As the Purim holiday approaches, the National Library of Israel has put a 400-year-old hand-illustrated copy of the Book of Esther on display. The scroll was copied in Italy in 1617 and will soon be uploaded to the National Library website. The curator of the National Library's Judaica collection, Dr. Yoel Finkelman, said the illustrations on the scroll are full of violence, bloodshed, and beheadings in an apparent attempt to portray the ancient story as vividly as possible. "A study of the rich detail reveals hints that the illustrator expected that given the tense relations between Jews and Christians and because of the anti-Semitism throughout Christian Europe at that time, God would inflict the same violence on the Christians if they dared to attack Jews," Finkelman said. The scroll was commissioned by Mordechai Ben Eliyahu Halevy from the city of Brescello, near Parma, in 1616. The scribe who copied and illustrated it was named Moshe Ben Avraham Peshkarol. The scroll covers 27 parchment pages and was much used, as evidenced by the many stains and damage to the colors. The National Library boasts a collection of scrolls of the Book of Esther that includes over 100 scrolls from dozens of Jewish communities in the west and the east. The oldest copy of the Book of Esther in the library's possession is a 14th-century translation of the text into a Jewish dialect of Arabic.
400-year-old Book of Esther scroll uploaded to National Library website
Richly illustrated scroll was commissioned in 1616 by Mordechai Ben Eliyahu Halevy and apparently much used • Curator Dr. Yoel Finkelstein: The illustrations are full of violence, showing the tension between Jews and Christians.
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