ABC FLOOR PUZZLE

The Sarajevo Haggadah is an illuminated manuscript that contains the illustrated traditional text of the Passover Haggadah which accompanies the Passover Seder. It is one of the oldest Sephardic Haggadahs in the world, originating in Barcelona around 1350.

The Haggadah is presently owned by the National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Sarajevo, where it is on permanent display. The Sarajevo Haggadah is handwritten on bleached calfskin and illuminated in copper and gold. It opens with 34 pages of illustrations of key scenes in the Bible from creation through the death of Moses. Its pages are stained with wine, evidence that it was used at many Passover Seders. In 1991 it was appraised at US$7 million.

The Sarajevo Haggadah has survived many close calls with destruction. Historians believe that it was taken out of Spain by Spanish Jews who were expelled by the Alhambra Decree in 1492. Many og the Spanish Jews then came to Bosnia and Herzegovina. Notes in the margins of the Haggadah indicate that it surfaced in Italy in the 16th century. It was sold to the National Museum in Sarajevo in 1894 by a man named Joseph Kohen.

During World War II, the manuscript was hidden from the Nazis and Ustashe by the Museum's chief librarian, Dervis Korkut, who at risk to his own life, smuggled the Haggadah out of Sarajevo. Korkut gave it to a Muslim cleric in Zenica, where it was hidden under the floorboards of either a mosque or a Muslim home. In 1957, a facsimile of the Haggadah was published by Sandor Scheiber, director of the Rabbinical Seminary in Budapest. In 1992 during the Bosnian War, the Haggadah manuscript survived a museum break-in and it was discovered on the floor during the police investigation by a local Inspector (Detective), Fahrudin Cebo (later nicknamed (Haggadah), with many other items thieves believed were not valuable. It later survived in an underground bank vault when Sarajevo was under constant siege by Bosnian Serb forces (Siege of Sarajevo -- the longest siege in the history of modern warfare). To quell rumors that the government had sold the Haggadah in order to buy weapons, the president of Bosnia presented the manuscript at a community Seder in 1995.

Afterwards, the manuscript was restored through a special campaign financed by the United Nations and the Bosnian Jewish community in 2001, and went on permanent display at the museum in December 2002.

In 1985 a reproduction was printed in Ljubljana, 5,000 copies were made. More recently, the museum has authorized the publication of a limited number of reproductions of the Sarajevo Haggadah, each of which has become a collector's item. In May 2006, the Sarajevo publishing house Rabic Ltd., announced the forthcoming publication of 613 copies of the Haggadah on handmade parchment that attempts to recreate the original appearance of the 14th century original, alluding to the 613 Mitzvot.

There is a brief mention of the manuscript in the motion picture, "Welcome to Sarajevo". The novel People of the Book, by Geraldine Brooks (2008), crafts a fictionalised and highly inaccurate history of the Haggadah from its origins in Spain to the museum in Sarajevo. The Winter, 2002, issue of the literary journal Brick published Ramona Koval's account of the disputes surrounding the proposed UNESCO-funded display of the original codex in the context of the post-Dayton Agreement UN-supervised 1995 peace settlement.

The history of the remarkable man, Dervis Korkut, who saved the book from the Nazi officers who sought it, was told in the December 3, 2007 issue of The New Yorker magazine. The article, entitled "The Book of Exodus", also by Geraldine Brooks, sets out the equally remarkable story of the young Jewish girl, Mira Papo, whom Korkut and his wife hid from the Nazis as they were acting to save the Haggadah. In a twist of fate, as an elderly woman in Israel, Mira Papo secured the safety of Korkut's daughter from the Serbian genocide of the 1990s.

The astonishing and unique Sarajevo Haggadah was created in the middle of the 14th century, the golden age of Spain. We still do not know the exact date and place of the book’s creation or the name of the artist who illuminated it. Was it perhaps a wedding gift on the occasion of the marriage of members of two prominent families called Shoshan and Elazar, since there are two coats of arms in the bottom corners, one representing a rose (shoshan) and the other a wing (elazar)? Perhaps we will never learn.

We do, however, know that in the eighteenth year after the expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492, the Haggadah changed hands. A note mentions this fact but does not provide us with the names of either of the owners. There is another note, dated 1609, stating that the book does not speak against the Church, which saved it from being burned by the Spanish Inquisition. We know nothing further about it until it is mentioned in 1894. It is assumed that the manuscript came to Bosnia and Herzegov

How often do you get to be a kid anymore? When you’re a kid, you lose yourself in everything. Do you remember the last time you said your ABC’s? When was the last time you strapped on your cape and jumped off the 42nd floor of your bed to save the world?

As we grow older, we may lose connection of the world as we knew it when we were kids. At least most of us. Why do you think we relate so well to movies about talking toys? We grew up in those worlds. Where the cabinets towered above us. The staircase was a mountain. And the boogeyman lived in our closet.

Today, I joined my cute little friend here on an magical alphabetical journey through the animal kingdom! It was fun. It was spur of the moment. It allowed me to be a kid again. Sure the knees creaked, and the back tweaked as I got up from the not-so-soft tile floor. But it was a small price to pay to live in memories maybe you can’t visit that often.

So, just like my challenge with this project is to feed my brain with creativity, I have a challenge for you. Find sometime this week to let yourself be a kid again. Have a magazine to read? Try laying on your belly under a sunny window. Going to watch the latest blockbuster film? Swap it out for your favorite cartoon. Go to the candy store and fill a bag of treats for yourself. Find a swing set and make yourself nauseous as you tip your head back on the way up.

Being a kid shouldn’t be puzzling. After all, it’s those pieces of a bigger puzzle that made you who you are today.