APRIL 2018
Artifact of the Month: April 2018
Haggadah
Haggadah
Israel Herman Feinsilber (1870 - 1942)
Israel Herman Feinsilber was a Norwegian-Jewish businessman and philanthropist. He was born in Malmö as one of eight sons to Abel Feinsilber (born in 1850 in Russian Poland). Herman came to Norway in 1885, acquired commercial citizenship in 1894 and started up a business enterprise in Kristiania. A few years later, he married Anna Sofie (b. Silberstein). The couple had four children: Johnny, Edith, Harriet and Sigrid. In 1917 Feinsilber donated a large piece of land to to the Mosaic Congregation in Oslo, from which the synagogue was raised three years later. Herman Feinsilber died in April 1942, his wife Anna in 1951.
Haggadah is a Jewish text collection that sets forth the order of the Passover Seder, the ritual feast that commences the week-long Jewish feast Pesach (in Norwegian language Jewish Easter). Reading the Haggadah at the Seder table is a fulfilment of the Scriptural commandment to each Jew to "tell your son" of the Jewish liberation from slavery in Egypt as described in the Book of Exodus in the Torah. This Haggadah was printed in Germany in 1898. It has belonged to I. H. Feinsilber and is a gift to the Oslo Jewish Museum from Jeanette Wulff Reilund.
Photo: Anna Sofie and I. H. Feinsilber, ca. 1910
Photo: Facsimile from the Jewish journal Hatikwoh, March 1930, on the purchase of goods for Pesach