Page 382 - The Legacy of Abraham Rothstein - text

Utilitarian objects

AR built these traditional Purim noisemakers for his
grandchildren. Four are made of plain wood, constructed in
one batch (the tongues are cut from the same crate slats); the
fifth is painted blue, with “Haman” painted in red on top. The
original function of the grager was to drown out the name of
Haman during the reading of the Book of Esther, but children
have found more general uses for the ratcheted lamellophones.

164 Aleph-bet blocks
Wood
25 blocks, 1.75” x 1.75” x 1.75”
1 block, 1.75” x.5” x 1.5”
Inscriptions: letters of the Hebrew alphabet, one per cube;
vowel on small block

Precisely when or for whom AR made this pedagogical toy is
not known; he may have created more than one such set of
blocks for his children and grandchildren, but only this one—
almost complete—remains. He evidently began with cubes
sawn from a 2” x 2” board; his son-in-law Max could have
provided this raw material. The intaglio letters and
ornamentation were probably burned into the wood with a
combination of soldering iron tips, some of which AR might
have fashioned himself. A vogue existed in the early part of the
twentieth century for etching designs into boxes, chair-backs
and other wooden objects by this method, and a variety of
manufactured soldering iron tips were available to the hobbyist
in that era. One is reminded of AR’s fondness for burning
words into bits of wood with his magnifying lens for the
edification of his grandchildren.

He evidently used a straightedge as well as some specialized
irons to create the repetitive shapes of Hebrew letters within a
square border (on four faces) and stylized Stars of David (on
the grain ends); some chisel-work may have been required, as
well, but it is not easily discernible. He painted the blocks
yellow, and the intaglio branded areas orange, blue, black,
green, and red. The lone vowel block appears intended to fit
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