Encyclopaedia of Judaism

In the realm of art, illuminated manuscripts link the culture of ancient Israel with the later culture of the diaspora. Several fragments of manuscripts that were written in the ninth-tenth centuries are decorated with both carpet pages of overall, repeated motifs and with pages bearing the implements of the wilderness Tabernacle and the Temple in Jerusalem. ² Some of these early illuminations are formed through micrography, the use of letters to shape forms, which became a distinctive feature of Hebrew manuscript illumination into the modern era, although the technique is not exclusive to books written in Hebrew.

The same decorative schemes are found in later manuscripts created in Cairo and in Spain. ³ Carpet pages are also a feature of illuminated Korans, and the corpus of Hebrew and Arabic Bibles extant from medieval Spain share a common repertoire of carpet page compositions and motifs, as both were produced within the iconoclastic culture of Islam. In Hebrew Bibles, additional pages bear images of the Tabernacle and Temple instruments, continuing the iconography of earlier Tiberian manuscripts (fig. 1). Inscriptions surrounding the Spanish compositions elucidate their meaning: the Bible is the mikdash me'at, the small sanctuary, that sustains Jewish belief until the reestablishment of the holy Temple in the messianic age.

With the spread of Christian hegemony over the Iberian Peninsula and the influence of new artistic models in the early fourteenth century, an innovative type of Hebrew manuscript appeared in Barcelona and its environs, the illuminated haggadah or service book for the Passover seder. The decoration of these Sephardic haggadot was influenced by the Christian tradition of figurative manuscript decoration. It includes a prefatory cycle of biblical pictures tracing the history of the world from the creation through the death of Moses, or some portion of that history. ⁴ Illuminated haggadot also incorporate textual illustrations, such as the four sons and the symbolic foods, and even genre scenes depicting preparations for Passover, for the seder, and the enactment of the seder itself.

The genre scenes are important sources for the history of a Jewish ceremonial art that largely disappeared with the expulsion from Spain in 1492 and from Portugal in 1497. For example, a deep dish (brasero) inscribed with Hebrew names of three symbolic Passover foods is in the Israel Museum (fig. 2). Its exact use is unknown, but one illuminated fourteenth-century haggadah shows the master of the house distributing matzah to his household from a similar dish. ⁵ Such information on the forms of ceremonial art is invaluable in the light of the losses suffered by the Jews of Iberia because of edicts forbidding them to leave Spain and Portugal with their gold and silver. Both synagogual and private ceremonial objects were melted down and used to compensate cities for the loss of tax revenues caused by the expulsion of Jewish citizens.

Genre illustrations of Judaica also appear in manuscripts created in Ashkenaz, whose Jews lived within a dominant Christian culture with a long tradition of using images as both an aid to devotion and for education. Scenes depicting Jewish ceremonial objects appear in prayer books, even those used in the synagogue, and haggadot. ⁶ Despite periodic persecutions, the Jews of Ashkenaz did not suffer the wholesale expulsions inflicted on the Sephardim, with the result that greater numbers of actual ceremonial objects remain from the French and German-speaking areas of medieval Europe.

Hannukah lamps constitute the earliest group of ceremonial objects extant from the medieval period, with their characteristic row of eight lights all on the same level. A twelfth-century bench-type lamp, designed to sit on a surface, was excavated in Lyons. ⁷ Made of stone from a nearby quarry, its row of oil and wick containers are shaped as horseshoe arches, a motif drawn from the Islamic art of nearby Spain.

A change in usage occurred in the thirteenth century. Hanukkah lamps began to be hung on the wall. Three bronze examples from northern France or the Rhineland are known (fig. 3). ⁸ Above their oil and wick containers rises a backplate formed of an interlaced arcade similar to that on Norman buildings of the thirteenth century, and a gable housing animals in relief framed in roundels. A century later, a group of lamps with simplified gables and arcades appeared. ⁹ Their major motif is a Gothic rose window.

Recent excavations in the old Jewish quarter in Teruel, which was a center for the manufacture of pottery during the Middle Ages, have uncovered fragments of three fifteenth-century ceramic Hanukkah lamps. ¹⁰ They are bench type and glazed cream, purple, and green like other Teruel ceramics of the period. Painted eyes animate the oil containers, giving them a face-like appearance.

Other excavations along the Rhine and in the mining town of Kutna Hora, the Czech Republic, revealed additional domestic Judaica. One type is the kiddush cup. At Lingenfeld near Speyer, beakers were found along with a coin hoard dated 1348, their burial probably due to the persecution of Jews following the Black Death. ¹¹ A set of nested beakers was found in an administrative building in Kutna Hora (fig. 4). Although originally made for a queen named Elizabeth, whose coats of arms appear on the bottoms of the beakers, these cups were later acquired by a Jew named Wolf, who added his Hebrew name to the shield bearing that animal.

