Pair of Torah finials
Torah finials are silver ornaments that decorate the top of Torah scrolls. This pair is earliestknown surviving example from the Netherlands, and the earliest traceable pair showing the three-tiered, hexagonal form that became highly influential over the next two hundred years as the main Dutch type, spreading to the Sephardic congregations of London and Hamburg.
While Amsterdam is recognized as a center of Jewish culture, these finials linked to Rotterdam present the story of Jews in other cities. Rotterdam had a Jewish presence as early as 1610, and a second wave of Portuguese Jews arrived in 1647, after the city government granted new rights, most importantly the opening of a synagogue. That the date 1649 indicated marked on this pair of finials is a mere two years later is unlikely to be coincidental, and rather suggests that they were made for Rotterdam’s recently inaugurated synagogue.
Later in time, and possibly with Dutch Jewish immigrants, the Torah finials arrived in Central Synagogue in Great Portland Street, London, where they were kept until the MFA acquired them in 2020. Due to the loss of the synagogue's archival documents during the Blitz, it is uncertain when these finials arrived in London..
NOTES:
[1] The United Synagogue was formed in 1870 when five London synagogues (including the Central Synagogue) joined together. According to a representative of the United Synagogue, the silver was in the collection of the Central Synagogue or another branch of the United Synagogue for decades and certainly prior to the bombing of Central Synagogue in 1941. One of these two finials incorporates bells made by the London silversmith Abraham Benelisha dating to around 1900, suggesting they were in London by that time.
