A Large Ukrainian, probably Kiev, Parcel-Gilt Silver Torah Crown, Mid 19th Century

Phillips, May 9, 1996, lot 121.

The inscriptions read:

Admor and preacher of righteousness, the revered rabbi and teacher, Rebbe Yaakov Itshak of Makarov, shelita (may he live a good life, amen)

Zeev bar Binyamin, Pesach bar Moshe, Ephraim Fischel bar Aharon, [?] bar Shalom

And

The crown of Torah (under the Rabbi's name), the crown of priesthood, the crown of kingship.” (a reference to Pirkei Avot 4:13)

Rebbe Yaakov Itshak (1828-1892, also known as R’Yakov Tizchock Twersky) was a grandson of the Seer of Lublin and a member of the Chernobyl (later the Twersky ) Hasidic Dynasty, one of the leading Hasidic communities in nineteenth-century Ukraine. His father, son of the Rabbi of Chernobyl, moved in 1837 to Makarav, about 60 km / 37 miles due west of Kiev, and established a Hasidic court there; on his death in 1852 Yaakov Itshak succeed as rabbi, and it may be this accession that is commemorated by this crown. In that year, the town had a Jewish population of 1,152. A respected local leader, Rabbi Yaakov was still denounced and spent time in prison in Kiev. He died in 1892 and two of his sons, both rabbis, took over his Court. His grandson of the same name headed the court of the Makarov Hasids in Kiev aged just 14, but moved to Chicago in 1926, where he founded a beit midrash [house of study]; he died in Chicago in 1945.