The double cup, a very elaborate drinking vessel whose cover was formed to serve as a second cup, was popular as a wedding present from the thirteenth through the sixteenth centuries. The symbolism of two combining into one made these vessels highly appropriate as marriage gifts. One example dated to the fourteenth century was found with the Lingenfeld coin hoard. An even more elaborate example of jasper was commissioned by a Jew named Zvi, then acquired at some point by the archbishop of Erbach, who substituted his own coats of arms for that of the prior Jewish owner. ¹² The miniatures of fifteenth-century Ashkenazic haggadot attest to the presence of both nested kiddush cups and the more elaborate double cups in wealthy Jewish homes, those also capable of commissioning illuminated manuscripts. ¹³

Seder scenes in both Ashkenazic and Sephardic haggadot commonly show a star-shaped hanging lamp above the festive table. ¹⁴ The form was in general use in medieval Europe, but was eventually superseded by other forms of lighting. Among Jews, however, the lamp became a traditional type so that, by the sixteenth century, it became known among German goldsmiths as a Judenstern. The star-shaped hanging lamp was utilized by central- and east-European Jews for Sabbaths and holy days into the twentieth century. One medieval survivor of Jewish ownership was found in Deutz (fig. 5). Made of bronze, its faceted form indicates a date in the first half of the fourteenth century. An engraved six-pointed star on the base together with its discovery in an area inhabited by Jews suggest Jewish ownership.

Excavations of medieval sites have also yielded distinctive Jewish marriage rings, whose bezels are formed in the shape of small buildings. The earliest was found at Weissenfels, near Halle, in a hoard dated to the first half of the fourteenth century. ¹⁵ Another example found with a fourteenth-century coin hoard comes from Colmar, and a third was in the Munich Schatzkammer before 1598.

Another medieval object, the aquamanile in the form of a lion, was used by Jews both in the home and in the synagogue. An example in the Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore, is engraved with the Hebrew blessing said after washing the hands and was probably used in the home. ¹⁶ Two others were published in 1928 as the property of German synagogues; their whereabouts are today unknown. One may be identical with a damaged example, now in a private collection, that bears a Hebrew inscription indicating its dedication to a synagogue by a woman whose father was a kohen, a member of the priestly class. It may have been used for washing the hands of kohanim prior to their blessing the congregation.

According to Rabbinic responsa and to documents such as the lists of objects belonging to various synagogues found in the Ben Ezra geniza in Cairo, the Torah finial was an independent object as early as the twelfth century. ¹⁷ It is most often called a rimmon (pomegranate), implying that its shape was round or fruit-like. This is the form found in medieval miniatures and in the earliest extant Sephardic finials, dated 1601/2 and discovered in Pest, in an area occupied by the Ottomans. ¹⁸ The only medieval pair to survive, however, is formed as a tower, a symbol of the heavenly Jerusalem used by both Christians and Jews since the early Byzantine period (fig. 6). The finials were made in Sicily during the fifteenth century, when that island was under Spanish rule, and are close in form to the verges, the ceremonial stave ends, used by the church. ¹⁹ This may account for their survival to this day in the Cathedral Treasury of Palma de Majorca. These Sicilian Torah finials are decorated with horseshoe arches and filigree, as well as with semiprecious and glass stones. Hebrew inscriptions appear on all four sides of the towers.

Although the Sicilian finials and earlier Torah finials dated as far back as the twelfth century were created independent of the Torah scroll, other finials were fashioned from the Torah's wooden staves themselves. They can be seen in manuscript illustrations where the rod of the stave terminates in a bulbous form and in one extant pair of stave decorations dated to the late fifteenth century. ²⁰ The stave finials were created for Nathanael Trabuto, who worked as a punctuator and scribe of Hebrew manuscripts and may have adorned a Torah scroll that he copied. They are carved with Gothic motifs: multiple lancet windows, a frieze of leaves that appear on metalwork of the late fifteenth century, and the name of their owner.

Unfortunately, none of the Torah crowns mentioned in Rabbinic responsa and seen in miniatures such as the one in the Spanish Sarajevo Haggadah of the second quarter of the fourteenth century survive. ²¹ These Sephardic crowns were sometimes used individually, but were often placed together with a pair of finials on the staves of the Torah scrolls, a usage that has been followed throughout the Sephardic diaspora and in eastern communities until the present day.

