Schwab: We’re fast forwarding through hundreds of years, but the menorah’s been there throughout, right?
Yael: Yes From the desert, through the time in Israel, through the first exile, through the second temple, to our current exilic time.
Yael:From Unpacked, this is Jewish History Nerds, the podcast where we nerd out on awesome stories in Jewish history. I’m Yael Steiner.
Schwab: And I’m Jonathan Schwab. And Yael, this week, we’re continuing symbols and objects from Jewish history. And you have, I think, a good one for me, right?
Yael: I think I do. I would propose that this symbol is tied perhaps with the Star of David as the most recognizable Jewish symbol. I think you even mentioned it in your episode on the Star of David. Do you recollect what it could be?
Schwab: Mm-hmm.
So my guess is the menorah because I know that those two are sort of were considered for the symbol of the state of Israel. Great. Nice.
Yael: That it, yes, it is indeed the menorah. And as you so elaborately mentioned in your episode, the star of David is at the center of the Israeli flag and the menorah is on the seal of the state of Israel.And I would assume that most, if not all, of our listeners have seen a menorah, or at least a picture of a menorah. Certainly in the United States, it is a ubiquitous holiday season symbol. When we spoke about the Maccabees and Hanukkah in our first season
Schwab: Yeah, way back in season one, yeah.
Yael: We spoke a lot about how Hanukkah has gained a lot of its popularity among cultural Jews and among non-Jewish Americans and probably non-Jews around the world because of its proximity to Christmas in the calendar and this desire for all people, not only Jews, to have something of their own to celebrate during this overarching, all-encompassing Christmas season. So if the menorah wasn’t well known to the world before the commercialization of Christmas, it certainly is now.
Schwab: There’s an interesting sort of bleeding over where the menorah, I think, then comes to represent just like all Jewish religious practice.
And the menorah, has become an all encompassing symbol of Judaism culturally here in this country and probably in other Western countries.
But the menorah was viewed as a symbol for Judaism writ large well before we had big box stores. As you mentioned with respect to the Star of David, the Star of David is not an inherently religious symbol. But the menorah, for those who don’t know, was not originally nine branches, representing eight nights of Hanukkah and one Shamash, the helper flame that you use to light the other flames. The original menorah, It was a vessel of the temple in Jerusalem. And before the temple, it was a vessel of the tabernacle, which was sort of the on the move proto temple that the Jews had in the desert and before the temple was built in the land of Israel.
Schwab: Right. goes way back to to the Torah, right? To the, to like the five books of Moses. Like there’s instructions for building various things, and one of them is the menorah. It’s very clearly described.
Yael: Yes. So in the book of Exodus, there is a description of a menorah to be hammered out of a single ingot of gold. It was ultimately crafted out of this single piece of gold by an artisan named Betzalel, who is a very famous figure in Jewish artistry. A very renowned school of art and design in Israel is named for him. He is, I think, the proto Jewish artist.
There is a midrash, midrash being a commentary on the Torah text itself that says that Moses received instructions for all of the pieces of equipment for the temple or that time the tabernacle and Moses would come down the mountain and have those instructions in hand and he or the people around him or Betzalel would craft the instruments and with the menorah he kept having to go back because he could not retain the information for the crafting of the menorah and ultimately he and God determined that Betzalel should be the one to just figure this out.
Schwab: Mm-hmm.
Schwab: Yeah. Yeah. It does sound really channel, like thinking about it, comparing it to the Star of David, which again, one of the things we talked about in that episode is how incredibly easy it is to draw. Once you’ve seen it draw from memory, like very easy to do. The menorah is like, takes a lot of work to do, especially as described, hammering it out of a single piece of meta, my knowledge of these things is limited to what my kids tell me about Minecraft. I would say that’s the closest I come to any sort of.
Yael: Biggest movie of the weekend, by the way.
Schwab: I saw it and I was mostly incredibly confused. yeah. But hammering, I don’t know, this object with various arms and rooms for candles and then all of the different details that are mentioned in it, out of a single piece of gold, it does seem incredibly hard to do.
Yael: So it’s interesting that you say that. Nachmanides, Ramban, says somewhere that if you take all the descriptions of the menorah from the Torah and you sit down and try to draw it, it’s very confusing. And it’s not clear, actually what it looks like.
Schwab: Mm-hmm.
