Steampunk ammud

[lethargic_man]

Remember the steampunk shtender (ständer? שטענדער?) in the Beit Midrash of my shul's new building I blogged about a couple of months ago? Well, we now have a steampunk bimah ammud (I must get into the habit of not using the former term when I mean the latter) to go along with it now:

It's been made by the talented Ben Kochan, who made the old one used by Assif (now falling to pieces), as well as the Ark visible in the background. It's adjustable, so in future when we have leyners or daveners only just past bar/bat-mitzvah, who can't easily read from the top surface, all we have to do is wind the control on the right, and the top raises or lowers (note the mechanism visible in the middle), rather than them having to stand on a chair. Not only that, but gone too are the days of having to rotate it around to face the congregation for the Torah reading: the top of this new ammud flips over to face either the Ark or the congregation:

(Ordinarily the exposed mechanism would be covered in this position by a cloth.) It's very cool, I think, and I've been waiting for several weeks for an opportunity to get to shul when it's not Shabbos in order to photograph it to blog it here. :o)

Comments

[curious-reader.livejournal.com]

Oh, then I have missed something. I have never seen it really lowered for a child.