Family history being made today

PATRICIA

The story begins with an email to me, Jeff Kutcher and Steve Smith.

Hi, I was researching a antique (sic) Judaica silver Synagogue piece coming up for auction & came across your website. it's a piece donated in 1929 by the brothers Gabriel & Kalmam (sic) Smith in honor of their parents David & Sarah Gittel. I believe it would be very interesting if it will be purchased by their descendants & end up where it properly belongs. Please get back to me & we will take it from there. <Signed>

The same message was sent to the Zmidek Family website, and included a link to an auction site.

My instinct – and Jeff’s - was to dismiss the email as spam and throw it into the trash. But Steve recalled seeing an announcement in the Jewish Chronicle of a presentation of a Sefer Torah to the synagogue following the death of Sura Gitel in 1929. Suddenly, it seemed that we were being offered a chance to acquire a genuine piece of family history!

Jewish Chronicle 1929 P32-33 July 5th

So begins the…STORY OF A TORAH SHIELD

JEFF

1929: Gabriel Smith, Colman Smith and Polly Solomon donated a Sefer Torah with silver appurtenances and an Ark to the Cazenove Road synagogue in memory of their parents, David and Sara Smith, previously known as Dawid and Sura Gitel Zmidek of Chmielnik, Poland.

1935: Kehileth Jacob Synagogue, 81 Cazenove Road, Stamford Hill, London N16.

The Synagogue closes and it becomes a Jewish school. No further information about this has yet been found. Nor do we have any information on what happened to the Sefer Torah and other silver accessories. There appears to be no Jewish Year Books for the period 1934 - 1936.

1988/1993 to 2022: The shield was bought recently from a collection in Miami, Florida, where it had been for the past 35 to 40 years. No-one, neither buyer nor seller, had any information about the shield's provenance.

December 2021: The cryptic email message that arrived via the Zmidek blog had all the hallmarks of a spam /scam, so at first, I was very dubious to say the least. A similar message had been left for another family on a bereavement site. However, after some email exchanges between myself, Steve and Patricia, and some communication with the person who sent the message (who described himself as a researcher for the Auction House), it looked more and more likely that the Shield was the genuine article.

However, there was still some element of risk. There appeared to be no reviews online about the Auction House itself, which is based in New York. Despite repeated requests via the Auction House for further information from the seller in Miami, no details were forthcoming and the seller refused to make direct contact.

Was the Shield sold off by the synagogue? Was the Shield sold immediately after the synagogue closed its doors in 1935? How did it get to America? Who was the buyer? Was it stolen? Did the Smith family try to repossess it? Where is the Sefer Torah? Where are the other appurtenances and Ark mentioned in the JC that were donated together with the Sefer Torah? And why is Polly not mentioned in the dedication on the Shield?

Lots of questions, still unanswered.

Description on the Auction Website - A Gilded Silver Torah Shield, London, 1929

This bold, austere Torah shield is made of sterling silver that was gold-washed (gilt). It has a set of English hallmarks on the bottom of the front of the shield. There is a very lengthy dedication to the couple in whose memory the shield was donated. The Hebrew engraving was expertly done by the same hand who engraved the Ten Commandments in the center of the Shield. It's a very restrained design, as opposed to American Torah shields of this era. Dated 1929.

Maker Moses & Morris Salkind of London, 1929. Dedication also dated 1929.

Each piece is hallmarked with English silver marks; chain link also partly hallmarked.

Donated by the brothers Gabriel and Kalman Smith in the memory of their parents, David, son of Moshe, and Sura Gitel, daughter of Yitzchak Isaac.

Sura Gitel and David Zmidek immigrated to England from Chmielnik in Poland in 1903, and changed the family name to Smith. They had five children: Perla (Polly), Hinda (Annie), Mirla (Mary), Gabryl (Gabriel) and Kalman Josek (Colman).

David was a Member of the Greenfield Street Synagogue and this shield was probably donated to that Synagogue in their memory.