Yael (16:44.909)
Professor Stephen Fine, who is a professor at an institution I believe you are familiar with called Yeshiva University. I don’t know if you know him personally.
Schwab (16:47.598)
Mm-hmm.
Schwab (16:51.456)
Yeah, yeah, I know who he is. I’m curious if he would know who I am.
Yael (17:00.523)
Well, he’s gonna know now, because somebody’s gonna listen to this and be like, hey, Professor Steven Fein, you were referenced on the Jewish History Nerds podcast, know, number one history Jewish history podcast in the nation.He has written a very acclaimed book on the menorah. He says many times in the various interviews and lectures that I listened to that he is known by many as the menorah man.
anyway, Professor Stephen Fine, apparently, according to a conversation I heard with a former student of his, often reads out all the textual references to the menorah and then asks his students to try to draw it based on what is described. And it is indeed very challenging. There are two very different traditions as to what the temple menorah looked like that are used as a basis for Hanukkah menorahs in contemporary Judaism. And that is because there is disagreement on what it looked like.
But let’s go back to the biblical references. So we have a reference to this accoutrement of the temple that is called the menorah, that is described as a seven-branched implement with flames that were supposed to be lit at all times. is the model for what we have in modern day synagogues as the Ner Tamid, the eternal light that might be familiar to some people that usually hangs above the ark in a synagogue.
And the Jews get to Israel. And when we get to the kingdom era, when David and Solomon ruled, for example, and we had the temple, we had the first temple, then we had the Babylonian exile and we had the second temple and we had the destruction of the second temple all through that pit.
Schwab: Mm-hmm. We’re fast forwarding through hundreds of years, but the menorah’s been there throughout, right? Like that’s what I’m hearing. The menorah pre-exists like a kingdom in Israel, that entire, like follows the first temple period, second temple period. The menorah’s always been there for the Jews.
Yael: Yes, all through that period there was a menorah. From the desert, through the time in Israel, through the first exile, through the second temple, to our current exilic time.
Schwab: When you say menorah now, I think about a thing that not even hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, right, are exist are sold, you know, around December every single year. But you’re talking about there was at one point, right, there was one menorah.
Yael: exactly.
The OG.
Yael: The OG original gold menorah that was used in the temple for worship. There are some sources that suggest that there actually may have been more than one menorah in the temple. For our purposes, we are going to say that there was one original menorah in the temple that actually, I’m just going to detour for a second.
Schwab: Mm-hmm.
Yael: When the Maccabees returned to the temple and the miracle occurred of the oil lasting eight nights, it was not in fact on an eight branched menorah. The menorah that we’re talking about was the seven branched temple menorah. The tradition that we have now of lighting eight lights for the eight nights of Hanukkah for the eight days of a miracle is a melding of the fact that there was a menorah in the temple and that there was a miracle that lasted eight nights. So you put those two ideas together and you get this eight branched plus one nine branched menorah.
Schwab: It sounds kind of heretical and the sort of thing that would usually be prohibited. You know, we’re like, okay. Phew, okay.
Yael: It’s actually not heretical and Talmudic sources specifically note that it’s not heretical. And the reason it’s not heretical is because it’s not seven branches. There is text, I believe, in the Talmud that says you cannot recreate temple implements. That is a prohibition outside of the time in Judaism when the temple is standing. It is absolutely prohibited for any Jew to create an implement.
Schwab: Interesting. Hmm.
Yael: That is identical to the implements that we had in the temple. This is not. And it specifies that the identical nature is the problem. It says a six-pronged candelabra is fine. An eight-pronged candelabra is fine. A seven-pronged candelabra is not fine. And if I had my passport in my hand, which I do not, you would look at the seal of the State of Israel and you would tell me how many prongs are on that menorah.
Schwab: And this is not identical because it’s a different number.
I want to say six though, right? It doesn’t have a middle one. Is that right? No? no. boy.
Yael: Seven, seven. Big, big deal. Is the seal of the State of Israel heretical? Some people say yes. Other people say that it’s because it’s a drawing it is not. However, if you have ever been to the Knesset or maybe been outside the Knesset, you may have seen a giant statue of a menorah. That is the seal, the menorah.
Schwab: Boy, okay, good to know.
Yael: From the seal of the State of Israel and has seven prongs and is standing there in front of the House of Parliament of the State of Israel.
