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Metadata
Object Name |
Decalogue |
Date |
late 19th century |
Place of Origin |
New York, United States |
Dimensions |
21 x 54 in. (53.3 x 137.2 cm) |
Accession Number |
HHARA.14 |
Credit line |
The Hebrew Home at Riverdale Archive |
About This Work |
Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe brought their woodcarving skills to America in the late 19th century. They created both religious and secular objects, including decorative pieces and furnishings for synagogues and wood carousel horses. Carved plaques like this one, featuring the Ten Commandments, also called a Decalogue, in raised gold letters on a blue background, flanked by a pair of rampant lions and topped with a crown, were traditionally installed above the cabinet, or ark, housing the Torah scroll. This Decalogue was brought to the Hebrew Home at Riverdale in 1951 when the original shelter for poor older Jews relocated from its site on East 105th Street in Harlem where it had been founded in the Beth Hamedrosh Hagadol synagogue. The Decalogue presumably came from the synagogue, which had split in the early 20th century from a Lower East Side congregation of the same name that was founded in 1852. Likely by the same hand as this example, a similar Decalogue once adorned the ark at B'nai Sholom Synagogue in Harlan, Kentucky. Both were exhibited in a groundbreaking exhibition on the subject, Gilded Lions and Jeweled Horses: From the Synagogue to the Carousel, at New York City's American Folk Art Museum in 2008. |