A detailed description of a medieval crown was found in a French archive, in a contract dated March 24, 1439, written between an Avignon silversmith, Robin Asard, and the Jewish community of Arles. ²² The contract indicates what materials were to be used and the working conditions and restrictions mandated by the community, who also specified the forms to be incorporated into their Torah ornament. Robin Asard was required to make a hexagonal crown whose corners were marked by pillars, each adorned with the head of a lion from whose mouth three chains emerged bearing bells. The sides of the crown were to be articulated as masonry and topped by crenellations to give the appearance of a fortress. This literary description recalls the polygonal polycandelons donated to important German churches beginning in the twelfth century. ²³ Latin inscriptions on these large lamps indicate that their patrons saw them as representations of the heavenly Jerusalem, a meaning appropriate to a Torah crown as well. The Arles contract also describes the renovation of an older crown belonging to the congregation that likewise was to be furnished with towers, interesting testimony to a desire to modernize an older work by investing it with symbols matching those on the new crown.

Only one other type of ceremonial object associated with the Torah survives from the Middle Ages. It is represented by a single silver pointer, a rod with a terminal in the form of a hand, made in Ferrara, Italy, in 1488, for use by the reader in following the text. ²⁴ The Talmudic prohibition against touching the sacred Torah scroll with the naked hand or finger (B. Meg. 32a) gave rise to the practice of covering the hand with a piece of silk or the corner of a prayer shawl. Documents from Prague indicate that in 1581 the Jews of that city commissioned pointers from Christian silversmiths attached to the court of Rudolf II, who were considered to be better-trained than their Jewish counter-parts, but none survive. ²⁵ Although the new instrument appeared in the late fifteenth century, both means of following the text, the silver pointer and a textile wrapped around the hand, survived into the late sixteenth century. ²⁶

When not in use, the Torah scroll was placed in an ark, which, as in the period of the early synagogues, could be part of the building fabric or an independent wooden structure. Until Kristallnacht , the synagogue in Worms, dated to 1174/75, was the oldest in Europe, and its ark was an aedicula. A similar ark, dated ca. 1265, still exists in the Altneuschul, Prague, now the oldest surviving European synagogue. ²⁷ The gable of the ark contains a stone relief of the Tree of Life, a motif repeated over the entrance door to the men's prayer hall.

Both Ashkenazic and Sephardic manuscript illuminations depict wooden arks as independent pieces of furniture. A surviving example stems from Modena and is today in the Musée de Cluny, Paris. Although its inscription indicates a date of 1472, in the midst of the Renaissance, the Modena ark is decorated with Gothic motifs, notably a series of lancet openings. The old-fashioned style of this ark may indicate it was based on a preexisting work that the congregation wished to replace. Just a few years later, ca. 1500, the Jews of Urbino commissioned an ark in Renaissance style, whose basic scheme appears to derive from the studioli of their duke in his palaces at Gubbio and Urbino. ²⁸ The temporal coexistence of different styles remains characteristic of Jewish ceremonial art into the modern age.

The development of Jewish ceremonial art in the post-medieval period was governed by many of the same conditions that affected the production of European decorative arts in general. Of major significance was the increased availability of silver in Europe as the result of the discoveries of the Americas, which led to the creation of greater numbers of silver vessels and tableware. The ownership and display of works in silver came to express the power and wealth of their possessor. Not only individuals but corporate entities such as city governments and guilds commissioned quantities of silver plate that were placed on view at ceremonial occasions. Jewish participation in this trend can be seen in the commissioning of large numbers of silver ritual objects whose forms were known in the Middle Ages, finials, crowns, and pointers, and in the creation of an important new ornament for the Torah scroll: the Torah shield, a plaque indicating the biblical book and chapter to which the scroll was rolled.

In 1530, a Jewish convert to Catholicism, Antonius Margaritha, wrote that he saw silver plaques hanging by means of chains over the mantles of the Torah scroll. ²⁹ Other mid-sixteenth-century evidence for Torah shields are entries in the register of the Frankfurt goldsmiths' guild. They list a “Jewish plaque,” “a Moses plaque engraved with the Ten Commandments,” and two “silver covers for Jewish Torah scrolls.” ³⁰ One shield made in Frankfurt in 1587 survives, as does another made in Trieste in 1599. ³¹

The Frankfurt shield is an oblong topped by a crown and, in the middle, has a holder for small plaques that were engraved with the names of special readings used to indicate the place to which the scroll was rolled. The Trieste shield is oriented vertically and lacks accommodations for interchangeable plaques. Instead, it is engraved “the third scroll.” It became traditional for Italian synagogues to own three such plaques, engraved “first,” “second,” and “third.” Rather than heralding specific readings, these indicated the order in which the scrolls were to be used on a given Sabbath or holy day (fig. 7). From their earliest appearance through the beginning of the twentieth century, Torah shields were useful appurtenances that marked the scroll turned to the reading of the day. They were also decorative. Only in the twentieth century did they lose their practical purpose and become exclusively ornamental.

