“We must save Mahzor Luzzatto”

Tribune. The Alliance Israelite Universelle (AIU), a recognized association of public utility, which keeps one of the most prestigious Jewish libraries in the world in Paris, is selling at Sotheby’s in New York, October 19, his finest medieval Hebrew manuscript, the Mahzor says “Luzzatto”, named after the Italian scholar Samuel David Luzzatto (1800-1865), its previous owner. It is a ritual of prayers for the New Year (Rosh Hashanah) and the Atonement (Yom Kippur). It is estimated at some 5 million dollars (nearly 4.3 million euros).

Copied by a certain Abraham around 1270-1300, this magnificent manuscript presents a typically Ashkenazi calligraphy and decoration – initial letters populated with fantastic animals and stylized characters – suggesting a manufacture in the south of the Germanic area. It is one of the very few illuminated Hebrew prayer rituals preserved in France and, according to Sotheby’s, the oldest such manuscript ever to be auctioned.

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Although the AIU is not subject to the rule of inalienability which protects French public collections, how can we not be moved that such a prestigious institution, devoted to knowledge since its creation in 1860 – with a network of schools which have promoted the French language and the values ​​of the Republic throughout the Mediterranean world – abandon its most precious heritage?

How not to be surprised that France, which is home to the largest Jewish population in Europe and the third largest in the world, lets out of its territory such an emblematic heritage, acquired very early on by the IAU library, whose collection was hardly recovered after its despoilment by the Nazis?

Significant tax deductions

We do not make up our minds to see this emblematic manuscript leave France and call for the search for all solutions so that it is classified as a “work of major heritage interest”, allowing its acquisition by a patron under the law of August 1, 2003 (known as the “Aillagon” law), which offers very significant tax deductions (90% of corporation tax) as soon as the manuscript is donated to a heritage institution such as the National Library of France, whose fund of medieval Hebrew manuscripts refers.

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Acquired in New York by a private individual, the Mahzor Luzzatto risks disappearing in a safe, while at the AIU it is accessible to researchers. But beyond its interest in the knowledge of medieval European Judaism, this manuscript has a symbolic importance which exceeds its market value.

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