Schwab: I’m hearing you say that we need to protest this?
Yael: What I’m saying is that when I researched this episode and I combed through the Apple Library of podcasts for other people who may have spoken about the menorah, one of the things that I found was a Daf Yomi podcast entitled The Knesset Menorah. Daf yomi, for those who don’t know, is a seven and a half year program of studying one page of the Talmud every single day. If you do one page a day, it takes seven and a half years to get through the entire Talmud. This is a very, very popular program of learning in the Orthodox community, even outside the Orthodox community And in modern times has become very popularly disseminated by podcasts. Podcasts have actually really helped the popularity of Daf yomi.
And I found one rabbi who talks about how problematic this particular menorah outside of the Knesset is to the extent that he talks about possibly taking his class to see it, but he doesn’t want people to think that by going to see it, he is endorsing it or saying it’s not problematic. So he wants to find a private time when no one is around so that he can go see it and examine it without anyone thinking it’s problematic. So yes, there are problems, but the question is, are there problems with the image or are there only problems with that one statue that stands outside the Knesset, which was a gift from the British government to the state of Israel in 1956. It was crafted by a Jewish artist named Benno Elkan, who was chosen by the British because he was Jewish. And on the statue, there are reliefs of famous scenes from Jewish history.
Schwab: Of course it was. Mmm, the British.
Schwab: Mm-hmm.
Yael: It’s actually the menorah itself has been called a visual textbook of Jewish history because there are many different scenes played out.
And a second problem that this rabbi brings up is that the second, I think it’s the second commandment, right? Prohibits the creation of graven images of people.
Schwab: Mm-hmm. You know, I think we discussed that recently. It factors in majorly in our, I want to say our most recent episode, or perhaps second most recent, of the Dura Europos synagogue and its problematic graven images.
Yael: We did actually.
Do you know what appeared on one of the murals in the Dura Europos Synagogue?
Schwab: I’m pretty sure it’s the menorah and the fact that you’re asking me on this episode makes me even more sure.
Yael: Yes, it is. So we have images of the menorah going back to the time of the Dura Europos Synagogue, which is when? Second century?
Schwab: I think the third century.Speaking of things being off by one, while we’re talking about number of prongs and everything, if the original menorah is seven prongs, then the one we light on Hanukkah is actually nine prongs, right? Because it’s eight separate ones plus the shamash.
Yael: Yes, 100 percent.
Yael: It’s, designed to mimic the menorah in the temple. So in order to do that, it has the four candles on each side. And then because I believe, and you would be in a much better position to opine on this than I am, halachically, you can’t use one of the Hanukkah candles to light another.
Schwab: Mm-hmm.
Schwab: You’re not allowed to get any benefit from the candles themselves, right? Including lighting other, right? You can’t draw the flame from them. So that’s why we use, we have another candle that’s sort of just like the shamash, right? Like the custodian of, right?
Yael: Exactly but also there is I believe a requirement that that shamash candle be set apart from the others and I think
Schwab: Mm-hmm. You have to clearly know that it’s not part of this set of eight. Yeah.
Yael: It’s not part of the set of eight because of the number pertaining to the miracle. And it’s not part of the set of eight because I guess that helps mimic the center branch of the seven branched menorah. I feel like we skipped a lot. I wanted to talk a little bit about the fate of the original gold menorah from the temple before getting into the iconography. And I skipped.
Yael: straight to the seal and the iconography because I got excited.
Schwab: Mm-hmm. Right. But it wasn’t destroyed, right?
Yael: So, unclear. According to the Arch of Titus, which is a large arch in the city of Rome, depicting in bas relief, which is sort of 3D etching out of stone.
Schwab: Is that how that’s pronounced? But there’s an S in it, but it’s pronounced like that? Okay, all right. I’m learning so many new things.
Yael: I believe the S is silent, but please listeners, somebody write in and tell us if that’s right or not. Also, please just write in, in general. We got a few emails this week and it’s so fun to get emails. So I think it’s bar eleaf and the bas relief on the Arch of Titus depicts
Schwab: Yeah.
Yeah, we’d love hearing from you. Tell us if we’re pronouncing words wrong, because that’s our favorite feedback to get.
