1. This micrography decoration has been mentioned in previous research, but without any interpretation beyond noting that it portrays Ezekiel's vision. George Margoliouth, Catalogue of the Hebrew and Samaritan Manuscripts in the British Museum (London: The British Museum, 1899), sign. 117; Therese and Mendel Metzger, Jewish Life in the Middle Ages: Illuminated Hebrew Manuscripts of the Thirteenth to the Sixteenth Centuries (New York: Alpine Fine Arts Collection, 1982), 269, 271; Ilana Tahan, Hebrew Manuscripts: The Power of Script and Image (London: The British Library, 2007), 133–135. See also the British Library website: http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=or_2091_f203r.

2. Only in Hebrew, without the Aramaic translation. On this issue see Stern, David, “The Hebrew Bible in Europe in the Middle Ages: A Preliminary Typology,” Jewish Studies: An Internet Journal 11 (2012): 4–7Google Scholar (http://www.biu.ac.il/JS/JSIJ/11-2012/Stern.pdf).

3. The books are not organized according to the regular order; on this topic see Donald Coggan, “The English Bible,” Encyclopaedia Judaica, ed. Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik (Detroit: Macmillan, 2007), 3:580–583.

4. An iconographical borrowing of the Holy Roman Empire's eagle.

5. The verse from Isaiah 66:23 is repeated after the last verse in Isaiah (66:24): “All flesh shall come and worship Me said the Lord.”

6. According to Gershom Scholem and others this phrase was the core text of the so-called “special cherub” circle within Hasidei Ashkenaz, and it is very tempting to relate this image to the “special cherub”; however, I could not find any strong support for this possibility in the texts. Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York: Schocken, 1954), 113–116.

7. On this see Herbert L. Kessler, Spiritual Seeing: Picturing God's Invisibility in Medieval Art (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000). It should be mentioned that the depiction of the chariot beings is a topos from the Hebrew Bible, borrowed by the writers of the book of Revelation, made manifest visually in art made for early and medieval Christians and then “reborrowed” by the authorship of art made for medieval Jews.

8. Margoliouth, Catalogue of the Hebrew and Samaritan Manuscripts, sign. 75; Metzger, Jewish Life in the Middle Ages, 304; Tahan, Hebrew Manuscripts, 132. See also the British Library website: www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/ILLUMIN.ASP?Size=mid&IllID=50753.

9. On other scenes of the chariot's four creatures in Ashkenazic and French manuscripts see Sara Offenberg, Illuminated Piety: Pietistic Texts and Images in the North French Hebrew Miscellany (Los Angeles: Cherub Press, 2013), 65–71. The Ambrosiana Bible (Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, B. 32 inf., fol. 135a), produced in 1236; the London Miscellany (London, British Library, Add. 11639, fol. 354b), produced in northern France around 1280; The Double Maḥzor (Wrocław, University Library, Cod. Or. I, 1, fol. 89a), probably produced in Esslingen around 1290; and the Leipzig Maḥzor (Leipzig, Universitätsbibliothek V 1102/I, fol.31a), produced in Worms around 1310 (fig. 3); The Copenhagen Maimonides (Guide for the Perplexed) (Copenhagen, The Royal Library, Cod. Hebr. 37, fol. 202a), produced in Barcelona 1348. The creatures in the Leipzig Maḥzor are portrayed without wings. In all of these examples, as well as in the Yonah Pentateuch, the lion is always facing the ox and the man is facing the eagle. On the lion facing the ox as symbolizing harmony and peace see Michael Schneider, Ha-masorot ha-genuzot shel ha-mistikah ha-Yehudit (Los Angeles: Cherub Press, 2013), 239–242. I could not find other illustrations of the four creatures in medieval Hebrew manuscripts.