The few shields that survive from the seventeenth century are oblong like the early example from Frankfurt and preserve the large proportions of the interchangeable plaques relative to the size of the shield as a whole. ³² Two examples were made by silversmiths from Emden, and the remainder stem from Strasbourg.

A new period begins in the later seventeenth century, a great age of experimentation with the form of the Torah shield, when some of the most impressive examples of the genre were created. During the last decades of the century, silversmiths in several German centers added framing columns to the repertoire of motifs on the shields, thereby establishing a vertical orientation that soon became commonplace. The columns were frequently topped by confronted lions that “guarded” the motif at center, usually a crown symbolic of the Torah. Within this basic scheme many individual variations occurred, such as the 1717-1718 shield of Zacharias Wagner of Augsburg, whose columns are multiplied to form a garden pavilion (fig. 8) and the Bohemian and Moravian shields, whose crowns copy the imperial Austrian regalia. In the works of two Prague goldsmiths of the second quarter of the nineteenth century, the guardian lions are often playful, as in the works of Carl Skremenec, or they disappear in favor of dragons on the shields of Thomas Hoppfl. ³³ This unusual iconography was probably inspired by the fourteenth-century statue of Saint Michael Vanquishing the Dragon, a landmark sculpture that stood in front of Prague's St. Vitus Cathedral.

Although the framing columns, guardian animals, and even crowns could be interpreted as Jewish symbols and often are labeled as such, these motifs in fact come from the general repertory of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century decorative silver. Other shields made in the same period display specifically Jewish iconography, including biblical subjects such as Abraham and the three angels or the Offering of Isaac, ³⁴ while others bear scenes showing the celebration of Jewish holy days or the furnishings of the Temple. This last iconographic theme was also popular on Torah curtains, mantles, and valances of the period. ³⁵ The most commonly found biblical theme is the pairing of Moses holding the Tablets of the Law and Aaron holding a censer. This iconographic scheme appeared first on the title pages of Latin books during the 1520s and later on the title pages of Hebrew books printed in the late seventeenth century. Since the Torah shield announced the specific contents of the scroll on which it hung, the shield functioned like a title page and came to assume the iconography of printed examples.

Figures of Moses and Aaron are most commonly found on shields produced in Breslau and other German cities (fig. 9). In the early nineteenth century, Moses Sofer, rabbi in Pressburg and a proponent of strict orthodoxy, discussed the propriety of shields with figures of the Lawgiver and the High Priest. ³⁶ He ruled that they were permissible, since the iconography of Moses and Aaron was widely known and their figures would not be mistaken for idols. Nevertheless, a diminution of the human forms by cutting off the tips of their noses or the tops of their ears was preferable.

As was the case with Moses and Aaron, various compositional schemes were particularly popular in specific regions. Following the fire in the Frankfurt Judengasse of 1711, a series of simple shields of cast rectangles to which were attached molded appliqué symbols were quickly made to replace the synagogue silver lost in the conflagration. ³⁷ In Augsburg and Nuremberg, a composition focused on a vertical arrangement of the Temple menorah, the reading plaques, and the Tablets of the Law, all flanked by columns supporting lions, was popular into the early nineteenth century, while in eastern Europe, shields devoid of pictorial decoration were dedicated in honor of newborn children. ³⁸ Later, many east- European shields were embellished with filigree as was other Judaica from the region. Immigrants from Russia and Poland continued to produce filigree shields in the United States, often stamped with false Russian marks to assure other immigrants of their quality.

Prior to the mid-nineteenth century, Torah shields, although a characteristic form of Ashkenazic Judaica, were unknown in Sephardic and eastern lands. The few that were made were ornamental and were often formed from an existing object (fig. 10). They do not fulfill the common function of Ashkenazic shields of indicating the lection.

On the other hand, Torah finials were used in Sephardic and eastern communities throughout the Middle Ages and afterward, as attested by Rabbinic responsa and other documentary evidence. As we have seen, the earliest pair, found in Budapest and dated 1601, is of spherical form. Fruit-shaped finials continue to be used in eastern, Italian and other Sephardic communities until the present day, sometimes in combination with crowns on the top of a scroll or on the top of tikim housing scrolls, or placed at the corners of the reader's desk. ³⁹

Tower-formed finials found in the synagogues of eastern communities in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries suggest European influence, as in the Italianate finials used in North Africa until the recent emigration of the community (fig. 11). Ashkenazic communities, on the other hand, favored the tower-form finial from the beginning, although this shape underwent many changes and varied from naturalistic towers with apertures and articulated masonry, some actually copying local landmarks, to others whose tower form disappeared beneath an overlay of baroque ornament. ⁴⁰ The Torah crown was usually employed as an alternative to finials in Ashkenazic lands, sometimes reserved for holy days as opposed to routine Sabbaths. Its form varied from region to region, reflecting the regalia of local rulers of the cities in which it was made (fig. 12).

