“Corona” means “crown” — and the coronaviruses, such as the vicious one causing the current Covid-19 disease pandemic, get their name because of the crown-like spikes on their surface. (Or, because scientists thought they resembled the corona of the sun in an eclipse.)
In Jewish tradition, the Crown, or keter, has a very positive meaning, symbolizing royalty, power, and — perhaps above all — honor. It’s a common motif in Jewish ritual art.
“There are three crowns,” it says in the Pirkei Avot, the Ethics of the Fathers.
The crown of Torah, the crown of priesthood, and the crown of kingship. And the crown of a good name is superior to them all.
For this reason, the image of the Crown (often flanked by a pair of lions or placed over a depiction of the 10 Commandments) is frequently seen, particularly as part of the items decorating Torah scrolls (including the mantles covering the Torah and elaborate silver Crowns and breastplates) as well as in the decorative construction of the Arks where Torahs are stored, including on the Parokhet, or curtain hung in front of the ark.
The Israeli scholar Ilia M. Rodov, at Bar Ilan University, told JHE that, regarding the Torah, the crown symbolizes “the Torah’s uppermost authority, glory and value.”
An early use of images of the the Crown associated with the Torah can found in the Ark of the Remuh synagogue in Krakow, which dates from the 1550s and which, Rodov writes, is “presumed to be the first Renaissance Ark in Poland.”
He wrote in his 2013 book The Torah Ark in Renaissance Poland: A Jewish Revival of Classical Antiquity, that “the earliest images of the crown pertaining to the Mosaic law [Torah] come from Renaissance Italy.” He added that “the first material testimony to a crown image in synagogue art” also comes from Italy — the ark dating from 1522/23 of the Scuola Catalana synagogue in Rome, which no longer exists. (Since that publication,however, he told JHE in an email, “a badly damaged relief that perhaps may depict a crown was revealed on a remnant of the medieval Torah ark in Cologne.” )
The image of a Crown is also used on gravestones, to indicate the deceased as an honorable person, or in some cases the head of a family. On gravestones the Crown is also often flanked by a pair of animals, or combined with other symbols such as the gesturing hands denoting that the deceased was a descendant of the priestly Cohen tribe.
To counter today’s negative association with the Corona(virus), we’re posting here some beautiful images of the positive ways that the Crown is used in Jewish ritual art.
