Treasures of a London Temple. (Taylor's Foreign Press. 30s.)
IT was fortunate for the Sephardic Jews of England that they built their synagogue of Bevis Marks and collected its treasures during the period of the highest flowering of English applied art, the period running roughly from the Restoration to the Regency, though the examples surviving to be de- scribed and illustrated in Treasures of a London Temple are seldom earlier than 1700. Though many of these treasures are foreign riches—embroideries from Italy, Bohemia and even China, silver from Holland, Prussia and South America—most interest- ing are the pieces in which the English tradition has been linked to Jewish needs. Thus, there is a circumcision chair in the Sheraton style, a silver Chanucah lamp made in 1755, and a Seal of the Synagogue on which the " Watcher over Israel" is accoutred as a British Grenadier of the reign of George III. A pleasing example of this synthesis, illustrated in the earlier descriptions of these treasures by Dr. Moses Gaster, is a portrait of the Haham or Chief Rabbi of 1689 who sur- rounds a luxuriant white Rabbinical beard with the fashionable curly brown wig. The present book, beautifully illustrated and written by men learned in its various subjects, should delight not only Jews but all who are interested in the singularly rich and varied
aspects of this period's art. M. L.
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