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Nearly 1,000 years old, this Kiddush cup will be up for auction in the fall.
HISTORY SOTHEBY’S TO AUCTION EARLIEST KNOWN KIDDUSH CUP by GRACE GILSON
A KIDDUSH CUP that may have been passed around the Fri- day night dinner table during the reign of Genghis Khan will be available for auction this fall. The rare remnant of the Silk Road, the ancient Asian trad- ing route that was home to vibrant Jewish communities, is the oldest known Jewish artifact from the Middle Ages according to Sotheby’s, which will put it on the auction block. It is dated to the eleventh or twelfth century, a time when the Jews of Europe faced mass expulsion, exile, and massacres during the era of the Crusades. The inscription on the cup, which includes both Hebrew and Arabic, names its Jewish owner as “Simcha son of Salman.” “This cup is an extraordinarily rare record of the existence and importance of Jewish communities in Central Asia in the Middle Ages, and of their cultural and artistic exchanges with
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