10. For example, in 'Orḥot ḥayim, a compilation from the end of the thirteenth or early fourteenth century, Rabbi Aharon ha-Kohen of Lunel quotes a responsum by the Rashba (Rabbi Solomon ibn Adret of Barcelona, d. 1310): “It is forbidden to create the form of the four creatures as one figure with four faces, but creating one of them alone is not [forbidden] … and that is why it is allowed to create the form of the lion, the eagle and the ox—each on its own.” 'Orḥot ḥayim: Hilkhot ‘avodah zarah 7, ed. Moshe Schlesinger (Berlin: Druck von H. Itzkowski, 1902), 232–233. I used Katrin Kogman-Appel's translation: A Mahzor from Worms: Art and Religion in a Medieval Jewish Community (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012), 176; Kogman-Appel, “The Scales in the Leipzig Mahzor: Penance and Eschatology in Early Fourteenth-Century Germany,” in Between Judaism and Christianity: Art Historical Essays in Honor of Elisheva (Elisabeth) Revel-Neher, ed. Katrin Kogman-Appel and Mati Meyer (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 314. Beyond this halakhic restriction, there may be another reason for choosing to differ from the conventional mode of depicting the evangelist symbols in late thirteenth-century Christian culture in Franco-Germany: the masoretor avoided such images due to their christological ideas.

11. Ivan G. Marcus, “Why Is This Knight Different? A Jewish Self-Representation in Medieval Europe,” in Tov Elem: Memory, Community and Gender in Medieval and Early Modern Jewish Societies: Essays in Honor of Robert Bonfil, ed. Elisheva Baumgarten, Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin and Roni Weinstein (Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 2011), 139–152. For more on illuminations of “Jewish knights” see Offenberg, Sara, “A Jewish Knight in Shining Armor: Messianic Narrative and Imagination in Ashkenazic Illuminated Manuscripts,” The University of Toronto Journal of Jewish Thought 4 (2015): 1–14Google Scholar.

12. Sarit Shalev-Eyni, Jews among Christians: Hebrew Book Illumination from Lake Constance (London: Harvey Miller, 2010), 85–92; Shalev-Eyni, “Ba‘alei hon Yehudim be-‘ir noẓrit: Ha-mimẓa’ ha-ḥazuti ve-ha-miluli,” in Temunah ve-ẓelil: ‘Omanut muzikah historiyah, ed. Richard I. Cohen (Jerusalem: Merkaz Zalman Shazar, 2007), 107–130. Her study relies, among other sources, on research of the decoration on a Jewish house found in Zurich, where we find many coats of arms portrayed on the walls; for more on that see Dölf Wild and Roland Böhmer, “Die spätmittelalterlichen Wandmalereien im Haus «Zum Brunnenhof» in Zürich und ihre jüdischen Arbeitsgeber,” Separatdruck aus dem Bericht «Zürcher Denkmalpflege, Stadt Zürrich (1995/96): 15–33. This is also in line with the Jewish seals found from medieval Europe, see Daniel M. Friedenberg, Medieval Jewish Seals from Europe (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1987).

13. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan of the Pentateuch: Text and Concordance, trans. E. G. Clarke (Hoboken, NJ: Ktav, 1984), 33; David J. Halperin, The Faces of the Chariot: Early Jewish Responses to Ezekiel's Vision (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1988), 121.

14. Elliot R. Wolfson, “The Image of Jacob Engraved upon the Throne: Further Reflection on the Esoteric Doctrine of the German Pietists,” in Along the Path: Studies in Kabbalistic Myth, Symbolism, and Hermeneutics (Albany: SUNY Press, 1995), 1–62.

15. On the pronunciation of ʾAbir Ya‘akov as ʾAvir Ya‘akov see Samuel Rolles Driver, Alfred Plummer, and Charles A. Briggs, The International Critical Commentary on the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1895–1929), 530–531. I thank Leor Jacobi for this reference. On the phrase ʾAvir Ya‘akov, ʾAvir Isra'el, or simply ʾavir as referring to angels in the Hekhalot Rabbati see Yaron Zini, “ʾOẓar ha-milim ve-ẓerufei ha-lashon shel hekhalot rabbati” (PhD diss., The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2012), 211–214.

16. Neis, Rachel, “Embracing Icons: The Face of Jacob on the Throne of God,” Images 1 (2007): 48–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The importance of the hekhalot literature here is that it was familiar to Hasidei Ashkenaz, who indeed elaborated on it, as meticulously studied in recent years by Annelies Kuyt. See Annelies Kuyt, “Traces of a Mutual Influence of the Haside Ashkenaz and the Hekhalot Literature,” in From Narbonne to Regensburg: Studies in Medieval Hebrew Texts, ed. N. A. van Uchelen and I. E. Zwiep (Amsterdam: Juda Palache Institute, 1993), 62–86; Kuyt, “The Haside Ashkenaz and Their Mystical Sources: Continuity and Innovation,” in Jewish Studies in a New Europe: Proceedings of the Fifth Congress of Jewish Studies in Copenhagen 1994, ed. Ulf Haxen, Hanne Trautner-Kromann and Karen Lisa Goldschmidt Salamon (Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzel A/S International, Det Kongelige Bibliotek, 1998), 462–471. In what follows we shall return to the issue of Hasidei Ashkenaz.

