“Highlights from the Horwitz Collection of Jewish Ceremonial and Folk Art”
September 2024 – July 2025, Congregation Mishkan Or Museum, Beachwood, OH
Showcase “Torah”: Torah case, early 20th century, India; Miniature Pentateuch, Italy, 1588; Book of Psalms in Hebrew, Latin, Greek, Arabic and Aramaic, Genoa, 1516
Torah case, early 20th century, India, silver, wood, fabric, 1965-19
Torah case, early 20th century, India, silver, wood, fabric, 1965-19; Eternal light, circa 1773, Italy, silver, 1989-90
Torah crown, 17th century, Italy, silver, FT16
Showcase “Mahzorim”: Torah mantle, 20th century, USA; Judenstern Shabbat lamp, 18th century, Germany or Poland; Eternal light, mid-19th century, France or Russia; Prayerbooks in silver covers, Italy and Austria, 18th–19th centuries
Holidays prayerbook, printed by Anton Schmid, 1825, Vienna, Austria, silver cover possibly Italian, FT118; Holidays prayerbook, possibly 1710, Italy, silver cover, FT119; Miniature book of Counting of the Omer, 18th century, Europe, silver filigree cover, FT35, on loan from Judy and Harvey Relman
Showcase “Menorot and Nerot Tamid”: menorot, Europe, Poland and USA, 19th–20th centuries
Showcase “Yom Kippur, Sukkot”: spice boxes, etrog holders, shofar and works on paper, 17th–20th centuries
Showcase “Hanukkah”: Hanukkah lamps, Italy, the Netherlands, Morocco, Poland and Eastern Europe, 16th–20th centuries; Reuven Rubin, King David, lithograph, 1971
Showcase “Marriage and Its Consequences”: marriage contracts, including one from Padua, 1709; Kiddush cups, spice boxes and circumcision set, Italy and Eastern Europe, 18th–20th centuries
The exhibition presented highlights of the Olyn and Joseph B. Horwitz collection held at the Mishkan Or Museum, among them a 17th-century Italian silver Torah crown, an early 20th-century silver Torah case from India, a miniature Pentateuch printed in Italy in 1588, prayerbooks in silver covers from Italy and Austria of the 18th and 19th centuries, spice boxes and etrog holders from Central and Eastern Europe, Hanukkah lamps from Italy, the Netherlands, Morocco and Poland dating from the 16th to the 20th century, and illuminated marriage contracts, including one made in Padua in 1709.
The Olyn and Joseph B. Horwitz Collection
Joseph B. Horwitz was born in Vilna, Poland (contemporary Vilnius, capital of Lithuania) on December 14, 1899. He came to the USA at an early age, settling in Cleveland, OH, where in 1930 he married Olyn Shaw. In 1939 he became involved in steel production and developed a process of reclaiming usable metal from slag. His career advanced and he became the chairman of the board of the Kaiser-Nelson Corporation in Cleveland, managing contracts with steel mills in the United States, Europe and the Middle East.
In 1948 Joseph and Olyn volunteered with the Joint Distribution Committee in France, helping European refugees to resettle in Israel. The same year, while volunteering in Israel, Joseph received a gift of a 19th century silver Hanukkah lamp from a family he helped resettle. This gift became the foundation of the internationally renowned Horwitz collection, that by the mid-1970s included over 1000 objects. In the 1950s Jewish ceremonial objects were not commonly collected yet, thus Olyn and Joseph Horwitz were among the early innovators in the field. Joseph’s initiation into collecting Jewish ritual objects was accomplished through his acquaintance with Dr. S. Zalman Yovely (1902–1979), a New York dealer and consultant on Jewish folk art, antique books and manuscripts. Since the 1950s Joseph and Olyn travelled in Israel, the Middle East and Europe acquiring Jewish ceremonial and folk art. In 1965 Joseph Horwitz retired from Kaiser-Nelson and dedicated all his activity to the collection.
The first exhibition of the collection took place at the Anshe Chesed Fairmount Temple in Beachwood in 1962. In 1964 and 1965 the Horwitz couple donated 157 objects to the congregation. In 1965 another exhibition was held at the B’nai B’rith Klutznick National Museum in Washington, DC, an institution with which the couple developed a close relationship. As a result of this, in 1975 the B’nai B’rith Museum became the recipient of nearly two thirds of the collection. In 2015 the entirety of the B’nai B’rith collection moved to the Skirball Museum of the Hebrew Union College’s Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati, where it is displayed and stored presently.
The Cleveland College of Jewish Studies (Siegal College) also received a number of objects that were moved to Fairmount Temple with the reorganization of the college in 2012. The Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York, and several synagogue museums were also recipients of gifts from the collection. Photographs of individual objects have been featured in The Encyclopedia Judaica and a special holiday cards issue by The American Greetings Company of Cleveland.
In 2024 through the merger of the Anshe Chesed with The Temple Tifereth-Israel that formed congregation Mishkan Or, the collection became part of Mishkan Or Museum of Jewish Cultures (former Temple Museum of Jewish Art, Religion and Culture).
Katya Oicherman, Curator