(mappah)
A piece of cloth placed behind the parchment of the Torah scroll and rolled up with it.
The Torah wrapper can be called mappah or mitpachat. In some communities, such as the Sephardic and Romaniote communities, ceremonial textiles for the Torah were often known by the general term “mappah,” which makes it sometimes difficult to know which item is being alluded to, the wrapper, the binder or the mantle.
Melasecchi, Olga, Amedeo Spagnoletto, and Doretta Davanzo Poli, eds., Antique Roman Mappòt: The Precious Textile Archive of the Jewish Museum of Rome. Rome: Campisano Editore and Museo Ebraico di Roma, 2017.
Yaniv, Bracha. “From Spain to the Balkans: The History of Textile Torah Scroll Accessories in the Sephardi Communities of the Balkans,” Sefarad, 66/2, July-December 2006, pp.405-442.
Yaniv, Bracha. “The Mappa (Wrapper) and the Torah Mantle in Ashkenaz in the Middle Ages,” in G. Bacon, D. Sperber and A. Gaimani, eds., Studies on the History of the Jews of Ashkenaz: Presented to Eric Zimmer (Ramat Gan, 2008), 107-134. Hebrew.
Yaniv, Bracha. “The Torah Wrapper and the Torah Binder.” Ceremonial Synagogue Textiles: From Ashkenazi, Sephardi, and Italian Communities, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2019, pp. 85-126.
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