17. Wolfson, “Image of Jacob,” 131 n. 132. On this idea in relation to the verse and term ʾAvir Ya‘akov along with other sources cited by Wolfson, see, for example, Eleazar of Worms (Rokeaḥ), Pirushei siddur ha-tefillah la-Rokeaḥ, ed. M. and Y. Hershler, 2 vols. (Jerusalem: Makhon Ha-Rav Hershler, 1992), vol. 2, sign. 81, 522.

18. Weber, Annette, “The Masoret Is a Fence to the Torah: Monumental Letters and Micrography in Medieval Ashkenazi Bibles,” Ars Judaica 11 (2015): 7–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On other examples of the ideas of Hasidei Ashkenaz in Hebrew illuminated manuscripts see Dubrau, Irmi, “Motiv ʾikonografi shel re‘im ʾahuvim be-maḥzorim ʾashkenazim me-ba‘ad le-darkei ha-parshanut shel torat ha-sod be-ʾAshkenaz bi-yemei ha-benayim,” Kabbalah 24 (2011): 209–240Google Scholar; Katrin Kogman-Appel, Mahzor from Worms; Kogman-Appel, , “Sephardic Ideas in Ashkenaz—Visualizing the Temple in Medieval Regensburg,” in Simon Dubnow Institute Yearbook 8 (2009): 245–277Google Scholar; also Offenberg, Sara, “Crossing over from Earth to Heaven: The Image of the Ark and the Merkavah in the North French Hebrew Miscellany,” Kabbalah 26 (2012): 135–158Google Scholar; Offenberg, Illuminated Piety.

19. I should mention Rabbi Judah the Pious's statement in Sefer Ḥasidim that “one who hires a scribe to write the Masorah for the twenty-four books (i.e., the Bible) should make a condition with the scribe that he should not make the Masorah into drawings of birds or beasts or a tree or into any other illustration … for how will he be able to see [and read the Masorah]?” Sefer Ḥasidim, ed. Jehuda Wistinetzki (Frankfurt a. M: M. A. Wahrmann, 1924), par. 709, 184. However, according to David Stern: “Whether or not Judah was the first to oppose the practice, it is clear that his and any other objections were manifestly ignored by Ashkenazic scribes and Masoretes. Indeed, there is hardly anything more common in Ashkenazic Bibles (and other Ashkenazic books) than micrographic illustration.” Stern, “Hebrew Bible in Europe in the Middle Ages,” 52–53. See also Fronda, Rahel, “Attributing of Three Ashkenazi Bibles with Micrographic Images,” Ars Judaica 9 (2013): 45–56Google Scholar; Shalev-Eyni, Jews among Christians, 4–5; Halperin, Dalia-Ruth, “Decorated Masorah on the Openings between Quires in Masoretic Bible Manuscripts,” Journal of Jewish Studies 65, no. 2 (2014): 323–348Google Scholar. It is important to note that there is a gap between what R. Judah the Pious wrote and the actual acceptance of all his instructions by his followers. One example of that is his ban on writing in the margins (found just after the aforementioned section), however, his own book Sefer gematriot was copied on the margins in the North French Hebrew Miscellany produced around 1280; for more on that see Offenberg, Illuminated Piety, 73–100.

20. Kogman-Appel, Mahzor from Worms, 175–182; Kogman-Appel, “Scales in the Leipzig Mahzor,” 315–316.

21. Israel Davidson, ʾOẓar ha-shirah ve-ha-piyyut, 4 vols. (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1924), vol. 1, sign. 3853.

