A - Inscriptions as a Reflection of Customs of Dedication

Summary

The dedicatory inscription on a ceremonial object donated to a synagogue reflects the emotions and aspirations of the donor or donors and conveys information relating to the event or person commemorated or honoured. As a result, such inscriptions can contribute significantly to the study of the community's customs, social life, and history. The tradition of having a dedicatory inscription is known to us from ancient times, from inscriptions in the mosaic floors of synagogues. Inscribing a name as a means of establishing the donor's rights is mentioned in medieval halakhic sources: it is not permitted to use a candelabrum or a lamp that was donated to a synagogue for another purpose as long as the name of the donor that was inscribed upon it is legible.

The oldest recorded dedicatory inscription on a ceremonial textile object is the name of the donor, Perach, on a luxurious fabric, apparently a parokhet donated in 1080 to the synagogue of the Babylonian Jews in Fustat. Comparison of inscriptions far distant from one another, both in space and in time, indicates common elements across all communities in relation to the substance, circumstances, and texts of the dedications. I shall therefore discuss the entire corpus of dedicatory inscriptions presented here as one totality and note specific communities only if there is something unique in their inscriptions.

The corpus that follows in the next chapter is not a representative sampling, for it is based on randomly surviving ceremonial objects, or on archival photographs that are in a sense also random, in that not all items were ever photographed and not all photographs found their way into archives. Nevertheless, it does characterize, at least partially, the dedicatory inscriptions that were embroidered on ceremonial objects in the Ashkenazi Jewish communities in Europe and the Sephardi communities in North Africa and the Balkans.

The Content of the Dedication

‘And everyone who excelled in ability and everyone whose spirit moved him came, bringing to the Lord his offering for the work of the Tent of Meeting and for all its service and for the sacral vestments’ (Exod. 35: 21). This passage was in the mind of Havah Levi when she donated a binder in Italy in 1676.