Yael: The victory parade of Titus carrying the spoils of Jerusalem back to Rome after the Roman defeat of the Judeans and the beginning of the second exilic period. The Arch of Titus is famous for a lot of reasons, but I think it’s particularly famous in the Jewish community because of the depiction of the temple menorah being carried off to Rome.
Schwab: Mm-hmm.
Yael: So let’s take that as a historical evidence, as a piece of historical evidence.
Schwab: Yeah, I have two questions about that. Do we assume that that is correct? While the rest of the temple was being destroyed, burnt down, do we think that that is true? That the menorah was carried off by the Romans to Rome, I guess. but also that that, like you mentioned earlier, we don’t know exactly what shape the menorah is, that bas relief has a very definitive portrayal of what the menorah looked like. Is that in line with other historical archaeological finds depicting the menorah?
Yael: Two, two excellent, excellent questions. The first with respect to do we actually think that this is what happened? Yes, we do think that the implements of the temple among other loot from the Jews in Jerusalem was taken back to Rome. We believe that for a few reasons. One is our good friend Josephus from the very first episode of this podcast in his history of the Jews, we learn that this parade of spoils happened and that these implements were brought to Rome and many of them, possibly not all of them because there is a bit of a discrepancy between text and the art. It’s possible that there was also a Torah scroll or what Josephus called the law of the Jews that was also brought back and other things were displayed in something called the Temple of Peace, which one of the scholars described as an Orwellian title because essentially what it was was just war spoils in a museum. And the Temple of Peace had the menorah for a very long time.
Schwab: Hmm. Great name for things looted in a war.
Schwab: That’s good.
Schwab: Mm-hmm.
Yael: And that’s according to Josephus and I believe some other contemporaneous Roman scholars. We also have Tanaitic and Talmudic sources of rabbis who say that they saw the menorah in Rome. One being the very famous rabbi and student of Rabbi Akiva, Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai, who actually says, I was in Rome and I saw the menorah. And certainly that is possible that he visited the Temple of Peace and saw not to worship. I’m not assigning that intention to him, but just to see and to mourn the fact that the temple has been destroyed and that these implements are now in the hands of the Romans.
Schwab: Mm-hmm.
Right.
BREAK
Yael: So you also asked about the appearance of the menorah on the Arch of Titus. By all accounts, with the exception of the Arch of Titus, the base of the menorah in the temple was a tripod. We have a few written sources that attest to that, and we also have a lot of graffiti from the temple era, in particular around graves that show the menorah with a tripod base. And it is fairly common among scholars to believe that it is correct that there was a tripod basFrom its divine origin in the Book of Exodus to its central role in the Holy Temple, and from the Roman plunder depicted on the Arch of Titus to its prominent place on the State of Israel’s national seal, the menorah has transcended time and geography to become a potent emblem of Jewish resilience, ritual, and identity.e in the temple. And in on the arch of Titus, it is not a tripod. It looks a bit like a wedding cake. is multi-tiered with one tier on top of the other. That’s a little smaller. It’s an octagon. And on each panel of the octagon of each of the octagons, there are carvings of animals and some mythical animals like dragons. And I think maybe lions with fish tails or something else with fish tails and
Classic.
Yael: Because of that, some people believe that this was just artistic license taken by the Romans because Jews would not have carved, A, they wouldn’t have carved anything because of the graven images thing.
Schwab: Yeah. We don’t do that. And that would have been very difficult to hammer out of a single gold ingot.
Yael: True and we also wouldn’t have included things like dragons which were not popular or really allowed in Jewish society. So there are a few theories as to why the base is portrayed this way on the Arch of Titus. One is that it was just artistic license. A second is that Herod actually changed the base of the menorah when he came in and did his massive expansion and beautification of the temple.
Schwab: Mm-hmm.
Yael: We do know that he put a golden eagle at the entrance to the temple. So it wouldn’t be unheard of for him to make changes, particularly animal related changes. And then another theory is just that the tripod base broke on the way to Rome and they put something else on the bottom. That being said, the seal of the state of Israel doesn’t have the dragons, but it does have the octagonal
Schwab: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Schwab: With dragons as one does.
Schwab: Has the dragons.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Yael: Wedding cake base, it does not have a tripod. And that is controversial in addition to the no graven images thing.
Schwab: Right. Controversial to who? Is it like the people who say you cannot do an exact representation of it, are okay with it because it’s not an exact representation, but the people who want an exact representation say it’s not an exact representation? But it sounds like we can never make every Jew happy.
