Obj. ID: 39348  Wedding and Circumcision Embroidery, Tangier (Tanger), 1886

The following description was prepared by William Gross:

In traditional Judaism, marriage is viewed as a contractual bond commanded by God in which a man and a woman come together to create a relationship in which God is directly involved. (Deut. 24:1) Though procreation is not the sole purpose, a Jewish marriage is traditionally expected to fulfill the commandment to have children. In this view, marriage is understood to mean that the husband and wife are merging into a single soul, which is why a man is considered "incomplete" if he is not married, as his soul is only one part of a larger whole that remains to be unified. There are many different stages and documents for the wedding.

There existed a special custom in the city of Tangier whereby women of the Jewish community would embroider special textiles for the ceremonies of the wedding and circumcision. There still exist a number of these textiles in the womens' gallery of the Nahon synagogue in Tangier, but very few are known in collections outside of that place. Additionally this textile has an inscription for both the wedding and circumcision, a unusual dual use among this small group of textiles.

The embroidery is quite rare, perhaps unique among this genre of works. The "thread" used for the inscription is actually thin silver and gold-plated silver wire. It must have been quite a feat to embroider such a stiff and relatively thick thread on the fabric ground.

Inscription: Yishma' be-A'rei Yehudah ve-Chutzot Yerushalayim........ Texts from the wedding ceremony