The Birds of the Birds’ Head Haggadah: Disputation Through Art

Abstract:This article challenges a current reassessment of the Birds’ Head Haggadah, which claims that the manuscript’s bird-headed Jews are not birds, but griffins: creatures whose nobility and strength enable open contest with the Christian oppressor. The Haggadah in fact resists such ennobling of its zoocephalism, and compelling analogues are adduced here for the birds. Masked with simple hominess, the characters confront Christian hegemony quietly and privately in a disputation through art. By co-opting and subverting Christian iconography and ritual, the illuminations urge Jewish commitment and resolve in the face of cultural domination – a social reality of insecurity that belies the sense of empowerment suggested in the griffin identity.