Obj. ID: 33415
Sacred and Ritual Objects Torah shield, 1814
The silver Torah shield is rectangular and topped by a semi-circular arch. The shield bears a rectangular medallion in its center with a dedicatory inscription in Hebrew. The inscription reads:
ז"נ [זאת נדבת] כהר"ר [=כבוד הרב רבי] גרשון ב"א [בן אבי] /
כהר"ר [=כבוד הרב רבי] אהרן /
עבור הילד דוב /
בער חיים לגדל /
לתורה ולחופה ומ"ט [=ומעשים טובים] /
בשנת תקע"ד לפ"ק [=לפרט קטן]
The letters are engraved in a simplistic way.
This Torah shield is a votive deposit. On this type of small Torah shields mentioning children and mostly donated in the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th century see Vladimir Levin, “The Social Function of Synagogue Ceremonial Objects in Volhynia,” in Synagogues in Ukraine: Volhynia, by Sergey Kravtsov and Vladimir Levin (Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center and the Center for Jewish Art, 2017), 139–73.
sub-set tree:
Sialitskaya, Darya, ed. The Second Birth: The Reconsctruction of the Jewish Collection of the Belarusian State Museum in the 1920s–1930s. Minsk: Belmytservis, 2021., I.11.