The foreword by Rabbi Benjamin J. Elton, Chief Minister of The Great Synagogue Sydney ascribes how difficult it is for a rabbi of this congregation to resist the call of its history, especially as he is a historian himself. Australian Jewry began in 1788 culminating with the opening of The Great Synagogue in 1878. As a curator of the Rosenblum Museum, where the treasures of old Jewish Sydney are located, the author Jana Vytrhlik, says most items are unique, irreplaceable and essential to telling the story of Jewish settlement in Australia that highlights the enormity in essence of compiling, importing and building items of such beauty in such a short time after landing as convicts.
With this exquisite tome, she has produced an outstanding contribution to the material culture of early Sydney Jewry, not only adding considerably to Australian Jewish historiography but built up resources in the neglected field of Jewish art and architectural history. How the Jews of Sydney projected their identities through their objects is a vital field. Treasures can be objects and they can be people, and we are lucky to have both. The beautiful silver Torah finials, or rimmonim that decorate the cover of this book whose mysterious origins served as the inspiration for writing her book that encompasses her interest in Jewish visual culture and Judaica.
She recounts her sense of loss and neglect while undertaking her doctoral degree in Prague, at the streets of Prague’s old Jewish ghetto where the many synagogue buildings stood silent and empty. For example, the early Gothic Altneuscule, the baroque Klausen Synagogue, and the richly decorated Moorish-style Jubilee temple were more about the history of architecture than the Jewish faith. What is lost is the rich legacy of Jewish life.
Such was the absurdity and reality of post-holocaust communist Prague that while the synagogues, the cemeteries, and the thousands of Jewish liturgical objects, books and paintings survived- and could not be concealed for the sheer volume- the Jewish life in Prague was absent. The Jews became an erased people.
In Jana’s later research into the origins of the rimmonim (finials) which had mystified The Great Synagogue’s congregation for a long time, she gained access to 1840s records and its provenance of Dutch origin is now part of Judaica Australiana. It’s interesting, she says, that some of the treasures of Judaica include ritual objects, referred to as ceremonial art, are typically found in a Jewish home but also include synagogue furniture and stained-glass windows.
Within this magnificently decorated book are 300 pages of illustrations and original essays that present a portraiture that’s looks elegant with eloquent imagery of Sydney’s old Jewry’s story.
The book blends the history, the art and architecture into the story that’s original in scope highlighting objects of Australian Judaica, many published for the first time. TREASURES OF OLD JEWISH SYDNEY is a timely publication not only in Australia but also internationally. It presents for the first time the art history dimension of old Jewish Sydney, with particular focus on synagogue, architecture, ritual and ceremonial objects and works of visual arts. It introduces art created by Jewish artists as well as those of other faiths. One has to admire the austere beauty of the written Torah accentuated by the scroll’s outer embellishments. The decoration is the fulfilment of the mandate, a commandment to enhance the sanctity of the Torah and enrich the religious observance to create or acquire beautiful ceremonial objects.
The Torah is handwritten in Hebrew letters by a trained scribe, a sofer, using special ink and quill on parchment sheets. They have been produced this way for centuries, rarely signed or dated making it extremely difficult to determine their age and origins. Illuminations, gold or colourful decoration seen in manuscripts of Hebraic, Christian , and Islamic origins, are not permitted. But let’s return to the mysterious provenance of the silver rimmonim. They bear the hallmarks and maker’s mark, revealing their origin in the works of a late 18th century Amsterdam silversmith, Johannes Schouten. The silverwork was assayed in 1773 in Amsterdam and matched the date 1773/74 recorded in Hebrew letters (5534) on the finial shields. They would have been donated to the Portuguese Synagogue shortly after their manufacture and commissioned by the donor for the particular purpose by Jacob da Silva Mendes 1718-1788, a converted Jew from Lisbon. It would have taken three years to reach Sydney.
The book is a beautiful presentation that uses a wealth of material culture as a lens through which to view the development of Sydney’s Jewish community across the 19th century. Through careful, detailed interpretations of Sydney’s architecture, art and religious objects, museum curator and author Jana Vytrhlik unfolds various layers in Australia’s Jewish history from the arrival of a small group of convicts to later waves of immigrants, tracing the community’s evolving connections and disconnects .
This book is a rich repository of the ways the local community understood and performed its identity through the intriguing objects it cultivated and collected. Ultimately, Treasures of Old Jewish Sydney is a visual heritage that celebrates little known facts of the emerging clan to three decades later with the design won to build The Great Synagogue. The author’s i forensic research and publication is timely and comprehensive in scope. A masterpiece.
