Cooking Pot

Since lighting a fire and cooking are both forbidden on the Sabbath (the day of rest), traditional Jewish households prepare all food beforehand. In the past, in order to have a hot midday meal on Saturday, Jewish families often left pots bearing their names in communal ovens, where dishes cooked from sundown on Friday. This finely proportioned example is a rare remnant from the early centuries of the Frankfurt ghetto, which later became one of the great centers of Ashkenazi Jewish life.

Jews first settled in Frankfurt in the 11th century. In 1424, under pressure from the church and the emperor, the city council segregated the city's Jewish inhabitants in a small area which became known as the Judengasse. Each of the houses of the ghetto was marked by a sign which featured a distinctive symbol or color. Ultimately, many Jewish families adopted last names based on their house signs. For example, the famous Frankfurt banking family, the Rothschilds, derived their name from the red shield which hung from their house. Likewise, the Hebrew inscription on this pot identifies its owner by association with a house sign. It reads: "Hirtz Popert's s[pouse], daughter of Moses zur Leiter in [the year 5]340 (= 1579/80)." To the left of the word Leiter is a schematic rendering of a ladder. In this inscription, the owner is not cited by her own name, but as the wife of Hirtz Popert (who died in Frankfurt in 1625) and as the daughter of Moses, who lived in the house with the sign of a ladder.

Medieval and Renaissance brass objects often bear inscriptions, initials, or coats of arms as signs of ownership, but very few extant examples bear Hebrew inscriptions. An interesting feature is the manner in which the year of manufacture is recorded on the pot. Since all the letters of the Hebrew alphabet have numerical value, the writer of a Hebrew inscription can either utilize biblical passages, make up his own text, or create plays on words, while indicating a date. On the pot, the letters for the Jewish year 5340 (=1579/80) might be read as the German word Schale, meaning pot or vessel, or as a corruption of cholent, a stew that is made on Friday before the Sabbath and is cooked overnight.

Source: Adapted from Norman L. Kleeblatt and Vivian B. Mann. TREASURES OF THE JEWISH MUSEUM. New York: The Jewish Museum, 1986, pp. 36-37.