Obj. ID: 39236
Sacred and Ritual Objects  Tefillin bag, Jerusalem, circa 1910

The following description was prepared by William Gross:

Religious Jews put on Tefilin - phylacteries - every weekday morning and they were carried to the synagogue for this purpose. To make this transport easier and to protect the Holy objects, the Tefilin were usually placed in a container, most often fashioned from some sort of textile. Such was the custom in most countries where Jews lived.

Some printed textiles were made for this purpose as souvenirs, as gifts from Jerusalem institutions for their supporters abroad and directly as ritual items. Such cloths are to be found in virtually every country in which Jews reside, having been sent there by institutions or as souvenirs. The iconographic scheme usually centered around images of the Holy Sites with other Jewish symbols. The textiles were printed on a variety of fabrics ranging from simple cotton to silk. he earliest examples, yet from the 19th century, were produced by the famous printers of that period in Jerusalem.

This example is a Tefilin bag printed with the Holy Land images on a light brown cotton fabric. It was accompanied by a companian textile bag for the Tallit, Gross Family Collection 047.015.002. This example was not an institutional commission, but apparently a commercial venture of the publisher. This cloth was printed in the workshop of one of the foremost printers in Jerusalem, Avraham Moshe Luncz, who printed in Jerusalem for more than 30 years. There are some 30 objects in the Gross Family Collection that were printed by him.

Abraham Moses Luncz (December 9, 1854–1918) (Hebrew: אברהם לונץ) was a Russian scholar and editor born at Kovno, Russia. At age 14 he came to Jerusalem.[1] Luncz, who suffered from early blindness, founded, in conjunction with Dr. Koisewski, an institution for the blind at Jerusalem.

In the exploration of the Holy Land, Luncz has rendered great services from the historical, geographical, and physical standpoints, through his guide-books for Palestine, his Palestine annuals, and his Jerusalem almanac:

Netibot Ẓiyyon we-Yerushalayim: Topography of Jerusalem and Its Surroundings (vol. i, 1876) Jerusalem, Jahrbuch zur Beförderung einer Wissenschaftlich Genauen Kenntnis des Jetzigen und des Alten Palästina (Hebrew and German, 6 vols., 1881–1903, Hebrew: ירושלים, שנתון לידיעת ארץ ישראל) Literarischer Palästina-Almanach (Hebrew; since 1894).

He owned a Hebrew printing press in the Ezrat Yisrael neighborhood, across the street from his own home in Even Yisrael.[1] From there he issued a number of works by Palestinian scholars, Estori Farḥi's Kaftor wa-Feraḥ and Josef Schwarz's Tebu'ot ha-Areẓ being the first works published. He also produced a travel guide to Israel.[1] As of 1904, he had in press a new edition of the Jerusalem Talmud with commentary and introduction.

Inscription: Ve-Haya lecha le-ot al yadecha ule-zikaron bein einecha (Bamidbar Ukeshartem le-Ot al Yadecha (Deuteronomy 11:18) Dinei ve-Hanachat Tefilin ve-Birkhatan