Prayer Lectern Adornment from the “Zisu Herman” Synagogue in Iași, Romania

The intricately carved adornment for a prayer lectern depicts the ten Sefirot of the Kabbalah, each representing one of the aspects of God’s revelation, carved as flowers surrounding the Holy Name. This decoration is not common in synagogue art. The “Zisu Herman” Synagogue stood until 1979, when the building was destroyed during a renewal of the area. The synagogue artifacts were preserved by the city’s Jews and donated by Jewish community representatives during Yad Vashem’s campaign in the 1990s to gather and rescue artifacts and Judaica remaining in Romania after the war. The embellishment of the ten Sefirot of the Kabbalah carved as flowers, was brought to Yad Vashem without any information about its placement within a particular adornment or the piece of synagogue furniture to which it belonged. However, in old photographs of the “Zisu Herman” Synagogue in Iasi, this decoration is visible as part of a magnificent prayer lectern that stood in this synagogue next to the Torah Ark. This prayer lectern survived and reached Yad Vashem in a precarious state. Until the discovery of the photograph, it was impossible to know that there was a connection between the prayer lectern and the embellishment of the ten Sefirot. The magnificent Torah Ark that appears in the old photograph is also preserved at Yad Vashem.