©Jewish Museum, London
 
 

Silver cases for miniature Torah scrolls, made in London, 1766/67 From the collection of the Jewish Museum London

These silver cased scrolls were made by Frederick Kandler, George III's silversmith, for Rabbi Samuel Chaim Falk, a kabbalist known as the Baal Shem of London.

Following the readmission of Jews to Britain under Oliver Cromwell, there was a growing community of Ashkenazi (East European) Jews in London from the late seventeenth century. Most came from Germany, but after 1770 there was small-scale migration from Poland. The scrolls shown here were part of a collection belonging to the Great Synagogue in Duke's Place, Aldgate, founded in 1692 by a group of German Jewish merchants. It was destroyed in the Blitz in 1941.

The Torah scrolls form part of one of the world's finest collections of ceremonial art, in the Jewish Museum, London. The Museum's ceremonial art gallery illustrates and explains Jewish religious practice, while the history gallery explores the story of the Jewish community in Britain.