22. Kogman-Appel, Mahzor from Worms, 179–182.

23. Perushei ha-Torah le-R. Ḥayim Palti'el, ed. Isaac Lange (Jerusalem: Daf Chen, 1981), 164. My translation.

.מידי אביר יעקב. כלומר מי גרם לו כל הגדולה הזאת והכבוד הזה זה אביר יעקב, כלומר זהו יעקב שהוא גבור

24. Charles Henry Ashdown, European Arms and Armor (New York: Brussell & Brussell, 1995), 88–90; Martin J. Dougherty, Weapons and Fighting Techniques of the Medieval Warrior, 1000–1500 AD (Guilford, CT: Lyons, 2008), 32–37; David Edge and John Miles Paddock, Arms and Armor of the Medieval Knight: An Illustrated History of Weaponry in the Middle Ages (New York: Crescent, 1988), 55–61. The three “tails” of the surcoat are portrayed according to the standard iconography of a knight's garment's contour. For more on heraldry see Stephen Slater, The History and Meaning of Heraldry: An Illustrated Reference to Classic Symbols and Their Relevance (London: Southwater, 2004).

25. On the great helm see Ashdown, European Arms and Armor, 82–85, 112–113; Kelly DeVries, Medieval Military Technology (Peterborough, ON: Broadview, 1992), 70–73; Edge and Paddock, Arms and Armor of the Medieval Knight, 53–55; Slater, History and Meaning of Heraldry, 52–59.

26. I could not find a heraldic equivalent to identify it. Perhaps celestial figures were chosen for the heraldic symbols because they are related to Jacob's image engraved not only upon the throne, but also upon the stars and moon. On this see Wolfson, Along the Path, 27–28, 31–32. A fourteenth-century Jewish seal of a scribe from Trier called “Jacob the scribe” shows a shield with letters forming Jacob's name (IACOB), and a crescent moon on the right side face of a man. Friedenberg, Medieval Jewish Seals, 222–223. I thank Andreas Lehnertz for drawing my attention to this seal.

27. Ashdown, European Arms and Armor, 90–92; Edge and Paddock, Arms and Armor of the Medieval Knight, 53–55.

28. Ashdown, European Arms and Armor, 111–112. For more on tournaments see Joachim Bumke, Courtly Culture: Literature and Society in the High Middle Ages (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 247–273; Dougherty, Weapons and Fighting Techniques, 70–79; Edge and Paddock, Arms and Armor of the Medieval Knight, 154–174.

29. Shalev-Eyni, Jews among Christians, 85–92; Gabrielle Sed-Rejna studied the knights illustrated in the French manuscript of Mishneh Torah in the Kaufmann Collection, produced in 1296 (also called Codex Maimuni) (Budapest, Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Kaufmann Collection, Ms. A.77, vol. 1, fol. 16b; vol. 3, fol. 3b). See the manuscript on the web site: www.kaufmann.mtak.hu/index-en.html (accessed September 3, 2014). Sed-Rajna, Gabrielle, “The Illustrations of the Kaufmann Mishneh Torah,” Journal of Jewish Art 6 (1979): 64–77Google Scholar. This manuscript contains scenes of jousting knights and even of their practice for the games. Also see, for example, a scene in the bottom margin of the first page of 1 Kings of a Hebrew Bible (Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, heb. 4, fol. 249b), composed in Lorraine, in 1286. The scene portrays two jousting knights identified by an inscription over their heads as David and Adoniyahu. On this scene and others see Stern, “The Hebrew Bible in Europe in the Middle Ages,” fig. 13, 48–49.

30. Eliezer ben Yo'el ha-Levi, Sefer Ra'avyah, ed. Victor Aptowitzer (Jerusalem: Mekiẓe Nirdamim, 1938), sign. 12, 213.

31. Bumke, Courtly Culture, 253–254, 269; Shalev-Eyni, Jews among Christians, 90–91.

32. Elsewhere the Ra'avyah noted that one should be careful not to watch the tournament games. Sefer Ra'avyah, sign. 89, 444. I thank Leor Jacobi for providing me with this reference.

33. On the shield see Ashdown, European Arms and Armor, 92–96.

34. Kogman-Appel, “Scales in the Leipzig Mahzor,” 316.

35. It could look more like a “horn book” (although it does not look as if it has a handle), and I thank Ilia Rodov for this idea. We can compare it with a later example of Moses receiving the Torah in the shape of a “horn book” from the fifteenth-century Second Darmstadt Haggadah (Darmstadt Hessische landes- und hochschulbibliothek, Cod. Or. 28, fol. 9v). On this image see Ilia Rodov, “The King of the King of Kings: Images of Rulership in Late Medieval and Early Modern Christian Art and Synagogue Design,” in Interaction between Judaism and Christianity in History, Religion, Art and Literature, ed. Marcel Poorthuis, Joshua Schwartz and Joseph Turner (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 464.

