46 Goblet

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Hungary, maker’s mark IM, early 17th century

Gold plated silver

Deposited by the Chevra Kadisha of Budapest, 1933

According to its inscription the gilded silver goblet of the Chevra Kadisha of Óbuda was donated to the community by Mr Gumpel, Mr Wolf and Mr Gershon in 1749. The object, created in the early 1600s, is richly decorated in floral ornaments and the warriors in antique helmets arranged in the three wreaths suggest that probably the chalice was intended originally for another purpose. More than one hundred years after the donation, it received another engraved inscription, according to which it is, “A gift in eternal memory to the Holy Association from me, Izsák Mózes (Isaac Moses), may thy light shine, who is son of Wolf Holitscher, may his memory be a blessing. In the year of 638, according to the minor era”. The Holitscher family was a distinguished Jewish family from Óbuda whose name appeared on several ceremonial objects. The inscription suggests that most of their descendants, just like the majority of the Jews of Óbuda, moved to the other side of the Danube River to Pest where from the mid-1800s a growing Jewish community emerged. In 1878 Isaac Moses Holitscher donated the chalice, previously owned by the Chevra Kadisha of Óbuda, to the Chevra Kadisha of Pest where it was in use until the 1930s. In 1933 it was placed in the museum collection as a deposit.

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