A variety of literary and visual evidence, together with a few extant works, suggest that the Torah curtain and mantle as articulated compositions including both iconographic and decorative elements first developed in the mid-sixteenth century. The curtains depicted in medieval miniatures were made of unembellished textiles, but a responsum of Joseph Caro, 1488-1575, discusses the permissibility of hanging curtains with woven designs. ⁴¹ In his answer, Caro wrote that the custom of placing a figured and embroidered Torah curtain before the ark had spread throughout the diaspora.

The earliest extant curtains are a carpet with Mamluk borders and motifs whose framing architecture was modeled on the title page of a Hebrew text printed in Padua, and an embroidered silk curtain made by Solomon Perlsticker of Prague in 1592, whose columned frame likewise echoes a printed example. ⁴² A major inspiration for the creation of articulated curtain compositions may have been the adoption of decorated title pages by the printers of Hebrew texts who, in turn, often modeled their works on Latin title pages.

On the Perlsticker curtain, the inscription, rows of squared letters of equal height, is placed in a block frame at the top of the textile, a compositional element that remained constant on Central European curtains and mantles into the nineteenth century. The remainder of the curtain or mantle consisted of a beautiful woven or embroidered textile, as on the earliest mantle, that commissioned by Mordecai Meisel in 1592. ⁴³ Sometimes, an independent, elaborately decorated valance hung atop the curtains. Its scallops were richly embroidered with the implements of the Temple, while two stumpwork eagles, representing the cherubim, and the inscription filled the horizontal field (fig. 13).

The iconography of the Prague valances was taken up in Bavaria during the 1720s by the embroiderer Elkone of Naumberg, who signed the elaborate curtain and valance sets that were his specialty. ⁴⁴ His compositions were a model for the works of Jakob Koppel Gans, active in the 1770s, who integrated the design of the valance with that of the curtain, and who treated inscriptions in a freer manner than did his counterparts in Prague. The basic iconography found on their curtains became standard in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in both western and eastern Europe, although often reduced to framing columns, confronted lions, and the menorah or Tablets of the Law.

Most Italian Torah curtains consist of beautiful fabrics without any additional decoration. A number of works are exceptional, however, and are formed of elaborately embroidered or needlework compositions with sophisticated iconographic programs (fig. 14). Executed by women, whose achievement was sometimes engraved on their tombstones, these curtains echo the complexity of meaning found in altarpieces of baroque churches. Italian Jewish women also embroidered binders for the Torah, as well as mantles.

Women in the Ottoman Empire similarly played a role in furnishing textiles for the synagogue, both new pieces and ones made from previously used works. Ceremonial bedcovers, tablecovers, and dresses embroidered with gold thread were donated to the synagogue and used to form Torah curtains, reader's desk covers, and the like. ⁴⁵ At the same time, the carpet curtain first known in Padua, where it was probably knotted by an itinerant Egyptian rug maker, was the forerunner of a series of Ottoman Torah curtains modeled on prayer rugs, whose iconographic elements (framing columns and lamps) were transposed into Ottoman forms. ⁴⁶ They continued to be made into the twentieth century.

Besides differing in style and materials, the Ottoman curtains and those made elsewhere in the Mideast contrast with Ashkenazic examples in their avoidance of animal imagery. While lions and other guardian figures were acceptable in Ashkenaz, they were avoided by the Jews of countries whose dominant religious art was severely iconoclastic. Some European Jewish communities went so far as to allow human forms on Torah shields, as we have seen, and on curtains and mantles. These exceptional textiles were made in Alsace and Germany in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. ⁴⁷

A similar distinction exists between the Torah binders used by Sephardim and those used by Ashkenazim to hold the parchment rolls of the scroll together. Until Kristalnacht, textile binders dating to the sixteenth century were part of the holdings of the Synagogue in Worms. The inscription dominated these long rectangle binders. Embroidered with the name of a young boy, his date of birth, and wishes that he grow to knowledge of the Torah, the wedding canopy, and to good deeds, the binders became the demographic record of Jewish communities. The main inscription, designed by a male scribe, was often decorated with motifs appropriate to the boy's name, his zodiac sign, his father's name, and the blessings that follow (fig. 15).

Sephardic binders served the same generic purpose but represented different social concerns. They were made by women to commemorate a major life cycle event, such as marriage and the birth of a child. ⁴⁸ Their inscriptions do not dominate the compositions but are equivalent or subsidiary to decorative elements, such as floral or abstract ornaments. Often, a beautiful fabric is used as a binder without the addition of any embroidery. Sephardi women also made and dedicated elaborate reader's desk covers, the cloths on which the Torah scroll is laid for reading. Although some Torah textiles in Ashkenazic communities were given to the synagogue by women, either together with their husbands or as widows, their role in provisioning the synagogue was less consistent than in countries like Italy, whose Roman rite prayer book acknowledges their role in the passage, “[bless] every daughter of Israel who makes a mantle or cover for the Torah.”

