In Eastern Europe today, especially in places such as Poland where Jewish communities were decimated during the Holocaust, there are vendors selling fake, counterfeit Judaicia, including Jewish wedding rings–known as Jewish house rings.
What is a "Jewish house ring", let alone a counterfeit one?
There was a tradition amongst Ashkenazic Jews since the 14th century whereby the groom at a Jewish wedding would give the bride an ornamental ring in the shape of a house. The "Jewish house ring" signified that the couple would share a home together, it gave an opportunity for the couple's new relationship to be blessed, and it was also thought to symbolize the Temple in Jerusalem. Relatively few Jews know about this tradition today as it was lost as a result of the Holocaust -it is part of that Jewish world that was simply never recovered after the Holocaust.
Interestingly enough, in 1998, a cache of Jewish house rings were found in in the wall of a house in what was once the medieval Jewish neighborhood of Erfurt, Germany. The Jewish house rings belonged to Jews who hid them in 1349 at the time of the Black Death pogroms, (where Jews were wrongly blamed for causing the Black Death). The Jewish owners probably hoped to return and find their hidden jewels, but this didn't happen since no doubt they met their deaths in the pogroms. This Erfurt cache of Jewish jewelry was found some 650 years after it was hidden by accident, as a result of an excavation to build a new block of flats on the location.
Now what is a counterfeit Jewish House ring?
Strangely enough, on ebay today, there are vendors in Eastern Europe who are taking advantage of the fact that there is interest in Jewish house rings and other Judaica. They are selling counterfeit Jewish house rings on ebay, marketing them as original.
I learned about this since I got interested in the subject and I bid on a Jewish house ring which was allegedly from Russia made in 1879 (it was stamped with this on the bottom of the ring). I only paid $50 and one would think that a genuine one would be worth much more. (Apparently, the counterfeit Jewish house rings sell for between $50-150 on ebay, as I have learned from researching this matter http://www.articlesbase.com/antiques-articles/fake-counterfeit-judaica-beware-799840.html. A real one could be worth in the thousands.)
Once I received the ring I bought for $50 dollars I took it to a reputable jeweller, and albeit it was described as silver, it turned out to be made of pewter, with a silver band. It was not made in 1879.
The design for this "fake" Russian Jewish house ring is quite beautiful, and one can only assume that the design is a reproduction of an authentic Jewish house ring that was once used by a groom to give to a bride at a Jewish wedding in Russia. But then again- maybe one can't even assume that-maybe the design is fake also. That I do not know.
The vendor on ebay said that the ring I saw came from Krakow, Poland. It makes sense that a dealer of counterfeit Judaica would say that the fake Jewish wedding ring came from Krakow, since it was once a city which contained a large Jewish population. This would give the ring an aura of authenticity, making it conceivable that such a ring could have survived the Holocaust.
Prior to the Nazi period, there were 60,000 Jews living in Kracow, one-fourth of the entire population. In March 1941, a ghetto was built and housed 20,000 Jews, including 6,000 Jews from neighboring communities. Only 2,000 Jews from Kracow survived the war and after the Holocaust a Jewish community was not re-established because of fear of pogroms. According to the Jewish Virtual Library, https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/vjw/Cracow.htmlToday, approximately 1,000 Jews live in Kracow, but only about 200 identify themselves as members of the Jewish community.
Thus, we live in a world where long after the Holocaust, and notwithstanding there are virtually no Jews in Krakow, there are people profiting off of this great loss by selling counterfeit Judaica , saying that the merchandise is from a city where there once was a significant Jewish population.
It is a rather sad and despicable truth.
