Seder Hagadah shel Pesach – Shivchei Yaakov, by Rabbi Jacob Rabinowitz of Edinburgh, London 1906-7.

Rabbi Jacob Rabinowitz was born in Gmina Kolno, Poland in 1869. He was the son of Rabbi Eliezer Simcha Rabinowitz of Lomza (today in north east Poland) and the grandson of Rabbi Mendel Rabinowitz, Rabbi of Kovno.

He came to Britain in approximately 1898 and served as temporary rabbi of the Machzike Hadath Synagogue, Brick Lane, Spitalfields, and then, from about 1900 to 1918 as rabbi of the Yiddish speaking community of the Edinburgh New Hebrew Congregation, known as the Richmond Street Synagogue, in Edinburgh, Scotland.  He was known as a great Zionist and spoke at Zionist meetings in Edinburgh in the early years of the twentieth century, including one where he gave a Hesped (a eulogy) for Theodor Herzl.

On the eve of World War I, his wife Sarah, then a few months pregnant with her tenth child, went to visit her family in Ponevez, Lithuania. While she was away, war broke out and they did not hear from her for the next four years, during which time Rabbi Rabinowitz relocated the whole family from Edinburgh to London where he became the Rabbi of the Montague Road Beth Hamedrash in Dalston.  Some time after the war, his wife returned to England with her four year old daughter.

One of Rabbi Rabinowitz’s sons was Rabbi Louis Rabinowitz, who was a son-in-law of Rabbi Moshe Avigdor Amiel of Antwerp, and became Chief Rabbi of South Africa.  He wrote an English translation of Rabbi Amiel’s book “El Ami”, which I have written about previously. One of his sons-in-law was Rabbi Julius Newman (Rabbi of Notting Hill Synagogue from the 1920s to 1950).  Another was the stained glass window artist, David Hillman, son of Dayan Shmuel Yitzchok Hillman.  A grandson was Rabbi Benny Rabinowitz of the Edgware Synagogue.  Rabbi Jacob Rabinowitz died in 1932.

Rabbi Rabinowitz was an erudite scholar, and this book is a detailed commentary on the Haggadah, published in 1906.  According to his great-grandson, Professor David Newman, OBE, of the Department of Politics and Government at Ben Gurion University of the Negev, whom I thank for additional information for this article and the photograph above, it may have been written in Eastern Europe, but published when he came to Edinburgh. Rabbi Rabinowitz also wrote another book, Bikorei Yaakov.

Another great-grandson, originally from Manchester, is Rabbi Eliezer Simcha Weiss, who is presently a member of the twelve person supreme Rabbinical Council in Israel.  Another great-grandson is Shmuel ben Tovim, who was Mayor of Kfar Shmaryahu and Israel’s commercial and business attache to Europe.

My copy appears to be the original first edition, 64 pages, which ends rather abruptly. Apparently for reasons of the time it took to print – perhaps he wanted it out in time for Pesach – and because there was not enough money to pay the printer, this first edition ended with an short explanatory note. It was then reissued as a second edition with the full text as a book of 103 pages plus three additional unnumbered pages.

The book was an early book printed by Israel Narodiczky in Whitechapel. He had started his press in 1901, with a book called Sefer Pirchei Chemed by Matitiyahu Levin.  This Haggadah is number 35 in Moshe Sander’s bibliography of Narodiczky’s press.

Another interesting thing is that when Yosef Chaim Brenner, the Hebrew novelist, publicist, editor and literary critic came to London, he lived at Narodiczky’s house at 48 Mile End Road. Narodiczky taught him the art of typesetting and helped him publish the famous periodical Hameorer in 1906, the same year that the Haggadah was printed.  I have some original copies of Hameorer and checked the type used against that used for the Haggadah. Hameorer uses three sizes of type. The largest one and the smallest one are identical with the type used to print the Haggadah.  Of course this does not prove that Yosef Chaim Brenner set the type for Rabbi Rabbinowitz’s Haggadah, but it is quite possible as the print house did not have many employees.