Yael: Correct. It really actually is a great physical manifestation of the tension that existed at the time of the founding of the State of Israel that still exists today in many forms between the secular nationalist Zionists and the religious camp. Rabbi Herzog, who was the first chief rabbi of the State of Israel, was not happy with this choice of seal.
Schwab: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Yael: He liked in theory that it was religious and it was a nod to the religious nature of the state, unlike the Star of David, which is not inherently a Jewish symbol. But he did not like that the choice was the Arch of Titus menorah as opposed to the tripod based menorah because the Arch of Titus menorah is not accurate. It’s a vision that was created by non-Jews.
Schwab: interesting. Right.
Schwab: Mm-hmm.
Yael: That being said, if I could have a conversation with Rabbi Herzog today, I would ask him the question you asked him, which is, isn’t it better that it’s not an implement identical to an implement of the temple?
Schwab: Right.
Yael: To go a little bit backwards before he got angry. There had to be a choice that made him angry. The choice that made him angry was the result of a competition. The nascent state had a competition for the seal. This seal that we have today of the Arch of Titus Menorah flanked by an olive branch on each side. The olive branches are nods to verse from, I believe it’s Zachariah.
Schwab: Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Schwab: Mm-hmm.
Yael: So it is biblical, it is religious, which is a good thing for the religious camp, but again, not something that they like for a variety of reasons. This seal that was chosen was created by famous Israeli designers, the Shamir brothers. One of the scholars, a scholar named Sperber, says that the choice of the Shamir brothers seal by the state of Israel at that time was a tragic error. And I don’t think that he meant it necessarily from a halakhic perspective, but he meant it more that the Arch of Titus menorah as an emblem is a symbol of spiritual servitude for the Jews. It is a symbol that emerged out of our defeat, both politically in terms of the end of our autonomy in the Holy Land and spiritually in terms of the destruction of the temple and a complete reversal in the way that Jews are able to worship God.
Schwab: Right. Although it connects a lot with the start, what we talked about in the Star of David from the first episode, of like, that is a symbol that had a ton of resonance in the Holocaust, right? it has become a symbol of oppression in a lot of ways and this is like a reclaiming of it.
Yael: Exactly. And there are a lot of people who say that. You are very prescient. And there were in fact, Jews in Rome who once this seal was chosen, walked towards Jerusalem carrying the seal to represent a return to our own autonomy, both religious and political.
Schwab: Wow.
Schwab: They think that we should have a bas relief in front of the Knesset of like the same scene, but in the opposite way, right? Of like Jews carrying something back to Jerusalem.
Yael: Yes, that we are, we’re back now. Our exile is over. Maybe not 100% in terms of our ability to perform worship in the temple, but it’s basically over. And I think that that’s what some of the more traditional Orthodox rabbis have a problem with because we are now insinuating both symbolically and actually physically with a standing replica of the temple menorah, that exile is over. And for a lot of people, exile is only over politically. It’s not over religiously. And we are still grappling with what this means.
And that’s actually a really good time for me to pivot to Germany in the late 19th, early 20th century, when there were many Jews who felt that their new acceptance among their peers
Schwab: Okay, alright.
Yael: short-lived, they didn’t know that, meant that exile was over. They were no longer the downtrodden Jews and they felt like they were completely integrated into German and Austrian society and
Schwab: Right. It’s an emancipation thing, right? Jews are now full members. Yeah.
Yael: It’s an emancipation thing that now that we are just like our neighbors, do we even need our own state? Like it goes back to one of the fundamental questions of Zionism is, is our own state there for our protection or is our own state there because we’re chosen and unique? If we don’t need the protection, which they didn’t think they did at
Schwab: Spoilers, yes, but.
Schwab: Yeah.
Schwab: Mm-hmm.
Yael: Turn of the 20th century German Jewish institutions, then maybe we don’t need a state. Which is why it’s notable that Theodor Herzl himself was very taken with the menorah. And he chose it as the iconic graphic symbol of the New Zionist movement. Betar, which was Jabotinsky’s movement, which we talked about
Schwab: Yeah. Yes. Yeah.
Yael: Also a couple seasons back, also use the menorah as its symbol. So there is a tremendous amount of reverence for the menorah among the Zionists. And there’s just so much here. And again, we’ve talked about Hanukkah a little bit, but we’ve barely talked about it.
