The Passover Haggadah is one of the few sacred Jewish texts that has a long history of including illustrations, and among the most remarkable are detailed images of rabbit hunts that often appear in the opening pages, even before the text of the Seder really begins.

The images, which are varied in style and can be found in editions dating back to medieval and early-modern Germany, often present hunters and dogs chasing rabbits, the latter of which are generally depicted escaping over a fence or off of the page. They are dramatic images and, like much in the Haggadah, they are curious and somewhat frightening.

Like all Jewish forms of textual interpretation, most illustrations in illuminated Haggadot are a form of midrash — an effort on behalf of generations of readers to wrest new meaning from ancient words, and to present the text as urgent and relevant to those who hold the book in their hands, often by identifying and explaining specific textual lacunae and ambiguities. For example, the Sarajevo Haggadah — dated to 14th-century Spain, and one of the oldest fully illuminated Haggadot still extant — includes an image of Moses, who is famously not mentioned in the Haggadah’s traditional........

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