Considered nowadays the most valuable and number one national art treasure of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Sarajevo Haggadah is popularly known as the most beautiful Hebrew book ever produced. The famous illuminated Haggadah was created in the second quarter of the fourteenth century in one of the Jewish communities in the northeastern part of the Kingdom of Aragon (Catalonia). The fascinating illuminations reflect the high cultural and artistic achievements of Sephardi Jewry at the time. The fate of the codex after the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain (1492), until it reached eventually Sarajevo, where a member of the old local Sephardi community sold it in 1894 to the new National Museum that was established in the city a few years earlier, remains a mystery. While under the Austro-Hungarians the manuscript became the theme for the first-ever monograph on a Judaic work of art, unusual and fateful events continued to accompany the history of the valuable manuscript. It witnessed many dramatic events - sought after by the Nazis, hidden by a Muslim librarian, robbed by art thieves, endangered during the Bosnian War of the 1990s, hidden in the underground vault of the National Bank - and it was miraculously saved time and again. The present small Jewish community of Sarajevo claims some rights to the Haggadah and was actually allowed to use the original codex in a communal Seder in 1995. A source of inspiration to modern artists and the subject of a suspense novel (by Geraldine Brooks), the manuscript that was hidden from the public eye for many years continues to fascinate and capture the imagination of many.

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Shalom Sabar is Professor Emeritus of Jewish Art and Folklore at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He received his Ph.D. in Art History at the University of California, Los Angeles in 1987. He is the author of about 250 publications that explore Jewish art and the material culture of Jewish communities in the Sephardi and Ashkenazi world in Europe and the Islamic East. His areas of research include Jewish ceremonies and rituals, life cycle events, objects of daily life, ephemera, folk art, amulets, and magic as well as the visual culture of illustrated Hebrew books and manuscripts. Shalom Sabar is also an avid collector of Israeli and Jewish ephemera and has guided numerous traveling seminars to Jewish sites in Europe, North Africa, India, and Central Asia.

Considered nowadays the most valuable and number one national art treasure of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Sarajevo Haggadah is popularly known as the most beautiful Hebrew book ever produced. The famous illuminated Haggadah was created in the second quarter of the fourteenth century in one of the Jewish communities in the northeastern part of the Kingdom of Aragon (Catalonia). The fascinating illuminations reflect the high cultural and artistic achievements of Sephardi Jewry at the time. The fate of the codex after the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain (1492), until it reached eventually Sarajevo, where a member of the old local Sephardi community sold it in 1894 to the new National Museum that was established in the city a few years earlier, remains a mystery. While under the Austro-Hungarians the manuscript became the theme for the first-ever monograph on a Judaic work of art, unusual and fateful events continued to accompany the history of the valuable manuscript. It witnessed many dramatic events - sought after by the Nazis, hidden by a Muslim librarian, robbed by art thieves, endangered during the Bosnian War of the 1990s, hidden in the underground vault of the National Bank - and it was miraculously saved time and again. The present small Jewish community of Sarajevo claims some rights to the Haggadah and was actually allowed to use the original codex in a communal Seder in 1995. A source of inspiration to modern artists and the subject of a suspense novel (by Geraldine Brooks), the manuscript that was hidden from the public eye for many years continues to fascinate and capture the imagination of many.

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Shalom Sabar is Professor Emeritus of Jewish Art and Folklore at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He received his Ph.D. in Art History at the University of California, Los Angeles in 1987. He is the author of about 250 publications that explore Jewish art and the material culture of Jewish communities in the Sephardi and Ashkenazi world in Europe and the Islamic East. His areas of research include Jewish ceremonies and rituals, life cycle events, objects of daily life, ephemera, folk art, amulets, and magic as well as the visual culture of illustrated Hebrew books and manuscripts. Shalom Sabar is also an avid collector of Israeli and Jewish ephemera and has guided numerous traveling seminars to Jewish sites in Europe, North Africa, India, and Central Asia.