J. D. B. News Letter

A Jewish antiquarian discovery of unusual interest has just been made in England. A London bookseller who was attending a sale at Chillingham Castle took it into his head to inspect the servants’ quarters. His attention was here attracted by a somewhat ornate cupboard, of unusual design, which was being used as a wardrobe in the steward’s room. Inspecting it more closely, he noticed that it was surmounted by an inscription in Hebrew characters. For the sake of sentiment he purchased it, had it dismantled, and brought it back to London. Here, in his warehouse, it was cleaned of some of the superficial strata of accumulated dust, pieced together again, and submitted to an expert examination. The object turned out to be an Ark of the Law of unique magnificence, dating back for 300 years, and obviously once used in some synagogue in the South of Europe.

In the Ark of the Law, the central object in the traditional design of the synagogue, are placed the Scrolls of the Law, embodying the complete text of the Pentateuch

The object is made of Italian walnut. It is of imposing proportions. The height is 10ft.;the width 7fraction 1/2ft.;and the depth 3fraction 1/2ft. The top and the base have been restored: the condition of the rest is as good as the day it was made. The doors are richly gilded; the remainder is daintily picked out in gold and color; and the pillars at the side are painted in imitation of marble. The surface is splendidly carved. On the doors and side panels are representations of the various objects which were to be found in the Sanctuary in the wilderness-the candelabrum, the bronze laver, the rod of Aaron, and the pot of Manna. The whole is surmounted by a conventional Hebrewinscription: “Know before Whom thou standest.”

The workmanship is of the high baroque period, of the second half of the sixteenth century, and may be dated about 1575. The style is North Italian, probably Venetian. Now Venice happens to have harbored at this time one of the most important Jewish communities of the day. There is therefore considerable reason to believe that the object was made there. Morecover, the general style is that characteristic of the Venitian synagogues, of which the famous Ghetto of that city harbored had one time no fewer than eight. Theree at least of these have now disappeared; and it is conceivably from one of them that the Ark now in London originally came.

From which, however? A close inspection renders possible a plausible conjecture. The Hebrew inscription is carved in the so-called Sephardic, or Spanish style; profoundly different from the somewhat more intricate, semi-Gothic, “Ashkenazic” characters which were in use both among the mative Italian Jews and the German immigrants from across the Alps. The fact precludes the probability that the object was made for any Italian congregation, except the few which followed the Spanish rite, These, at the close of the sixteenth century and for long after, were few; and in most of the cases in point-as, for example, at Leghorn-the original Arks of the Law belonging to that period are still in situ.

There is, however, one outstanding exception: that of the famous Spanish and Portuguese, or “Ponentine,” congregation in Venice. The present building, one of the show-places of the city, was constructed in 1635 under the direction of Longhena, the outstanding Venetian architect of the day. This was not, however, the original edifice. The congregation was formed, half a century earlier, by fugitives from the Inquisition, and its original synagogue was constructed on the same site in 1584. This is, as it happens, almost precisely the date of the Ark found in Chillingham Castle, with the Sephardic, or Spanish, inscription. Moreover, the somewhat crude and inexpert form of the letters makes one suspect that they were executed by a Marrano brought up in complete ignorance of Hebrew and only recently arrived on a soil where he could practise his ancestral faith in security.

On the construction of the new scuola spagnuola in 1635 the old Ark was useless. Very likely it was disposed of to one of the other synagogues of the Venitian Ghetto, of which one, the scuola Mesullamin, was founded, as it happens, at precisely this date. In consequence of the dwindling of the population and religiosity, the minor places of worship at Venice decayed in the course of the nineteenth. century, their appurtenances disappearing. It must have been at this period that the magnificent baroque Ark found its way, via some antique shop, into the hands of some deceased Earl of Tankerville. Household legend recounts that it was brought back by his late lordship after a tour in the Levant.