A tik is a rigid case, usually cylindrical or many sided, that holds a Torah scroll upright. The two halves are hinged so that the case opens like a book and the scroll is read while still standing inside it, rather than being lifted out and laid flat on a desk. This is the customary practice of North African, Middle Eastern and other eastern Jewish communities, and it differs from the Ashkenazi arrangement in which the scroll is dressed in a soft embroidered mantle and read lying open. The case is often crowned with finials or a crown, and its outer faces carry silver repousse work, dedicatory inscriptions and the names of donors.
Facts
Practice
Liturgical and Scriptural RoleThe scroll is read standing inside the open case rather than being lifted out and laid flat, which is the Ashkenazi practice 1Tradition: Judaism Status
Status TodayIn active religious use 1 Still in liturgical use in the communities that emigrated in the mid twentieth century; many cases from closed North African synagogues are now in museums Attributions
TraditionJudaism, in the North African, Sephardi and Mizrahi communities 1 Identity
Also Known As Category of Sacred ObjectA rigid hinged case that holds a Torah scroll upright and is opened for the reading 1Tradition: Judaism Physical Form
MaterialWood faced with silver, brass, leather or painted decoration, hinged in two halves and often crowned with finials 1 Use
Who May Handle ItAdherents of the tradition 1 ConsecrationNot consecrated; an instrument, not a consecrated object 1 Origins
Origin RegionNorth Africa and the eastern Mediterranean, with Sephardi communities carrying the form into the diaspora after 1492 1Tradition: Judaism Learn More
Standing, Not Lying Flat
The difference between a tik and a mantle is not decorative. In the eastern and North African practice the scroll never leaves its case during the reading. The case is set upright on the reading desk, the hinged halves are swung open, and the two rollers stand vertically with the open columns of text between them. The reader stands to the text rather than leaning over it, the congregation gathers around a standing object, and the scroll is carried through the synagogue as a closed cylinder with its crown or finials on top. In the Ashkenazi practice the mantle is removed, the scroll is laid flat and unrolled horizontally, and the whole gesture of the reading is different.
The practical consequences run in both directions. A rigid case protects a scroll well, keeps it clean, and makes it easy to carry in procession, but it is heavy and it fixes the reading position. A mantle is light and cheap but leaves the parchment exposed. Both arrangements have produced their own craft traditions: silver repousse, brass sheet, inlaid and painted wood, hinges, clasps and dedicatory plaques on one side, and embroidery, breastplates, pointers and finials on the other. In practice many eastern cases carry finials as well, so the two vocabularies overlap at the top of the scroll even where they diverge everywhere else.
The North African Cases and Where They Went
Jewish communities existed continuously in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt for a very long time, in some places predating the Arab conquest, and were joined after 1492 by Sephardi refugees from Iberia. Their synagogue silver is a distinct body of work, and the Torah case is its most substantial object. Local decoration draws on the same repertoires as the surrounding craft traditions, so a Moroccan case can look like the metalwork of the town it came from while carrying an entirely Jewish set of inscriptions, and dedications name donors, families and dates in ways that make individual cases documentary as well as liturgical.
Almost all of those communities emigrated in the middle of the twentieth century, in the two decades after the establishment of Israel and around decolonisation. Synagogues closed. Scrolls and their cases moved with congregations to Israel, France, Canada and elsewhere, and many are in use in communities that reconstituted themselves around them; others entered museums, and a number remain in buildings that no longer have a congregation. The object therefore now sits in three quite different situations, still in liturgical use, preserved as heritage, or stranded, and which of the three applies is usually a matter of where a particular community ended up.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
Where a tik is used, the finials are set on top of the closed case rather than on the bare staves.
Belongs to Tradition
The rigid case is the North African, Sephardi and Mizrahi form for housing a Torah scroll.
Implement Of
The scroll is taken from the ark in its case for the reading at Shabbat and festival services.
Sources
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