He died in 1908 and is buried in the Edmonton cemetery.

She died in 1929 and is buried in the Edmonton cemetery.

Weight 734.4 grams, Size 28x22 cm

Clearly some information had been taken from the family website, but the reference to the synagogue was incorrect.

Inscriptions on the Shield

Inscription on the right side:

ז''נ (=זאת נדבת) האחים מר גבריאל ומר קלמן סמיטה נ''י לזכר נשמת אביהם דוד בן ר' משה ז''ל נפטר כ''ט לחודש אלול לחודש אלול תרס''ח לפ''ק (= לפרט קטן).

Inscription on the left side:

ז''נ (=זאת נדבת) האחים מר גבריאל ומר קלמן סמיטה נ''י לזכר נשמת אמם שרה גיטל בת ר' יצחק אייזיק שנפטרה כ''ו לחודש אדר שנת תרפ''ט לפ''ק.

Bottom center:

תרפ''ט לפ''ק

Inscription on the right side:

(This is a donation) [by] the brothers Mr. Gabriel and Mr. Kalman Smith - may their light continue to shine - in memory of the soul of their father David, son of Reb Moshe of blessed memory, [who] died on the 29th of the month of Elul, 1908.

Inscription on the left side:

(This is a donation) [by] the brothers Mr. Gabriel and Mr. Kalman Smith - may their light continue to shine - in memory of the soul of their mother, Sura Gitel, daughter of Reb Yitzhak Isaac of blessed memory, [who] died on the 26th day of the month of Adar, 1929.

Inscription in the center

The Ten Commandments

Bottom center:

1929

========================================================

Sufficient funds were promised by family members to allow me to register and take part in the Auction, which was held on the 11th January, 2022.

Pre-Auction

Before the auction started, the start price online was 700US$. There were two collectors who, between them, pushed the price up to 1000US$. Then I waded in and set the price at the next point of 1100US$, which would be the starting point for the live auction.

The Live Auction 11th January, 6pm GMT +1

The Shield was Lot 305. Each bid lasts ~1 minute, which meant waiting and being alert until ~11pm.

Luckily, on their website there is a place where you can practice bidding beforehand, which I did the day before. One sneeze at the wrong time and you could accidentally either double the price or bid against yourself.

It was over in less than a minute. The following describes the bidding process - click the image to magnify it. Click here to see the video of the bidding.

Start of the auction Lot 305; Before the auction, the price was 700$, but it went up to $1,100. This was the start price at the actual auction. My Avatar is the blonde sitting in the front row of the online bidders.

There were three other bidders, two online and one at the auction itself.

Here is the person on the floor who has bid $1,400 and the price has now risen to $1,500.

My bid for $1,500.

This continues until my final bid of $2,000. At this point onwards the price would have risen by $200 per bid. There is a pause here and other bidders have 19 seconds to decide whether to continue bidding.

Thankfully none did.

Finally, 59 seconds later, we won the auction!

Now that we had the Shield, what were we going to do with it? It was generally agreed that to show respect to our ancestors’ wish to honor David and Sura Gitel, it would be placed somewhere where there was a connection to the Smith family.

Geoff Lewis had previously suggested the West London Synagogue where Colman had been a member for some years. It turned out that many more members of the extended Smith family had a connection to the synagogue and so, after a vote, it was decided that is where the Shield would go.

Alex Gerlis undertook to communicate with the West London Synagogue and make arrangements for the Shield to be polished and then exhibited in the Samson Family concourse.

On June 2, 2023, some members of the family gathered at the West London Synagogue to view the Shield.

From L to R: Anton Smith, Lois George, Sue Massey, Laurence Gerlis, Alex Gerlis, Gabrielle Pollecoff, Martin Pollecoff, Daniel Kutcher, Steve Smith, Nick Mathiason, Tom Massey....

...and Sasha Graff, who took the group picture.