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Making room at the table: women, Passover and the Sister Haggadah (London, British Library, MS Or. 2884)

ABSTRACT The final folio in the illuminated sequence of the fourteenth-century Sister Haggadah (London, British Library, MS Or. 2884) depicts the family Seder, presumably modelled on the festival meal celebrated by those who commissioned the manuscript. Unlike other Seder images, that in Or. 2884 presents a centrally seated woman who, while acknowledging the viewer's gaze, samples a ritual food of Passover while the men at the Seder interact with the Haggadah volumes before them. This particular deviation from traditional Haggadah illumination presents a woman who indicates that the senses are her own special domain. This paper considers the image in view of the possibility that Or. 2884, like numerous Christian devotional manuscripts of the period, was designed to accommodate a female viewer. This particular accommodation is presented in a context replete with Jewish notions of gender, visuality and observance.