Schwab: Mm-hmm.
Yael: There is a famous Austrian Jewish author named Stefan Zweig. Have you heard of him?
Schwab: Is that Z-W-E-I-G? Okay, so I’ve heard the name or seen the name, but I don’t, yeah.
Yael: Yes.
Yael: He is actually the only reason I had heard of him. It’s not because I know that much about Austrian literature of the late 19th, early 20th century, though I did learn in my preparation for this episode that he was one of the bestselling authors of that time worldwide, it is that he is the muse of the director, Wes Anderson. A lot of Wes Anderson’s design aesthetic and storytelling aesthetic.
Schwab: Hmm.
Schwab: Mm-hmm.
Yael: Draws from the written works of Stefan Zweig.
Schwab: Okay, very interesting.
Yael: which is why the name was familiar to me, but I didn’t really know why and then I figured it out. I didn’t want to bore our listeners with my affection for Wes Anderson in a lot of different ways.
Schwab: We’ve not spoken about this, but I love Wes Anderson. Okay, so we’ll…
Yael: Yes. I knew you had good taste. And he has a new movie coming out, which I just saw the first trailer for yesterday. Maybe we can go see it. It’ll be a great double feature for the Edgardo Mortara.
Schwab: Same. Yeah. Yeah, hopefully a different tone than the last movie we saw.
Yael: But Stefan Zweig was a tremendously popular author. He grew up in Austria. He was not an observant Jew. He was a very assimilated Jew. He was a good friend of Freud. He was an ardent admirer of Herzl. They both had a tremendous amount of respect for the menorah. Herzl has a very famous essay called the menorah, talking about how the menorah calls to the Jew no matter where he is in the world and how even a non-halachichly observant Jew has a transformative experience when he lights the menorah.
Schwab: Mm-hmm.
Yael: But everyone it’s very easily accessible.
You can Google Herzl the menorah. It’s barely three printer pages long It’s very easy to read and very worthwhile. And Stefan Zweig who had a lot of admiration for Herzl also felt very strongly about the menorah
And he also was completely non-observant. He left Austria in either 32 or 33, moved to the UK. And in 1937, he published a book called The Buried Candelabrum, which was a story that took place in the fifth century around the time that the Visigoths sacked Rome. Basically, the Visigoths sacked Rome in the fifth century and the menorah that was in the Temple of Peace disappeared at that time. And that’s why we don’t know what happened to the menorah. And that’s why there are some people who think that it might be in the basement of the Vatican. Spoiler alert.
Schwab: Mm-hmm. Hmm.
Schwab: Right, feel like I have heard that, but.
Yael: Spoiler alert, it isn’t, Dr. Stephen Fine is adamant that it is not. When relations started to thaw between the Catholic Church and the Jewish people, and they opened up diplomatic relations with the state of Israel, the chief rabbinate of Israel asked if they could explore the basement of the Vatican and look for it.
Schwab: Mm-hmm. Why is he so adamant? I don’t…
Yael: It’s not there. I think, by the way, that is so chutzpahdik and such an Israeli move that you would get to the Vatican and be like, can I look around your basement because I’m pretty sure you stole my menorah.
Schwab: Mm-hmm.
Can we check? Yeah. I know you said you don’t have it, we just want to check to be sure.
Yael: So Stephen Fine thinks that it’s not there. He says that he’s been there. He’s talked to people. It’s not there. I have the utmost respect for him. But having seen Conclave relatively recently and just being a naturally cynical person, I think it’s naive for anyone to think that we actually have seen the entirety of the Vatican. Even if we’ve asked to look around the basement, you know there’s a sub-basement and a sub, sub, sub, sub, sub-basement. Okay, so yes, there are people who think the menorah is in the basement of the Vatican that after the Goths sacked Rome, it was taken by someone, by another person, by somebody that the Catholics are hiding it from us. That’s basically a conspiracy theory that only lives in the minds of certain American Jews in the 19th and 20th century is not really proliferated. Most scholars think either it was melted down for the gold, because as we mentioned, it was a very densely packed piece of gold having been hammered out of one large ingot, or that it’s at the bottom of the Mediterranean or the Tiber River in Rome. Those seem to be the two most likely outcomes. The third is that the Catholics are still hiding it from us. It’s not a helpful conspiracy theory to anyone in any way.