36. Davidson, ʾOẓar ha-shirah ve-ha-piyyut, vol. 2, sign. 189; Daniel Goldschmidt, Maḥzor la-yamim ha-nora'im: Le-fi minhag bnei ʾAshkenaz le-khol ‘anfehem, kolel minhag ʾAshkenaz (ha-ma‘aravi) minhag Polin u-minhag Ẓarfat le-she‘avar, Rosh Hashanah, 2 vols. (Jerusalem: Koren, 1970), 1:216–217; Idel, Moshe, “Perushav shel R. Neḥemiah ben Shlomo la-piyyut ha-'oḥez be-yad middat mishpat,” Kabbalah 26 (2012): 187–189Google Scholar; Kogman-Appel, Mahzor from Worms, 178, 180; Wolfson, Along the Path, 8.

37. Kogman-Appel, “Scales in the Leipzig Mahzor,” 315–316; Wolfson, Along the Path, 8–10, 12, 121 n. 65. See also Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, héb. 850, fols. 57a, 58a.

38. MS Jerusalem, the National Library of Israel, Heb. 28° 7234, fols. 15b–16a; Sefer gematriot le-R. Yehudah ha-ḥasid: Mahadurat faksimiliyah, with introductions by Daniel Abrams and Israel Ta-Shma (Los Angeles: Cherub, 1998), 54–55; Sefer gematriot le-R. Yehudah ha-ḥasid, ed. Jacob Israel Stahl, 2 vols. (Jerusalem: Y. Y. Stahl, 2004), vol. 1, sign. 152, 157–160. On the study of Torah and gazing at the merkavah (chariot) see Idel, Moshe, “Tefisat ha-Torah be-sifrut ha-hekhalot ve-gilgulehah ba-kabbalah,” Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 1 (1981): 34–37Google Scholar. On the connection between Jacob's name and the Torah see Wolfson, Elliot R., “The Mystical Significance of Torah Study in German Pietism,” The Jewish Quarterly Review 84 (1993): 52Google Scholar n. 33.

39. On the mace see Ashdown, European Arms and Armor, 329–331; DeVries, Medieval Military Technology, 25–28.

40. Wolfson, Along the Path, 5, 33–35. See also Abrams, Daniel, “Special Angelic Figures: The Career of the Beasts of the Throne-World in ‘Hekhalot’ Literature, German Pietism and Early Kabbalistic Literature,” Revue des études juives 155 (1996): 379–380CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

41. Stahl, Sefer gematriot, 2:146. See also Perush ba‘al ha-turim ‘al ha-Torah, ed. J. K. Reinitz (Bnei-Brak: Feldheim, 1971), Genesis 32:11, 87; Perushei ha-Torah le-R. Ḥayim Palti'el, Genesis 32:11, 99.

42. Marcel Simon, Verus Israel: A Study of the Relations between Christians and Jews in the Roman Empire (135–425) (Oxford: Littman Library, 1986).

43. Sara Offenberg, “Resisting Conversion or the True Aristocrat: Jews Imagining Themselves in Hebrew Illuminated Manuscripts,” in Sefer Ha-yovel for Burton D. Morris, ed. Menachem Butler (New York: Hakirah, forthcoming).

44. Marc Michael Epstein, Dreams of Subversion in Medieval Jewish Art and Literature (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 1997), 88–90; Shalev-Eyni, Jews among Christians, 85–86.

45. Marcus, “Why Is This Knight Different?,” 148.

46. Marcus, “Why Is This Knight Different?,” 151–152.

47. On Friedrich II's 1236 ban on Jews carrying weapons see The Saxon Mirror, trans. Maria Dobozy (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), book 3, 2, 117: “Regarding priests, tonsured according to their rule, and Jews: when they carry arms in transgression of the law, they shall be compensated as laymen if they are attacked because those who are included in the king's peace are not permitted to bear arms.” See also Guido Kisch, The Jews in Medieval Germany (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1949), 107–128; Joseph Isaac Lifshitz, “Ha-te'oriyah ha-politit shel ha-Maharam me-Rotenburg” (PhD diss., Tel Aviv University, 2006), 36–37.