Mazal Tov Eliyahu Ezra Challah Cover

Sarah and Miriam Yellin

ca. 1890

Embroided cloth with domed building in center, surrounded by Hebrew and Arabic text, and flowers in each corner.

This beautiful, embroidered challah cover was made in Jerusalem around the year 1890 as a gift of thanks to “the gentlelady Mazal Tov Eliyah Ezra.” It is signed at the bottom by a mother and daughter pair of co-creators, Sarah Yellin and her daughter Miriam. At the center of this challah cover is an embroidered image of Jerusalem’s most famous Muslim holy site, the Mosque of Omar (The Dome of the Rock). The Hebrew on the challah cover names it “the place of the Holy Temple,” in reference to the fact that the Dome of the Rock sits atop the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism. It is very rare to find Arabic lettering on a Jewish textile.

Credits

Collection of William Gross. GFC Trust.

Published in: The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, vol. 7.

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Creator Bio

Sarah and Miriam Yellin

19th Century

Sarah Yellin (1840s–1901) was born in Baghdad and came to Ottoman Palestine around 1855. She married Yehoshua Yellin, the son of Polish immigrants, and the couple had at least five children, including Miriam (b. 1874) and the prominent Yishuv educator, scholar, and politician David Yellin. 

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