Page 402 - The Secret Museum

AS HIS NAME SUGGESTS, FROM the moment Moses Mendelssohn (1729–86) was born,

his family expected him to become a rabbi, but he followed his teacher to Berlin,
which was then under the enlightened rule of Frederick II. He read the works of
writers of the Enlightenment and turned all he learnt towards his religion, urging his
fellow Jews to leave behind superstition and engage with modern culture. He
translated the Bible into German and argued that the religious truths of Judaism were
the same as the fundamental truths accessible to anyone, as demonstrated by

philosophy. He believed that the soul is immortal and that God exists; and he
championed religious tolerance.

In the collections of the Jewish Museum in Berlin is a treasure that belonged to
him and his wife, Fromet Guggenheim. It is a delicate, white, silk Torah Ark curtain
embroidered with flowers, two lions and decorative motifs. He presented it to a
Berlin synagogue in 1774 or 1775. It was a very personal gift, for it was made from
his wife’s wedding dress and may have been given to the museum to celebrate the
birth of their daughter, Henriette.

For many years, during the two most important Jewish festivals of the year – the
New Year Festival and the Day of Atonement – the Berlin synagogue hung it in front

of their Torah cabinet containing the Torah scrolls. The scrolls in any synagogue are
handwritten copies of the Torah, the Jewish sacred scriptures, made up of the Five
Books of Moses. They are stored in the Torah Ark, built along the wall that faces
Jerusalem, and are usually veiled with a decorative curtain, like this delicate silk that
was once a wedding dress.

Several years after Moses Mendelssohn’s death, Fromet went home to Hamburg
and took her transformed wedding dress with her. She gave it to a synagogue in
Altona, where it remained hanging for nearly 150 years.

Then troubles began for the Jewish people. From 1938, they were no longer safe

in Germany and elsewhere, and thousands upon thousands of Jewish people fled from
Germany. One refugee took the precious silk with them to Antwerp, where it was
used in a makeshift prayer room set up by refugees. In the evenings, the community
warden, Leo Rothschild, kept it in his home. In May 1940, the Nazi Party occupied
Belgium, and Leo’s wife, Betty, gave the precious silk to a family friend, who hid it
in a wash basket filled with dirty clothes. Betty and her two sons were murdered in
Auschwitz; Leo and their son, Josep, survived. The Torah Ark curtain also made it

through the war.

It was found in terrible condition, in New York. It was in a genizah’, a storage
place where Jewish religious items are put when they are no longer in a good enough
condition to be used in rituals. The Jewish Museum in Berlin bought it and decided to
conserve it.

The museum is quite new – it opened on 9 September 2001. For a few years
before they opened they began buying interesting treasures, the Torah Ark curtain was
bought in 1997. When the museum first opened, the curtain was on display. However,