A rare Haggadah manuscript, found during a house clearance in Bury has been sold at auction for £210,000.
The text which is used by the Jewish faith on the first nights of Passover and thought to date back to 1726 was found in a cupboard box containing kosher food in the garage of a home where a Jewish couple had recently died.
It is believed that the handwritten text which is painted on goat skin, came into the country after it was smuggled out of Belgium by a family during the Second World War.
The 18th century Passover Seder Haggadah was written and illuminated on vellum by artist and scribe Aaron Wolff Shreiber Herlingen of Gewitsch.
The Haggadah is often described as the ultimate curriculum for a crash course in Jewish history.It describes the faith’s seminal experience of the Jewish Egyptian exile and the Exodus from it and thus blueprints for Jewish history.
The buyer is an Austrian Jewish collector who wishes to remain anonymous.It had been hoped that it would have been bought by an institution who would then have put the text on public display
