Friends!

Together with the Auction House "Litfund" we would like to present you the first in our country, a Jewish Objects charity auction, most of the profits from which will go to support the Jewish communities of Russia affected by the covid epidemic,

more precisely, from the restrictions associated with it. No one now doubts that the scattered almost all over the world, the Jewish people managed to survive and remain themselves on

over the millennia mainly because it has preserved, carrying through the centuries persecution and oppression of their religion, Judaism, their main traditions. One of these 

traditions, one might say, one of the pillars of Jewish ethics at all times was charity. It was she, coupled with the maintenance of Jewish religious traditions rallied the Jewish people, supported and inspired those who sometimes found himself on the very edge of the abyss of despair in the surrounding Jews often not too friendly world. Much has changed today, especially in Russia. Swift the return and growth of Jewish identity, Russian Jewish identity is not may not please. New synagogues are being built, old ones are being restored, but the main thing is 

new Jewish communities are emerging and multiplying, which often need and support and experience of older generations. We would like that, apart from clean charitable tasks, the organized auction also pursued national cultural goals, namely an attempt to return to use the partially lost for decades of timelessness of elements of everyday and religious life. In the list of the lots presented for sale, you can see antique mizrachi, which in 

houses and synagogues hung, usually on the east wall, pointing in the direction of Jerusalem. Shiviti tables (psalm of the menorah) - they are more often seen on the music stand 

(amude) cantor in the synagogue or inside the siddur, for they are called to help in prayer and reading the psalms - in Jewish mysticism, an internal connection between the number, the text

and a form that can additionally spiritualize the one who is praying. Often mizrah and shiviti were united in one picture, thus turning a prayer to the most important the spiritual symbol is the sacred city of Jerusalem. Similar items are intended 

were also for decorating dwellings. They were also hung on the walls (in Israel and other large Jewish communities of the world are doing this even now) other tables, called yortsayt: 

they exist to record the dates of commemoration of the deceased next of kin. 

Commemoration (kaddish) in the Jewish tradition takes place according to the dates of the Jewish calendar tied to the solar-lunar cycle, and yortsayt helps synchronize the memorial prayer prescribed by religious tradition with Gregorian calendar. The tables were not only handcrafted, but also were printed in Jewish printing houses in the form of ready-to-fill forms. On holiday

The tabernacle of the Sukkah was decorated with mizrakhs with the image of Jerusalem, they hung the ushpizin (with Aramaic - "guests"), on Purim the target tables were hung both in synagogues and in houses.

It was customary to place portraits of the great rabbis and tsaddiks on the walls, with the New year congratulated each other with cards with happy wishes, on the day the gifts of the Torah, and to this day, children are given flags with the images described in it events.

The artifacts presented at the auction are more than just antique testimonies Jewish religion, history or art. Many of them have a memory touches and prayers of previous generations, they are the tradition itself, in the preservation and development of which is so interested in the reviving Russian Jewry.

Your President of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia

Alexander Boroda