Other Judaica was commissioned by communal associations affiliated with one or more synagogues. These included societies to furnish dowries for poor brides, to pay for circumcision feasts for indigent families, to maintain the lamps in the synagogue, and to provide for the general needs of the poor. Prominent above all these associations was the Burial Society, which cared for the ill and dying, provided a proper internment, and looked after survivors. By the seventeenth century, societies began to acquire regalia of the type owned by Christian guilds, whose social services they emulated. Large inscribed drinking vessels of silver or enameled glass were commissioned and used at the society's annual banquet to mark the induction of new members (fig. 16). Some Burial Societies even owned sets of dishes and silver tableware for use at the banquet, as well as flags that were carried in the processions so popular in the eighteenth century. Inscribed sets of silver combs and nail cleaners were used for the members' central task, preparing the dead for burial, silver frames, for the prayers recited during the rites, and alms boxes, for the collection of charity at the cemetery. The manuscript record books of all types of societies bore miniatures depicting members carrying out their duties. ⁴⁹

Because Judaism is a home-centered religion as well as one focused on the synagogue, many significant ceremonial objects were created for domestic use. There are, first of all, those known from the Middle Ages, like the Judenstern, whose kindling marked the onset of the Sabbath. The star-shaped lamp remained traditional for Sabbaths and holy days in Germany and eastern Europe, although many used candlesticks and candelabra after wax candles came into widespread use.

The silver kiddush cup is another medieval type that continued to be made in the modern era in a variety of styles and forms: beakers, footed vessels, cups with covers. As long as the cup for kiddush was clean, had an unbroken rim, and encompassed the minimum volume specified in Jewish law, its form was left to individual choice. Sometime in the seventeenth century, the elaborate double cup known from the Middle Ages was supplanted by a simpler type, the barrel shape that separates into two. ⁵⁰ Like its medieval predecessor, it was used for marriage ceremonies and at circumcisions, both of which require the use of two cups.

The mohel (circumcisor) worked as an individual but was considered a community functionary. His basic implement was a knife with a rounded tip, whose handle was often of silver or semiprecious stones, sometimes engraved with an appropriate biblical quotation. Supplementary implements included the double cups mentioned above, plus bowls and flasks for various unguents. Custom-made sets were provided with specially fitted containers and were passed down from one generation to another. ⁵¹

A third type of object known from the Middle Ages that continued to be used in later centuries is the seder plate. Numerous European examples in pewter that survive from the seventeenth century onward are decorated with inscriptions, usually the order of the seder service and the owner's initials, and with symbols and scenes drawn from the haggadah, but lack containers for the symbolic foods. ⁵² In the eighteenth century a new tiered type appeared in which three trays for the matzot are capped by a tray bearing food containers and the Cup of Elijah. The earliest example has a Danzig (Gdansk) provenance but was probably brought there from Poland (fig. 17). Brass grill work similar to that on Hanukkah lamps surrounds the wooden trays for matzot; the footed cups for food are of wood. Early in the nineteenth century, the artisans of Vienna translated the tiered seder plate into silver, sometimes interpreting the food holders as workers with wheelbarrows and baskets.

The earliest example of another Judaica object, used both in the home and synagogue and mentioned in a medieval source, dates to the mid-sixteenth century. Ephraim of Regensburg, who lived in the twelfth century, reportedly owned a glass container for spices that he used during the ceremony of havdalah, performed at the close of Sabbaths to separate the holy day from the workday week. Because of the olfactory function of a spice container, it was termed either Rauchfass (censer) or Hedes (myrtle) in the list of works created by Frankfurt goldsmiths in the sixteenth century. The form of these spice boxes was generally a tower, which had been used for church censers since the early Byzantine period and, as we have noted, symbolized the heavenly Jerusalem (fig. 18).

That this iconography was acceptable to Jewish patrons is indicated by the one extant example from the mid-sixteenth century, now in The Jewish Museum, New York, and by a drawing found in the records of a court case in Frankfurt of the same period. ⁵³ Joseph Goldschmidt sued a goldsmith because the spice box he had produced was not like that of Goldschmidt's father, recorded in the sketch. By the time of the court case, the tower form had become traditional among Ashkenazim, and it remains the most popular form to this day, despite the appearance of other shapes. ⁵⁴ Sephardim have adhered to a more ancient manner of fulfilling the need to smell spices during havdalah. Those living in lands with warmer climates continue to use freshly picked branches of myrtle or other aromatic trees and do not use spice containers at all.

