CREEDE HINSHAW: Story of sacred haggadah is compelling

Ready for a column on something besides COVID-19?

Last week came news of a movie being adapted from the Geraldine Brooks 2008 novel “People of the Book.” Brooks’ novel is based on the real story of a 600-year-old haggadah known as the Sarajevo Haggadah.

I’m sure the movie will be a souped-up version of reality, but there is no doubting the authentic mystery and faith surrounding the Sarajevo Haggadah.

This ancient 142-page illustrated manuscript made of extremely thin calf-skin pages is on display today at the National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The story of the book involves war, deception, a wedding, potential destruction, Jews, Christians, Muslims, the Nazis, Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand, and probably hundreds of unknown people over the centuries.

The Jewish word haggadah means “to tell.” A haggadah is a book that tells the story of the Passover, that exodus from Egypt when God led the enslaved Hebrews out of bondage. A haggadah is not the same as the Torah. It is not scripture. Think of it more as a popularized commentary and/or retelling of the exodus story, beautifully illustrated like some of the medieval Christian Bibles.

The Sarajevo Haggadah was apparently created somewhere around 1350, probably in Barcelona. It may have been a wedding gift to a newlywed Jewish couple. It would have been a treasured family possession.

But in 1492 the king and queen of Spain expelled all the Jews from their nation and this particular volume wound up in Venice. On the last page of the book there is a handwritten notation, signed and dated 1609 by an Italian Christian censor, probably a church official. He had carefully examined this beautifully illustrated book and concluded there was nothing in it heretical according to the church. Thus the book was saved from burning.

It exchanged hands multiple times over the centuries with transactions that remain unknown and untold, finally resurfacing in Sarajevo in 1894, where it remained in the national museum until the Nazi conquest of Yugoslavia in WW II. The Nazis demanded the Sarajevo Haggadah be turned over to them, but the Muslim museum director and his curator managed to whisk the valuable volume out of the museum, where it remained hidden in a mosque for the duration of the war.

In the 1980s, during the Serbian War, the museum itself was bombed, but again the sacred treasure was spared. It remains on display in that same museum to this day.

Not every sacred book gets a novel written about it or a movie made about it. Oscar-winning director Danis Tanovic says his production will be finished in 2020/2021. You can find a 58-second teaser on the internet that promises “… an epic tale of mistrust and love: warring religious communities brought together by an ancient Jewish prayer book.”

That may be overstating the case somewhat, but I’ll look forward to the movie’s release. In the meantime, there’s plenty of material about the Sarajevo Haggadah on the internet, and Brooks’ novel is readily available.