“You shall make a Menorah of pure gold, hammered out shall the Menorah be made, its base, its shaft, its cups, knobs, and its blossoms shall be hammered from it. Six branches shall emerge from its sides, three branches of the Menorah from its one side and three branches of the Menorah from its second side; three cups engraved like almonds on the one branch, a knob and a flower, and three cups engraved like almonds on the next branch, a knob and a flower – so for the six branches that emerge from the Menorah. And on the Menorah shall be four cups, engraved like almonds, its knobs and its flowers. A knob shall be under two of the branches from it, a knob under two of the branches from it and a knob under two of the branches from it – for the six branches emerging from the Menorah. Their knobs and branches shall be of it; all of it a single hammered piece of pure gold. You shall make its lamps seven; he shall kindle its lamps so as to give light toward its face. Its tongs and its spoons shall be of pure gold. Of a talent of pure gold shall he make it, with all these vessels. See and make, according to their form that you are shown on the mountain.”
Exodus 25:31
The Eternal Menorah
Menorah, if you could speak what would you say? To hold you tight, to always obey? What is it like to travel through time? To have been born in the wandering, then returned Home, to have experienced the exile for thousands of years, only to return in desperate tears?
Why does the Bible spend so much time describing in painstaking detail how to build a Menorah? Why were God’s instructions so clear and specific? Why this shape and what does it mean? Why did it have to be hammered from one piece of gold? Why could parts not disconnect, divide, and then be attached? Is it because you embody the strength and the weight of the Jewish People? Do you not carry the miracle of light? Does gold not reflect this light of you?
You, the most ancient of symbols, were chosen to represent the Government of Israel. Was it because you have survived, in spite of the Romans, who stole and stained you into history, who scorched the Second Temple in 70 C.E., burned Jerusalem, put the Jews into slavery, cruelly carved you into stone called the Arch of Titus in Rome, which proclaimed with trumpets and crowds that the Jews had been crushed and the Temple destroyed? You, Eternal Menorah, alone can answer: where are the Romans today and where are the Jews?