodosia.
Kaffa was once home to a significant Jewish community that blended customs from Sephardic and Ashkenazi traditions with those of Romaniote Jews from the Balkans and Asia Minor. The uniqueness and significance of the manuscript lies in its content: it is the sole known source for many ancient piyyutim (liturgical poems), likely preserving an earlier stage in the development of Crimean Jewish tradition.
While some of the poems are known from the Cairo Geniza, others were previously unknown. Some appear here in unique versions not found in any other source. In one case, a piyyut preserved only in fragmentary form in the Geniza appears in full in this mahzor, as though kept intact for future generations.
“Yom Kippur liturgical poems are the very core of Jewish prayer, and this manuscript is of extraordinary importance for the study of early Hebrew liturgical poetry, as it preserves the unique prayer tradition of Kaffa’s Jews,” said Dr. Chaim Meir Neria, curator of the Haim and Hanna Solomon Judaica Collection at the National Library. “This item is irreplaceable in Jewish history, enriching our understanding of prayer, poetry and communal life in the medieval Jewish world, particularly in a region that connected East and West.”
The acquisition was made possible through the support of the Kraus Foundation. The manuscript has been digitized and is now available on the National Library’s website.