Tellings

The Sarajevo Haggadah, c. 1350

This image holds the imagination, suspends and upends narrative. And yet, all I really want to consider are the wine stains all over its pages, and the stories of seders past that these might tell.  As expansive as the story of this manuscript is (you might start with the December 2007 New York article, and then there's the historical fictionalization), it's those oenophilic traces that appeal.  One coupled with a smile, another with a gesture, a third with a quote, jostled between ritual and remembrance.  Fugitive drops that now join the copper and the gold of the manuscript. Patterns made with caring hands, warmed by good company.  I think of last year and of walking home after, and now of the tales the children still tell.