Small Shevithi Protective Plaque.

(SASSOON FAMILY)

(India)

19th century

Hebrew manuscript written in elegant square script in various sizes on vellum. Displays the Divine Name of God (the Tetragrammaton), Psalm LXVII arranged as a seven-branched Menorah and surrounded by multi-colored stylized flowers and foliage with Kabbalistic formulae. * Housed in: National Bank of India envelope, the front of which contains an autograph note signed by Flora Sassoon in her distinctive Hebrew hand: “This Menorah was given to me as a gift by R. Joseph, my father’s uncle, in the month of Adar I, 1935. He received it from my grandfather, the Tzadik Suleiman, Kislev, 1894.”

The verse (Psalm 16:8) “I place [Shevithi] the Lord before me always” is regarded by the devout as a focus of meditative contemplation. Hence the “Shevithi” became a distinct genre of Jewish ceremonial art, embellished with mystical and artistic features, as an object of veneration. Clearly members of the Baghdad-Bombay-London Sassoon Family paid great heed to such piety and carried the present Shevithi as a personal talisman. Flora (Farha) Sassoon (1859-1936) was married to the businessman and philanthropist Solomon David Sassoon (1841–94), and was a unique, published, rabbinic scholar in her own right. She was the mother of the great bibliophile David Solomon Sassoon (1880-1942) and grandmother of the learned Solomon David Sassoon (1915-85).