General

Title

St. Petersburg (Russia), Russian Museum of Ethnography: inv. no. 6396-101

Manuscript name

The Kitzes Ilan

Summary

This imposing Hasidic Great Tree of the VPaZW type was collected by S. An-sky during his ethnographic expedition to Volhynia and Podolia between 1912 and 1914. Executed in the late nineteenth century, it is exceptional for its massive scale, measuring 430 by 52.5 centimeters, which is roughly twice the size of comparable rotuli. The scribe exploited this width by enlarging the standard diagrammatic components (modules), resulting in a spacious layout that makes this Great Tree significantly wider than is commonly found. A distinctive feature of the work is its claim to include the glosses of the prominent Hasidic leader Rabbi Zev Kitzes of Mezhbizh, a close disciple of the Ba’al Shem Tov. While this attribution added prestige to The Magnificent Parchment, its contents largely mirror the standard configurations of its family. It remains one of only two known examples of a VPaZW Great Tree produced in Europe rather than North Africa.

Support material

parchment

Main language

Rabbinic Hebrew

Identifier

inv. no. 6396-101

Repository

Russian Museum of Ethnography

Country

Russia

Settlement

St. Petersburg

Research literature

J. H. Chajes, The Kabbalistic Tree (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2022), 214–215.

Creation time

Date

late 19th–early 20th century