Heʻeteḳ min ha-tefilot ṿeha-tishbaḥot ha-ketuvot al gabe cotle b.h. b.ḳ ḳ. Casale y.ʻa.e. העתק מן התפלות והתשבחות הכתובות על גבי כותלי ב"ה בק"ק קסאלי יע"א = Copia delle orazioni e poesie che trovansi scritte attorno all’ Oratorio Israelitico di Casale.

Title from dust jacket. On folio 1r, only the Italian title is repeated.

Variant title: העתק מן התפילות והתשבחות הכתובות על גבי כתלי בית הקנסת בקהילה קדושה קסאלי.

The Hebrew-Italian booklet was written by an unknown person most likely during the first half of the 19th century. It contains copies of the Hebrew prayers and poems which could be found on the walls of the sixteenth-century synagogue in Casale Monferrato, Italy.

The layout of the booklet is structured according to the location of the inscriptions upon the walls of the synagogue. The inscriptions were copied into frames of different shapes and sizes which are drawn in black ink unto the rulings. The frames are organized into a specific pattern on each page. Each folio and sometimes each inscription is headed by a title in Italian which informs the reader where the copied inscriptions used to be in the synagogue. With this layout, the copyist probably wanted to indicate the forms of the original tablets or cartouches upon which the epigraphs were written as well as their location on the walls of the Synagogue.

The inscriptions are numbered in arabic numerals (the sequence begins on each folio anew).

Historical value of MS Roth 213: According to Davis, Ms Roth 213 “is of unique value because,” and here he actually quotes Roth, “many of these historical inscriptions (…) have now disappeared, and are unpublished.” This assumption might indeed hold as the Synagogue was remodelled in the 1850s and 1860s, and the only publication regarding its inscriptions, the book of Giuseppe Levi, Le iscrizioni del sacro tempio israelitico di Casale Monferrato: cenni storico-illustrativi : Capo d’anno 5675 (21 settembre 1914). (Casale Monferrato: G. Lavagno, 1914) was firstly published more than half a century thereafter. The Synagogue in Casale fell into disrepair during the first half of the 19th century. It was restored at the end of the 1960s. Levi’s book was republished with an English translation of the inscriptions as Benedetto tu sia al tuo entrare: Le iscrizioni del Sacro tempio israelitico di Casale Monferrato. Edited by Comunità israelitica di Casale Monferrato. Monferrato, Italy: [Comunità ebraica di Casale Monferrato], 1994.

Bibliographical note: Cecil Roth, “Catalogue ”, in Alexander Marx: Jubilee Volume, vol. 1 (New York, 1950), no. 213. National Library of Israel (NLI), Online Catalogue, system-no. 000185758. The NLI’s description is based on the microfilm of Ms Roth 213 made on behalf of the Institute of Microfilmed Hebrew Manuscripts of the NLI during the 1960s. The microfilm can now be downloaded in a digitised form from the NLI-webpage. Malcolm C. Davis, Handlist 164 (Leeds, 2005), no. 213 .