Torah Shield

This work is a relatively early example of a Torah shield, a silver plaque designed to indicate the reading to which the scroll was turned. The rabbis suggested that rolling the Torah out of sight of the congregation was preferable, to prevent the congregation from regarding the Torah as a mundane object. Once the scroll was turned to the correct lection and covered, some means of denoting when it was to be used was required. Rabbi Israel Petahiah Isserlein (1390-1460) criticized a common practice of his day-affixing small paper labels with the name of the reading to the scroll, claiming that the tags did not enhance the beauty of the Torah. By the early sixteenth century, Rabbi Isserlein's complaint was placated by the creation of silver plaques hung from the staves of the Torah scroll. The new custom is recorded by Antonius Margaritha in his Ganz jüdisch Glaub, published in Augsburg in 1530.
The form of this shield is not yet fully developed. Mature examples of Torah shields incorporate a box for small interchangeable silver plates inscribed with the names of readings: the Sabbath, the New Moon, the New Year, and so on. Later shields are also decorated with more complex iconography. This example bears only one Jewish symbol, the crown engraved "The Crown of Torah," and one indication of a reading.
Its inscription, however, is very interesting. The shield was dedicated in the name of "the boy Uriel son of Azriel, born under a good sign [mazal tov] on the holy Sabbath, the ninth of Sivan, [5]429 [June 8, 1669)…May the Lord grant him to be raised to [knowledge of] the Torah, to the marriage canopy, and to g[ood] d[eeds]," a quotation from the circumcision ceremony that was also used in dedications on Ashkenazi Torah binders.