Grogger

Ivory ratchet with a helical handle topped with a metal banderole. It has a rectangular box with Hebrew inscriptions on the sides and front, plant decoration and a Magen David with an amber stone embedded in the centre. At the end of the box there is a floral appendage in gilded silver from which a bell hangs.
This ratchet was part of the permanent exhibition of a museum in New York and was most likely made in America around the year 1800.
Ratchets are used during the Festival of the Casting of the Lots or "Purim" and are rung by children when, during the reading of the Megillah of Esther, the name of Haman appears, a biblical character who wanted to kill the Jews of Persia and who, thanks to the intervention of Queen Esther, were saved.