Matzah holder with seder plate from the collection of the Hungarian Ethnographic Museum
This stand, carved from tropical wood and covered with embroidered textile sheets, was collected by Gyula Grünbaum in Sopronkeresztúron (now Deutschkreutz, Austria) in 1913. From the 17th century onwards, important Jewish communities were established in the seven field towns of the Esterházy estate. The famous Talmudic school of Sopronkeresztúr, known in Hebrew as Zelem, attracted young people from far and wide. Most of the Jewish objects in the Ethnographic Museum come from this village. In the early 1910s, Grünbaum collected ritual objects in Sopronkeresztúr that were rarely or never used by the Jewish community. Both the changing customs in the traditionalist settlement and the worn condition of the objects could have justified their sale.
Four carved columns hold the three shelves for the maces and the fourth, upper shelf, the 'seder tray', which holds six bowls on legs for ritual food. On the textile covering are embroidered Torah quotations in Hebrew for the Passover feast: "And the people carried their dough before it was boiled, tying their pots into their clothes on their shoulders." (Exodus 12:34) "And they baked the dough, (...) a leavened cakes" (Exodus 12:39) "And they ate the flesh that night, roasting it on the fire, with unleavened bread and bitter herbs." (Exodus 12:8).
