The Haggadot commissioned by wealthy patrons in the Middle Ages are among the most beautifully decorated Hebrew manuscripts, and The `Brother' Haggadah - so-called because of its close relationship to The Rylands Haggadah in the collection of the John Rylands Library, Manchester - is one of the finest of these to have survived. Created by Sephardi - or southern - artists and scribes in Catalonia in the second quarter of the 14th century, it sets out the liturgy and sequence of the Passover Seder, a ritual feast by which Jewish families give thanks for the liberation of the Israelites from slavery in ancient Egypt as described in the Book of Exodus. This finely produced facsimile edition begins with an introduction by medieval scholar Professor Marc Michael Epstein, who sets out the background to the Passover and provides an analysis of the manuscript's iconographic scheme. Following are essays on the provenance of The `Brother' Haggadah by Ilana Tahan, head of the Hebrew and Christian collections at the British Library, and on the Shaltiel family, former owners of the manuscript, by Hebrew scholar Eliezer Laine. The book also contains a translation of the poems and commentary in the manuscript by the late Raphael Lowe, former Goldsmid Professor of Hebrew at University College London, and a translation of the Haggadah liturgy.

Isaac Orobio de Castro, a crypto-Jew from Portugal, was one of the most prominent intellectual figures of the Sephardi Diaspora in the seventeenth century. After studying medicine and theology in Spain, and having pursued a distinguished medical career, he was arrested by the Spanish Inquisition for practising Judaism, tortured, tired, and imprisoned. He subsequently emigrated to France and became a professor of medicine at the University of Toulouse before openly professing his Judaism and going to Amsterdam where he joined the thriving Portuguese Jewish community. Amsterdam was then a city of great cultural creativity and religious pluralism where Orobio found open to him the world of religious thinkers and learned scholars. In this atmosphere he flourished and became an outstanding spokesman and apologist for the Jewish community. He engaged in controversy with Juan de Prado and Baruch Spinoza, who were both excommunicated by the Portuguese Jewish community, as well as with Christian theologians of various sects and denominations, including Philip van Limborch. This fascinating biography of Orobio sheds light on the complex life of a unique Jewish community of former Christians who had openly returned to Judaism. It focuses on the particular dilemmas of the converts, their attempts to establish boundaries between their Christian past and their new identity, their internal conflicts, and their ability to create new forms of Jewish life and expression.

The wondrous fables of Ibn Sahula in Meshal haqadmoni, presented here in English for the first time, provide a most unusual introduction to the intellectual and social universe of the Sephardi Jewish world of thirteenth-century Spain. Ibn Sahula wrote his fables in rhymed prose, here rendered into English as rhymed couplets. They comprise a series of satirical debates between a cynic and a moralist, put into the mouths of animals; the moralist always triumphs. The debates, which touch on such subjects as time, the soul, the physical sciences and medicine, astronomy, and astrology, amply reflect human foibles, political compromise, and court intrigue. They are suffused throughout with traditional Jewish law and lore, a flavour reinforced by the profusion of biblical quotations reapplied. With parallel Hebrew and English texts, explanatory notes, indication of textual variants, and references for all the biblical and other allusions, this edition has much to offer to scholars in many areas: medieval Hebrew literature, medieval intellectual history, Sephardi studies, and the literature and folklore of Spain. Both the translation and the scholarly annotations reflect Raphael Loewe's deep understanding of Ibn Sahula's world, including the interrelationship of Hebrew, Greek, and Arabic speculative thought and the interplay between those languages. Scholars will profit enormously from the textual annotations, and specialist and nonspecialist alike will benefit from the masterly introduction. Two full series of illustrations are reproduced alongside the text: the woodcuts from the second edition (Venice, c.1547), and the splendid vignettes in the Rothschild Miscellany, a fifteenth-century Italian mansucript in the Israel Museum. Raphael Loewe was formerly Goldsmid Professor of Hebrew at University College London, and is a former visiting professor at Brown University. His publications concern various aspects of Judaism in late antiquity and the Middle Ages, and include much translation. His English translations of a substantial number of liturgical poems for the Passover season are contained in his Rylands Haggadah (1988), and others-among them the Royal Crown-in his Ibn Gabirol (1989). His translation of FitzGerald's Omar Khayy m into medieval Hebrew verse was published in 1982. He is also a contributing author of the companion volumes to the facsimile editions of the Barcelona Haggadah (1992), the Rothschild Haggadah (2000), the Parma Psalter (1996), and the North French Miscellany (2002). Many other translations remain unpublished, being privately circulated among friends. 'The joy to be encountered by those who rise to his intellectual challenge is great. The Littman Library is owed an immense debt by all lovers of Hebrew literature for having committed to this ambitious project and, although the two volumes are expensive, the quality of Meshal haqadmoni is such that the price is worth paying, and all those interested in Jewish literature and especially that of the medieval period should have this work on their shelves. Raphael Loewe's translation and commentary on Ibn Sahula's work is a lasting testimony to a great scholar and a great teacher with a poet's soul.' Charles H. Middleburgh