Ephod
Musée de Cluny—Hebraic Collection—Ephod—XąVIIIth Century. Published by the National Museums, Paris.
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The Musée de Cluny produced only a small number of postcards displaying objects from its Hebraic collection, and these do not always inspire trust in the museum’s curators responsibly for the collection. In this case they identified a ceremonial tallit katan (35 x 41 cm)—bizarrely shown upside-down, hence the tsitsit are tied at the top—that came with a matching cap (which evidently was not deemed worthy of making it onto the postcard) as an ephod, i.e., as part of the high priest’s liturgical garment. Both are made of peacock blue satin and beautifully embroidered with gold thread. The assumption is that the tallit katan and cap were worn by boys when they were first (officially) taken to the synagogue.
The set was originally part of Isaac Strauss’s collection of Judaica and Jewish ritual objects. Isaac Strauss (1806–1888) was a violinist, composer and arranger and principal of the court orchestra under Louis-Philippe I and Napoleon III. In 1878, 82 ritual objects from Strauss’s evolving collection were presented in their own right at the (first) World’s Fair in Paris (which was attended by 13 million visitors). The exhibit was highly symbolic because it featured not in the ethnographic but in the art history section of the Palais du Trocadéro (the central location). In 1887, numerous objects from Strauss’s collection featured prominently at the Anglo-Jewish Exhibition in London. Following Strauss’s death, Charlotte de Rothschild acquired the Judaica collection for the Musée de Cluny where a dedicated room showcasing 133 objects from Strauss’s collection opened to the public on 22 December 1890. In 1981, Victor Klagsbald (1924–2019) of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem published a detailed inventory of the Musée de Cluny’s Judaica collection which was shown in Jerusalem the following year. It has since been transferred to the Parisian Museum of Judaic History and Art that eventually opened its doors in 1998.
