Please join us in transcribing a 17th century Haggadah for the Passover Seder translated into Latin by Johann Stephan Rittangel (a/k/a Rittangelius). Transcription will be taking place at Latin Wikisource (Vicifons). If you are not already a registered Wikisource volunteer contributor, please register first.
Johann Stephan Rittangel (1606-1652) was a Christian Hebraist and Professor of Oriental Languages at the University of Königsberg (Prussia) from 1640 till his death. Born Jewish, he converted to Christianity (to Catholicism and afterward to Calvinism, and then Lutheranism). After making a translation of the Sefer Yetsirah into Latin in 1642, he made this translation of the Passover Haggadah. In the Haggadah, Rittangel included musical scores for two piyyutim popularly sung during the final course of the Passover seder: “Adir Hu” and “Ki Lo Na’eh.” See below for a video of these tunes being sung!
In the year of his death, he published one of the earliest translations of Jewish liturgy (also into Latin): Hochfeyerliche Sollennitaeten, Gebethe und Collecten Anstatt der Opfer, Nebst Andern Ceremonien so von der Jüdischen Kirchen am Ersten Neuen-Jahrs-Tag Gebetet und Abgehandelt Werden Müssen (Königsberg, 1652). We have not yet seen this work and would like to help have it transcribed. If you know a collection in which it is held (or a digital, print, or microfilm copy), please let us know in the comments.
“📖 סדר הגדה של פסח | Liber Rituum Paschalium, a haggadah in Latin translation by Johann Stephan Rittangel (1644)” is shared through the Open Siddur Project with a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International copyleft license.
Aharon N. Varady (editing/transcription)
Aharon Varady (M.A.J.Ed./JTSA Davidson) is a volunteer transcriber for the Open Siddur Project. If you find any mistakes in his transcriptions, please let him know. Shgiyot mi yavin; Ministarot naqeniשְׁגִיאוֹת מִי־יָבִין; מִנִּסְתָּרוֹת נַקֵּנִי "Who can know all one's flaws? From hidden errors, correct me" (Psalms 19:13). If you'd like to directly support his work, please consider donating via his Patreon account. (Varady also translates prayers and contributes his own original work besides serving as the primary shammes of the Open Siddur Project and its website, opensiddur.org.)
Johann Stephan Rittangel (Latin translation)
Johann Stephan Rittangel (Latin: Rittangelius) (b.1606 Forscheim near Bamberg – d. 1652 Königsberg ) was a Christian Hebraist. Born Jewish, he later converted to Catholicism, and later to Calvinism and Lutheranism. In 1640, Rittangel was appointed professor of Oriental languages at the University of Königsberg (Prussia). In 1641, Rittangel visited a community of Karaite Jews in Trakai, before traveling to London and then to the Dutch Republic where, in Amsterdam, he taught Hebrew and possibly identified, for a time, as a Jew. In July 1642 he left the Low Countries to go to Königsberg, where he spent the rest of his life until his death in 1652. He obtained a Hebrew manuscript of the Sefer Yezirah through the Mennonite merchant Gerebrand Anslo, for a translation into Latin in 1642 ( Liber Jezirah qui Abrahamo Patriarchae adscribitur). In 1644, he published his Latin translation of the Passover Haggadah. He made one of the earliest translations of Jewish prayers, under the title Hochfeyerliche Sollennitaeten, Gebethe und Collecten Anstatt der Opfer, Nebst Andern Ceremonien so von der Jüdischen Kirchen am Ersten Neuen-Jahrs-Tag Gebetet und Abgehandelt Werden Müssen, Königsberg, 1652. His posthumous work Bilibra Veritatis was written to substantiate the claim that the Targums prove the doctrine of the Trinity. This is also the subject of his Veritas Religionis Christianæ (Franeker, 1699).
He did not, unfortunately, give us ‘several musical scores’ for the piyutim of the Hagadah. Only Adir Hu and Ki Lo Na’eh. And both tunes have been traced to older German hymns.
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He did not, unfortunately, give us ‘several musical scores’ for the piyutim of the Hagadah. Only Adir Hu and Ki Lo Na’eh. And both tunes have been traced to older German hymns.