Lecterns (Jablonów)

Artist Unknown

17th or 18th Century

These two lecterns are from Jablonów in the southern part of eastern Galicia and may have graced the town’s wooden synagogue, which was built as early as 1674. Carved from wood, and standing on two slender legs, they are intricately adorned with a stork and a snake. Storks are called ḥasidim in Hebrew, a synonym for those who practice goodness and charity, and were also revered as symbols of good luck by non-Jews in Poland.

Credits

  1. Courtesy Institute of Ethnology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.
  2. Courtesy Institute of Ethnology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.
  3. Courtesy Institute of Ethnology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.
  4. Courtesy Institute of Ethnology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.

Published in: The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, vol. 5.

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