Esther Scrolls, Jewish Museum, Prague

Unlike the ceremonial scrolls, private scrolls of Esther, from which the participants of the Purim service follow the reading of the book, may be decorated. Illuminations for the Book of Esther appear in medieval Hebrew codices, but the earliest decorated scrolls to have been preserved come from 16th century Italy. The Prague Jewish Museum collection contains about 20 scrolls of Esther with ornamental or figurative decoration. For illuminated scrolls, the decoration consists most often of a plant ornament, sometimes with animal figures and signs of the zodiac or architectural elements. But for the two scrolls of local provenance, dating from the 18th century to the beginning of the 19th, most of the Prague Jewish Museum’s illuminated scrolls are probably from Italy and date from the 17th and 18th centuries, with only two of them clearly Czech in origin.

On both of my visits to the Prague Jewish Museum these scrolls stood out as exceptionally beautiful--there were three on exhibit each time, and not the same three. I would love to see an exhibit of all 20 scrolls, and a catalog that showed all of the illustrations.