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Central panel of the Torah Ark curtain

The elaborate central panel of the Torah Ark curtain, called mirror, was one of the curtains that used to decorate the Torah Ark of the Nagykanizsa synagogue, built between 1807 and 1821. Made in the fashionable style of the era, the donors’ names inscribed in Hebrew are surrounded by laurel wreath. Above, similar to the Austrian imperial crown, is a raised embroidery crown, symbolizes the crown of the Torah scroll. The two figures beneath the crown cite a sentence from the second book of Moses and its subsequent commentaries. “And you shall make two golden cherubim; you shall make them of hammered work, from the two ends of the ark cover.” (...) “I will arrange My meetings with you there, and I will speak with you from atop the ark cover from between the two cherubim that are upon the Ark of the Testimony, all that I will command you unto the children of Israel.” The nature of cherubs has been widely discussed. Yalkut Shimoni, a very popular midrash collection of the early modern period says that the cherubs hide in the crown. We see the visual expression of this idea on the Torah Ark curtain. This motif made synagogue goers understand the text, and reminded them of God’s protective power over Jewish communities. Nagykanizsa, 1808.