Description
This casket is the mohel's kit, the circumciser's case, bringing together the knife, flasks, instruments, and unguents required for the ceremony of the brit mila, through which a boy enters on the eighth day into the covenant of Abraham. Circumcision, one of the foundational commandments of Judaism, is performed by a qualified practitioner within a precise ritual framework and surrounded by blessings. In Central Europe, these kits were presented as fitted cases, whose silver and steel tools were sometimes engraved with inscriptions. An object of the earliest rite of passage in Jewish life, it illustrates the material care surrounding the brit mila.
