Introduction

MS Oxford Can. Or. 12 (Cat. Neubauer 1217) is one of the most extensive miscellanies in Yiddish that have come down to us. Commissioned by a father for his daughter, perhaps on the occasion of her wedding, and written in Venice during the fall and winter of 1553/4, it contains a large variety of texts – rituals, translations of biblical texts and liturgical poetry, as well as original Yiddish literature.

Among these texts is a compilation of minhagim, which sets out the customs observed in synagogue and home over the course of the Jewish year. This work clearly diverges from the famous Yiddish Seyfer Minhogim printed in Venice in 1589 and reprinted dozens of times over the following centuries. While the compilation at hand never reached print, six versions have been preserved in manuscript, all of which hail from sixteenth-century Italy. They alert us to the role the Ashkenazic diaspora in that country appears to have played in the transmission of the legacy of medieval Ashkenaz. The migration of significant numbers of German Jews to Italy, which preceded the emergence of the new center in Poland by about half a century, and their encounter with both indigenous Italian and Sephardic Jews must have made Yiddish-speakers utterly aware of their own traditions – and, apparently, of the necessity to set down in writing what was threatening to slip away.

My presentation will be based on the section of the Oxford manuscript that deals with the customs related to Rosh Hashanah. We will examine the text for what it reveals of its own history, contrasting it with its ultimate Hebrew Vorlage represented by MS Frankfurt hebr. oct. 227. We will then discuss how the Yiddish minhagim book conceives of its readership, how it attempts to maintain a sense of community by evoking a shared liturgical heritage and a common bond of distinct observances, and to what extent it may – or may not – have succeeded.

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