Mezuzah Case and Scroll

Mezuzah case inscribed in Hebrew after Deuteronomy 28:6 (“Blessed shall you be in your comings and blessed shall you be in your goings”)

Gift of Leah Rabin (1928-2000) to Alice Grossman (1909-2007)

After a design by Ludwig Yehuda Wolpert (1900-1981) [New York, United States, or Portugal], ca. 1970 (designed in Jerusalem, 1939)

Medium: Sterling silver (hand-worked)

The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life, University of California, Berkeley, Gift of Molly Grossman.

Mezuzah case, gift of Leah Rabin (1928-2000) to Alice Grossman (1909-2007). Gift of Molly Grossman, 2008.23.1 a–d (Photo credit: Sibila Savage)

Provenance history

As attested in an autograph letter (dated June 4, 1974), Leah Rabin (1928-2000) donated this Mezuzah case (made after L. Wolpert’s original design) to Alice Grossman (1909-2007) in 1974 — the year that Yitzhak Rabin (1922-1995), who had served as Israel’s Ambassador to the United States from 1968 to 1973, succeeded Golda Meir as Prime Minister of the State of Israel. Grossman had served in the Women’s Army Corps during World War II, and had subsequently worked at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C. (1950-1979), later moving to San Francisco, where she was an active member of the San Francisco Chapter of Hadassah and of Congregation Ner Tamid. After her passing, her sister, Molly Grossman, donated the Mezuzah to The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life.

Sources

Ludwig Wolpert (1900-1981), Mezuzah case and scroll, The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life, University of California, Berkeley, Gift of Molly Grossman, 2008.23.1 a-d

Alice Grossman papers, BANC MSS 2010/646, The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley

Papers of Ludwig Yehuda Wolpert, Yeshiva University Museum, Center for Jewish History, YUM 07

Sandler Perten, Rebecca, (Advisors: Catherine Whalen, Elissa Auther, and Vanessa Och). Postwar American Jewish Religious Identity, Ritual Objects, and Modern Design: Ludwig Y. Wolpert, the Tobe Pascher Workshop, and the Joint Committee On Ceremonies of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations/central Conference of American Rabbis. Thesis (Ph. D.), Bard Graduate Center, 2019.