Mahzor of Worms

One of the oldest known passages in a language identifiable as Yiddish, in the Maḥazor of Worms. The sentence is written in red within the letters of the Hebrew title. The text is a rhyming couplet, fully vocalized.

The Mahzor of Worms is a thirteenth century illuminated manuscript. Dated to 1272, it is a Mahzor, a Jewish festival liturgical prayerbook, and the locus of the first written Yiddish. The scribe who copied the manuscript was Simhah ben Yehuda Ha-Sofer and it was illustrated by Shemiah Ha-Zarfati.

The first volume was completed likely in Würzburg. The second volume was produced at a later time, probably in Worms, where the two volumes were used by the local Jewish community.

References

Uses material from the Wikipedia article Mahzor of Worms, released under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license.