Obj. ID: 33418
  Sacred and Ritual Torah shield, late 18th - early 19th century
The Torah shield is a rectangular plaque with a stepped top culminating in a convex crown.
The plaque bears a panel in its center in the shape of a scroll. The panel has an inscription in Hebrew with square filled letters, which reads:
ז"נ [זאת נדבת] מהור"ר [מורינו הרב רבי] דוד
במ"ה [בן מורינו הרב] יצחק עבו'[ר]
בנו הילד בנימין
ארי'[ה] ליב הנולד מן האש'[ה] יוטא ה' יג'[=יגדלו] לת' [=לתורה]
ולח' [=ולחופה] ולמ"ט [=ולמעשים טובים]
"This is a donation of our teacher, rabbi David
Son of our teacher, rabbi Izhak fo[r]
His son Beniamin
Ar'[e] Leib that was born by the woma[n] Yuta. May the Lord raise him for Torah,
for Huppah, and for good deeds".
The panel is sided with two rampant lions standing on columns and holding a crown over the panel. The crown is surrounded by foliage.
Below the panel is a vase with flowers.
The plaque is framed with a flat rim.
The Torah shield has two holes at the sides for a suspension chain.
This Torah shield is a votive deposit. For similar Torah shields see CJA objects 6365, 311, 642, 17739. 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.
The inscription on this Torah shield mentions the mother's name, which is untypical.
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.17.