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Caveat Emptor Judaeus
- Abstract
The antique market is booming: and as one who purchased his collection long since, and in any case is in no position to purchase anything more now, I cannot but rejoice at the fact. The market in Jewish antiques on the other hand is not merely booming. It came into existence only a very short while ago, but it has already become affected by a runaway inflation. It is little more than a half century since a few eccentrics in France, Germany, England, one even in the United States, began to be interested in the artistic relics of the Jewish past—objects of Bigotry and Virtue, as a friend of mine once paraphrased the French bijouterie et vertu. Chanukah lamps for use in the home, pewter or majolica dishes for the Passover, the hanging lamps formerly kindled for the Sabbath, the brocades which hung before the Ark in the synagogue, the silver adornments which decorated the Torah scrolls, the illuminated megilloth or Books of Esther, the beautiful marriage contracts formerly common in Italy and elsewhere. But everybody knew that these collectors were eccentrics, and pitied them somewhat for not investing their capital in objects of more general interest or more profitable prospects. However, in a way such eccentricity was condonable, for the competition was so slight that the prices were negligible.
Now, however, the scene has changed. The universal collecting fever has spread to the field of Judaica. The economic well-being of Jews in some Western countries has made it possible for the circle of collectors to be immensely widened; and to some extent, doubtless, the abandonment of Jewish rituals has created a sort of guilt complex which results in an attempt to assemble the vehicles wherein these rituals were expressed in the past. As a result, apart from the newly-developed major Jewish Museums in New York, Cincinnati, London, and so on, there are smaller museums of Jewish ritual objects attached to synagogues and temples all over the United States, as well as overseas: and travelers to Europe or the East are anxious to bring back some object of interest to add to these collections and thus perpetuate their own names. Moreover, a very, very large number of private persons, including many enthusiastic young married couples, are now engaged in beginning to build up private collections of the same type, based in the first instance on the objects they may be able to use in their domestic rituals, but later extending more and more.
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