Circumcision utensils. Eastern Europe, 19th century; Jug: Austro-Hungarian hallmark; Dish: Russian hallmark; Knife: steel blade and horn handle; donated by Ignatz Bubis
These three items, though not originally a set, represent the basic instruments used by the mohel, the specially trained ritual circumcisor, who is also required to keep a register of those circumcised.
The ritual calls for a very sharp, small knife with no notches or nicks, with which the foreskin is removed. The foreskin is then placed on a special dish and covered with sand. The jug probably contained oil or some other ointment with which to treat the wound and stem the bleeding.
Circumcision is one of the most important of all Jewish rites, for it definitively determines a man's membership of the community.
Just as the Lord commanded Abraham to circumcise Isaac in recognition of the Covenant, the Bible calls for every male Israelite to bear this sign.
Circumcision is performed on the eighth day after birth in the presence of at least ten males of the community. The ritual is accompanied by a religious ceremony with blessings and prayers. In traditional Ashkenazi communities, the circumcision takes place in the synagogue, and women do not participate in the actual ceremony.
In seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Germany, there was a special double chair in the synagogue for the ceremony of circumcision. One seat was reserved for the godfather who held the child during the circumcision, and the other was reserved for the Prophet Elijah, whose symbolic presence was expressed by a sumptuously embroidered cushion. The child was placed on the cushion shortly before the actual circumcision.
The cushion is made of fine, hand-woven linen, with flat-stitch embroidery in different coloured silk yarns and metal threads. The embroidered motto quotes sections of the circumcision liturgy and the biblical Covenant with Abraham involving the circumcision of his male descendants.
Cushion cover for circumcision chair. Middle Rhine, late 17th century, linen with embroidery
Though they have now faded, the colours must originally have been a bright rendering of carnations, tulips and imaginary flowers. They were inspired by the Ottoman style then en vogue and typical for the late Baroque.
Torah binder, Aufhausen, Württemberg; linen, embroidered with silk; donated by the HaBonim community, New York City
In the German-speaking Ashkenazi communities from Alsace to Bohemia it was customary to sew a long band known as a “wimple” out of the swaddling cloths worn by a boy at his circumcision. The wimple was embroidered with the Hebrew name and date of birth of the child and a blessing for his future.
This band was then used in the community to wrap the Torah scrolls and was at the same time an indication of membership of the community. This particular wimple was made for Joseph ben Shneor of the rural community of Aufhausen in 1823.
The blessing “May he grow up to the Torah, the huppah and good deeds” is illustrated by a Torah scroll and a wedding canopy. The Torah scroll is a reference to the bar mitzvah ceremony in which the boy is called upon to read the Torah, while the wedding canopy, or “huppah,” indicates the founding of a new family,and the reference to “good works” calls upon him to contribute to community life through charitable works.
The letters have been painstakingly drawn in an old-fashioned script and embroidered over in rope-stitch using silk yarns of different colours. The lettering was drawn by a scribe trained in the art of ritual manuscript-writing, and the embroidery was done by the women of the family.
The most important obligation of the various fraternities of any Jewish community consisted in collecting money for charity (tzedakah). For this reason, there were many such collecting boxes in every community. Sometimes the precious metal of the boxes themselves were a pledge for sums to be donated.
This box has an unusual iconography indicating the purpose for which the money collected was to be used. The conically tapering cylindrical body bears a bas-relief portrayal of a field of grain moving in the wind, with rain-clouds gathering over it.
The coin-like clouds symbolise the shower of gold by which Eretz Yisrael, the Land of Israel, is to be transformed into fertile soil. Thus, this collecting box mirrors the Zionist hopes for a new homeland in the Land of Israel.
Tzedakah box; master's mark: Leo Horovitz, Frankfurt am Main, c. 1910; silver, engraved; loan from I. Bubis
Goldsmith Leo Horovitz (1876 Gnesen – 1964 London) was the son of Marcus Horovitz, an orthodox rabbi of the Börneplatz Synagogue in Frankfurt who initially rejected Zionism, but later gave it his enthusiastic support. This commitment may well have prompted his son Leo Horovitz to create a new a topical iconography for this traditional item.
Woman's bonnet (kupke); Poland, 19th century; brocade, trimmed with gold lace
Judaeo-Christian tradition holds that a married woman should cover her hair. For observant Jews, this led to the ceremony of cutting the hair of the bride and ceremoniously adorning her with a wig after the wedding.
This wig, or “sheitel,” as it is known, was worn by married women in the Jewish communities of Central and Eastern Europe in particular, whereas a lace bonnet tied under the chin was a more common head covering in Western Europe.
In Poland, the wig took the form of a cover of pleated black silk or black velvet. Less frequently, it consisted of the hair cut during the wedding ceremony and subsequently rearranged.
On the Shabbat and holy days a small cap of sumptuous fabric was worn over the wig, framing the forehead. Lace was a typical feature of such caps, and particularly ornate caps even had “Spanish lace” woven with gold thread.
Men are also required to cover their heads in the synagogue and during prayers, and many pious Jews even wear a small skullcap, known as a kipah, at all times. Until their emancipation, the Ashkenazi Jews customarily wore a beret out of doors and a kipah at home.
On feast days such as Passover, ornately embroidered caps were worn, derived from the bonnets worn by Christian men at home in the eighteenth century as a substitute for a wig.
Instead of the simple silk or cotton fabric and plain embroidery of the Christian caps however, the caps made for Jewish clients often featured velvet and gold or silver threads, in keeping with the importance of the event for which they were worn.
Man's feast day hat; Frankfurt am Main, 18th century; silk velvet with gold embroidery
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