Excerpt from the Journal of Advanced Appraisal Studies - 2010

I am very please to see the 2010 edition of the Journal of Advanced Appraisal Studies is selling well.  It has been very well received by the personal property appraisal community and supported by many appraisal organizations. Comments and praise have also started to show up on many social media sites and blogs. The feedback and comments have been very positive, I believe, in my biased opinion, that given the quality of content, the Journal should be in every appraisers library.

Every once in a while a professional appraiser may be approached by a Church or a Synagogue to appraiser contents and collections.  Elizabeth Kessin Berman, AAA, ANA has developed her appraisal practice around the identification and valuing of religious objects.

Ms. Berman graduated Boston College, and with the proper course work in the art of the ancient world, she spent a lengthy time in Israel working on an archaeology degree at Hebrew University. She also made her living as a field and research archaeologist with both the Israel Department of Antiquities and Hebrew Union College. Back from Israel, she earned Masters Degrees in ancient art and archaeology from Harvard Divinity School and Harvard University's Fine Arts Department. She has traveled extensively in Europe, Turkey, Greece, Cyprus, and Egypt.Elizabeth currently operates two appraisal companies, one Judaica In Context, devoted to expert appraisals of Judaica objects, Jewish art and Jewish historical documents. The other is Collections In Context, a company devoted appraisals and curatorial services related to modern and contemporary art and general estate appraisals. Elizabeth is a certified member of AAA and the ANA.

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An excerpt from her article:

Judaica objects are roughly divided in to various categories, but the two major divisions are ritual and domestic objects. Ritual objects or, in other words, objects used to enhance or support Jewish worship, include silver objects adorning the Torah Scrolls (the parchment scrolls on which the first five books of the Hebrew Bible are written); textiles to cover the Torah scrolls, and the synagogue ark in which the Torah scrolls are housed. Ritual objects also encompass eternal lights, wine goblets, spice boxes, memorial lamps, Hanukah lamps, and Torah pointers, as well as synagogue decorations, decorative calendars, and decorative wall plaques that may have psalms or blessings. These plaques often are used to indicate the direction “east,” toward Jerusalem. All of these objects have names in English, although sometimes the familiar Hebrew or Yiddish name might be used in a sale or in a gallery. The Jewish Museum, New York has a very useful website that offers a glossary of common Hebrew and Yiddish terms and also has an on-line gallery that can help identify Judaica objects (www.thejewishmuseum.org/glossary).

Domestic objects comprise any object used to celebrate the many different Jewish holidays during the calendar year and all of the life cycles from birth to death in a home context. There are many items used to celebrate the Sabbath in a home: Sabbath candlesticks, Sabbath bread trays, Sabbath lamps, blessing cups. There are also many objects used to celebrate various holidays: inscribed plates showing holiday ceremonies, spice boxes, Hanukkah lamps, Passover plates, and bread covers, not to mention wall plaques, paper-cut decorations, calendars and micrographic representations of the Hebrew writings and many more. All of these objects are likely to be found in a synagogue even though they are domestic in nature. In the synagogue context they are bound to have some communal use or educa-tional purpose.

Also included under the umbrella of ritual or domestic Judaica are genre paintings and tapestries of Rabbis or domestic scenes. The art of Jewish artists, whether an artist creating Jewish subject matter or an artist who happens to be Jewish, is sometimes also included under the umbrella of Judaica. The art of Marc Chagall is a good example of an artist whose work frequently appears in “Judaica” collections. Judaica also embraces the field of decorative arts, fine arts, ethnographic artifacts, and travel souvenirs, including jewelry, amulets, and small kitchy or common objects (some call these tchuchkes in Yiddish). There are many, many more categories and the list seems ever to expand. All of these objects are likely to turn up in a synagogue too.

Once an appraiser identifies what the object is, then an appraiser must ask a host of significant questions in order to fully establish the identity of the object: where is this Judaica object from? What does the inscription say? When was it made? By whom? And what is its purpose? Many of the clues to establishing the date, origin, and identity of an object can be found by interpreting the inscriptions on the object, as many Judaic objects are inscribed with donor inscriptions and corresponding dates. In addition to donor inscriptions, Judaic silver will often have silver marks that greatly aid identification and dating. However, in the absence of inscriptions, the Judaica appraiser has to discern local, regional, or national styles in order to settle on a geographic source and date of an object. Judaica objects may originate in North Africa, the Middle East, or the United States. Or they may be from Central, Northern, or Eastern Europe. Within these regions there are wide variations of styles. Judaica makers invariably borrowed from their local styles and therefore, in settling on a geographic source of a Judaic object, one must look at the object and determine the general character of its stylistic, decorative, and technical elements. It is important to note that Judaica objects were often made by non-Jewish craftspeople, since Jews for many centuries, especially in Europe, were not allowed membership in craft guilds. Thus a 19th Century Italian Hanukkah lamp might very well have features that resemble decorations employed on an Italian lamp stand. Regarding value, a Judaica object from England and Italy will be appraised more highly than one from Eastern or Central Europe, because objects from the former are, for the most part, more highly crafted and rarer (Figure 11). There are regional differences that are to be factored into the valuation of Judaica pieces.
In returning to the discussion on appraising contents of houses of worship, it is certain that all synagogues will have a large assortment of ritual “Judaica” objects. Most are made recently, but quite often, synagogues with longer histories may have amassed important silver ritual items. In synago-gues with larger congregations one may encounter display cases—mini-museums-- in which they exhibit historical Judaica.

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