The Hanukkah lamp is the final type known from the Middle Ages, which continues to be made to our own day. Both medieval forms, the bench type and the hanging lamp, were popular in succeeding centuries, although the motifs used as decoration on later examples are more varied. The decorative motifs of most of the surviving medieval lamps are architectural, perhaps because the lamps were always placed by the door, opposite the mezuzah, when lit. On later lamps with backplates, the style of the architecture or alternative motif changes with the country of origin and date of the lamp. ⁵⁵

The earliest post-medieval Hanukkah lamps with backplates stem from Renaissance Italy. Some echo architectural shapes, while other Italian backplates are filled with figures from classical mythology, such as nereids, combined with motifs drawn from the decorative repertoire of Renaissance bronzes that have no iconographic relationship to Hanukkah. An exception is the late-sixteenth-early-seventeenth century lamp from the workshop of Joseph de Levis (1552-1611/14), a Jewish bronze caster of Verona, which is the single known attempt to create a Hanukkah lamp with a Jewish theme. ⁵⁶ The scene of Judith beheading Holofernes appears in relief on the backplate, while figures of reclining Hasmoneans appear in repose below a three-dimensional figure of Mattathias. That most of the Italian Hanukkah lamps dated to the sixteenth century and later are of bronze must be due to the prestige of bronze sculpture in the Renaissance.

An innovative development of the late seventeenth century in Germany was the creation of a menorah-form Hanukkah lamp of a size suitable for use in the home. The large menorot found in ancient synagogues are represented in a few late medieval Hebrew manuscripts, but the actual examples that survive were made for Carolingian and Romanesque churches to signify that the church was successor to the synagogue. In the late seventeenth century, a silversmith of Altona fashioned a small silver version with bare, tube-like arms, stems, and supports. ⁵⁷ A few decades later, the type was taken up in Frankfurt by a group of silversmiths who produced seven examples that adhere more closely to the biblical description of the menorah as a branched lampstand with knops and flowers (fig. 19). Small molded figures of Judith with the head of Holofernes stand atop the center shafts. She was associated with the Hasmonean family in antiquity and in Renaissance Italy became a symbol of virtue and civic pride.

The Hanukkah lamps of eastern Europe are generally made of brass and feature openwork, sometimes inhabited by paired deer, lions, and birds. Their bench form provided a place for the Hanukkah lights on the “seat” level, while the “arms” supported two candle-holders. One could be used as the servitor, while both together functioned as candle-holders for the Sabbath of Hanukkah. An outstanding, large example from the Mintz Collection in The Jewish Museum, New York, incorporates pairs of each of the animals found singly on other lamps, plus a rampant bear and gorilla, muzzled like circus animals. ⁵⁸

The second minor holiday of the Jewish year, Purim, is celebrated by listening to the story of Esther recited from a handwritten scroll, by giving gifts of foods to friends in accord with the custom of the Jews of ancient Persia, and by donating alms to the poor. Three forms of ceremonial art were created around these practices. The first is the illuminated megillah or scroll, whose ornamentation could be decorative, composed of scenes from the Purim story, or a combination of both. ⁵⁹ These scrolls, as well as undecorated ones, were placed in an ornamented cylindrical case (fig. 20). In central and eastern Europe, the decoration often took the form of bands, executed in relief, of scenes that told the Esther story. Purely ornamental cases are known from the same regions and are common in Arabic countries. The third art object associated with Purim is a special plate for sending mishloah manot, gifts of foods to friends. In some areas known for ceramic workshops, like Alsace, the plates are painted ceramics, while pewter was common in Central Europe. Alms containers bearing inscriptions specifying their use on Purim are also known; the oldest dates to the thirteenth century and comes from Spain. ⁶⁰

In general, the Judaica produced in the second half of the nineteenth century was derivative of earlier types. The sterility of invention that characterized this period was bolstered by the “Historismus” movement in Germany, which called for repeating decorative arts themes of the past. Only in the last decade of the century did a new aesthetic emerge, based on forms drawn from nature. Called Art Nouveau in France and Jugendstil in German, the new style emphasized sinuous outlines and foliate forms and broke with the artificial ornament that had been the rule since the baroque. One of its German practitioners was Friedrich Adler (1878-1942), a designer of interiors, decorative arts, and fabrics, who was the first to create Judaica in a modern style. In 1908, he designed a silver spice container with clean lines, whose perforated cover rises in the center to form a handle. Three years later, he created a bulbous Torah crown for the Hamburg Temple based on nineteenth-century shapes, whose surface, however, is an expression of Judgendstil artistic principles. ⁶¹ Plain areas of polished silver alternate with perforated panels composed of sinuous leafy forms. The companion Torah shield was completely covered with ornament. In 1912 and 1913, Adler created multiples of Judaica for domestic use: a seder set, kiddush goblets, etrog and spice containers, and candlesticks. His seder plate has a new broad and low outline, enclosing solid areas of silver contrasting with perforated ornament based on nature. ⁶² In 1914, he formed an association with a firm in Regensburg to produce a line of pewter and brass Judaica. The culmination of these efforts was Adler's design for the interior of a synagogue, exhibited in 1914 at the Werkbund Exhibition in Cologne, which was cited for its unity of forms and decoration. ⁶³

