Abstract
“Seeing the Sounds of Love: Visions of women and music in a 15th-century Jewish prayer book.”
The Oppenheimer Siddur is a richly illuminated, small format Ashkenazic book of daily prayers in the Oppenheim collection of Oxford’s Bodleian Library. The manuscript’s colophon tells us that it was completed in 1471 by Asher ben Yitzḥaq for use by his children. That Asher ben Yitzḥaq was not only the scribe, but also the artist of this manuscript has been confirmed in prior research by identification of common stylistic elements in the artwork and text embellishment, along with scientific imaging analysis of pigments and production process. This means that the illuminated texts of the Oppenheimer Siddur reflect the singular, personal perspective of its creator as expressed throughout the manuscript in its scribal, material and artwork features. Among the most notable of these is the pervasive musical theme that is woven through its many decorated pages, and three unusual illustrations that associate women with music, including two showing them in active performance. Women playing musical instruments seldomly appear in medieval Hebrew manuscript art and, when they do, they are most often associated with a specific, archetypical narrative context, such as depictions of Miriam with her timbrel illustrating the Exodus story in Passover haggadot. Rabbinic prohibitions against instrumental music in the synagogue mean that the presence of performing musicians—especially women playing musical instruments in a medieval Jewish prayer book that would likely to have been intended for use by men—is an intriguing anomaly in a Jewish liturgical manuscript. Relying on iconographical and textual evidence, this paper will explore the links between these three images in the Oppenheimer Siddur and topoi referencing music seen often in Northern European secular art of the late medieval period, but rarely in the art of Hebrew manuscripts, such as the allegory of the folly of love. It will discuss how these images of women and music resonate with other musical iconography in this medieval Jewish prayer book, and how they relate to broader medieval Jewish iconographic traditions as well as to Jewish literary sources, such as midrashic commentaries on the biblical Song of Songs which, in Jewish tradition, is read as a love allegory. Examination of this body of evidence may help to explain the raison d’être of this feminine musical imagery in the Oppenheimer Siddur and inform its interpretation as visual commentary on the liturgical texts where it occurs.