Schwab: Yeah.
Yael: And Stephen Fine says it was so, it was such a rare conspiracy theory that it’s not even used when it would be helpful. And what he suggests is that it would have been helpful to the story in Stephen Zweig’s novel, The Buried Candelabrum, which takes place in the fifth century around the time that the Visigoths sacked Rome, but there is a character, a young boy named Benjamin Marnephes. Marnephes means literally bitter soul. And there is this hunt for the buried candelabrum. It retells an old Jewish story of the seven branch candlestick, which once stood in the Holy of Holies in Jerusalem and which Titus brought back with him to Rome after the destruction of the temple. And, something happens with Benjamin and his grandfather and they go looking for it. And I don’t know the whole plot of the story, but even Stephen Zweig doesn’t suggest that the Vatican took it. But the reason I bring up Stephen Zweig, aside from the fact that Stephen Fine, yeah, the Wes Anderson connection and that Stephen Fine uses him to bolster the argument that this Vatican Menorah conspiracy is relatively new and completely unfounded.
Schwab: Mm-hmm.
Schwab: The Wes Anderson connection and that, yeah.
Yael: Is because he speaks about the menorah as the ultimate symbol of the Jew. He as a non-religious Jew, Herzl as a non-religious Jew found solace in the menorah and I’m…
Schwab: Mm-hmm.
Schwab: Yeah. Why? Like what about it makes it the ultimate symbol that
Yael: Well, this is what Zweig says, no other symbol on earth is so dear to us as this lamp stand. And wherever you find a Jew who continues to cherish his faith in the Holy One of Israel, no matter under which of the winds of heaven his house stands, you will find in that house a model of the menorah lifting its seven branches in prayer. No people can continue to live thus without home and without goal, always afoot and always in peril. A light must be kindled for them. A way must be shown them. Someone must lead them, must lead them home. Throwing light on the path. A light must be found. They need light.
And I think many people look to the menorah and see its ever present light. It’s the eternal flame. It speaks to us politically. It speaks to us religiously. And it came, you know, the word came down from God as to how to sculpt it. And it accompanied us through the desert, into the tabernacle, into the first temple, into the second temple, then to Rome, then to who knows where, and back to the state of Israel on its seal.
And it’s interesting, the person who reviewed the book, The Buried Candelabrum for the New York Times, a gentleman named Harold Strauss, says that the cry that rises to the lips of Benjamin Marnephes, the cry that I just read to you about Jews needing a light, is a message to the Jews of modern Germany. That the same fear and desire for a connection to God in some way that the Jews had in the fifth century still exists in 1937 in Germany and you know, Jewish life is circular.
Schwab: Yeah. And I’m thinking about, about a famous photo I’ve seen that I think is real of the menorah in the window in a German home and like, framed in the window is like a giant Nazi flag or something like that., Like the presumed context is like a Jew lighting menorah in their home on the windowsill in Nazi Germany.
Yael: And I know that I’ve seen that as well. And I’ve also seen on Facebook or other social media a lot in recent years, a photo of a menorah being lit at the Brandenburg Gate juxtaposed with a photo of the Brandenburg Gate covered in Nazi regalia. And for some reason, this menorah, when Jews feel persecuted or think about their past persecution,
Yael: The menorah seems to be the light that brings them out of it. It’s like, what brings us out of the darkness of the Nazi violence that is embodied with these flags at the Brandenburg gate? The lighting of a menorah in the same space. What brings us out of the darkness of the Warsaw ghetto? The lighting of the menorah of Jews hidden in a home, the lighting of the menorah looking out over a Nazi flag with a swastika.
The menorah speaks to us.
Schwab: Yeah, right. And like we talked about at the beginning and in our Hanukkah episode also, like it is, I think, like probably the Jewish ritual that’s most widely practiced, right?
Yael: I totally agree. In fact, something that has stayed with me since I was a child is my parents choosing a bar mitzvah gift to buy for the son of a friend of theirs who’s not particularly observant. And I remember my mother thinking maybe about buying a kiddish cup, maybe a menorah. And my dad’s take, and I think that this is still 100 % spot on, is that it has to be a menorah. He’s like, kiddish, he’s never going to make. But a menorah, he’ll light.