Sukkah Soul Blog
March 24 - 13 Nisan 5773 - Then came the cat and devoured the kid.
March 24
13 Nisan 5773
Then came the cat and devoured the kid.
Verse 2 of Had Gadya
The earliest written versions of the ‘Had Gadya’ song are from the beginning of the 16th century. It originated in Yiddish, but was translated into Aramaic in order to give it a more ancient cadence, and also because the rhyme in Aramaic is simpler and the rhythm more uniform. The song was first included in a Passover Haggadah printed in 1590 in Prague, where it appeared in Aramaic on the last page.
-by Edna Moshenson, curator of the Stella show at Tel Aviv Museum
El Lissitzky’s Verse 2:
…is viewed from above by an eye set within a green circle. We will see a more detailed and conspicuous instance of this image in the final verse of the song. The red cat, the first murderer in the song, evokes Cain, the first murderer in the Bible.
– by Arnold Band in facsimile of Had Gadya published by Getty Research Institute
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