Treasures of Jewish Art The 1673 Illuminated Scroll of Esther Offered to a Romanian Hierarch

The Library of the Romanian Academy in Bucharest holds a rare piece of Jewish art from the seventeenth century, an illuminated scroll of the Book of Esther, dated 1673. This manuscript is a unique example in terms of Jewish art because of two distinct components that it exclusively possesses. One of them is the date indicating the year 7181 in Byzantine chronology, which corresponds to the Gregorian calendar year 1673. The second component is the coat of arms of the Principality of Moldavia, placed within the escutcheon in the ornamental section at the beginning of the scroll. These essentially biographic elements indicate an age for this type of megillah, and although this is not the very year when it first took shape, they prevent specialists from oscillating between the 16th, 17th, and the mostly preferred 18th centuries. In addition, the presence of the Moldavian coat of arms in the escutcheon, along with other evidence, points to a Romanian holder, namely Dosoftei, the metropolitan of Moldavia. The scroll provides evidence of important cultural and spiritual relations between two peoples living side by side in the same land, Romanians and Jews, as well as two noted scholars of the time, Dosoftei, the Romanian archbishop, and the cabalist Nathan Nata Hanover, rabbi for over 15 years (1657-1673) of the Jewish community in Iasi, the capital city of the Moldavian principality. This book includes a full-colour reproduction of this manuscript, along with a comprehensive discussion of the origin and significance of this unique piece of Jewish Art.

Cornelia Bodea (1916-2010) was a renowned Romanian historian and a member of the Romanian Academy. She studied under the great Romanian historians Nicolae Iorga and Gheorghe I. Bratianu. She was a distinguished scholar focusing on modern history. Cornelia Bodea was the author of numerous books and articles on Romanian history and culture.