Harvey E. Goldberg

Sep 30, 2024 | jewishreviewofbooks.com | Harvey E. Goldberg |Akiva Schick |Shai Secunda |Matti Friedman

Sometime in the late 1970s, I visited Beit Hatfutsot (Museum of the Diaspora, now called Anu—Museum of the Jewish People) in Tel Aviv. One of the exhibits was a diorama of a family scene from early modern central Europe that dramatized the making of a wimpel, an often lavishly decorated linen sash that was wound around a Sefer Torah several times as a binder. The minhag of that time and place was to make it out of the swaddling cloth used for a baby boy during his circumcision.