From the Sacred to the Secular: Ethnic Identity and Monetary Value embodied in Jewish Ceremonial Textiles according to the Pinkassim of Amsterdam

Abstract

In the last quarter of the nineteenth century the Jewish intelligentsia developed a historical and scholarly interest in material objects of Jewish culture. In new exhibitions they organized, ritual objects that had been associated exclusively with religious observance, were moved to the public domain and divested of their purely religious ritual function. In a secular setting, Judaica became an expression of Jewish ethnic identity defined by its surrounding and religion, and evoked a new appreciation as objets d’art that implicitly assumed a monetary market value. This article examines whether this expression of ethnic identity and aesthetic and monetary appreciation developed first in the context of nineteenth-century secularism. By presenting three case studies based on written sources, I argue that ethnic and monetary value were already manifest in prior centuries and underline the value of written sources for an understanding of the social and cultural historical context of Jewish ceremonial objects.