By the second decade of the twentieth century, German architects and designers were espousing a new, modernist aesthetic in which form followed function and works emphasized the beauty of materials rather than ornamentation. Among the chief proponents of the new trend were Mies van der Rohe and his colleagues at the Bauhaus school in Weimar. One of their students was a Hungarian Jew, Gyula Pap (1899-1983), who created a brass synagogue menorah in 1922, whose appeal lies in the beauty of its curved brass forms and their finely calibrated proportional relationships. ⁶⁴

Judaica following the new aesthetic was also created in workshops that followed the artistic principles established in the Bauhaus, but without any formal affiliation with the Weimar school. The textile workshop of Rudolf Koch in Offenbach used traditional techniques following the pattern of early Weimar production. Koch worked primarily as a designer of typefaces and books, and the commission given him by the collector and patron of Judaica, Siegfried Guggenheim, in 1924 was for a series of hangings incorporating Jewish texts (fig. 21). The Hebrew alphabet used in some of the hangings was designed by Koch's Jewish pupil, Bernard Wolpe, who created a stylized alphabet that mimicked the simplified letters of Koch's Latin typefaces. ⁶⁵ For both men, lettering was the prime means of decoration, a principle that would be adopted by a great many younger artists creating Judaica in the second half of the twentieth century.

The revolutionary Hebrew alphabets and modernist forms created for books and wall hangings in the 1920s also influenced the shape of inscriptions and symbols embroidered on Torah curtains, as on a series created in Berlin during the 1920s whose symbolic forms are as dense and compact as Adler's seder plate and whose lettering is stylized in the manner of the Koch-Wolpe hangings. ⁶⁶

Ludwig Wolpert (1900-81) was another pioneer influenced by the Bauhaus who applied its stylistic principles to Judaica in metal. One of his surviving prewar works is a silver pointer whose shape is an abstract curve devoid of ornament. ⁶⁷ It is a sharp renunciation of the type used to follow the text in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which consisted of a baluster-like handle and stem terminating in a hand with extended finger. ⁶⁸ Another work that represents a rethinking of an older type of Judaica is Wolpert's three-tiered seder set of 1930 (fig. 22). The original, lost in the war, was recreated in the 1960s. It has the same broad and low proportions of Adler's set, but unlike the earlier example relies solely on the beauty of the materials, the forms of the parts, and the decorative use of script to convey a modernist aesthetic.

Following several years of teaching at the Bezalel School in Jerusalem, Wolpert came to New York's Jewish Museum in 1956 to head its Tobe Pascher Workshop. With a larger clientele, many of them new suburban synagogues of the postwar era, Wolpert was able to produce a wide variety of Judaica for both the home and the synagogue. He also began to mass produce his designs, with the result that his Judaica influenced the taste of generations of patrons and, through classes held in the workshop, his aesthetic principles were transmitted to silversmiths working in the field.

Wolpert's most outstanding pupil at the Bezalel School had been Moshe Zabari (b. 1935), a Jerusalemite of Yemenite ancestry, who followed his teacher to New York in 1961, becoming artist-in-residence at the Jewish Museum workshop. His art, formed under the International Style espoused by the teachers at Bezalel, was recast under the influence of new trends in American art, such as the kinetic sculpture of the 1950s. From this combination of sources came Zabari's Torah Crown of 1968, whose curved tubes of silver and dangling pearls vibrate with the movement of the scroll. ⁶⁹ In the 1970s, he explored the structural and decorative uses of Hebrew script and, in other works, the forms of Art Nouveau, which had served as a major influence on early works of the Bezalel School. Zabari's works of the 1980s reflect the principles of post-modernism, a movement that allowed the artist to incorporate a richer repertoire of symbols into his Judaica for home and synagogue (fig. 23).

In the 1980s, Zelig Segal (b. 1933), Zabari's former schoolmate at Bezalel, joined him in New York. Today, both have returned to Israel, a move that symbolizes the internationalism characteristic of contemporary Judaica. Both Israeli and diaspora artists train with the same masters and compete at the same competitions and fairs, with the result that their works draw on similar vocabularies of form and decoration. Whereas the Judaica of earlier centuries was closely tied to the visual culture of individual countries, and even to that of particular cities, the international character of modernism is now characteristic of Judaica.