Reincarnation of the Temple Menorah until today's Chanukah

On the occasion of the Hanukkah holiday, it is interesting to know that whether the menorah fell at the hands of the Romans, whether it was melted in the terrible heat that splattered with the burning of the temple site or was scattered and looted, its disappearance became a central symbol of destruction and was condemned to complete silence in the literature of the Sages.

See also series "The priesthood as we have never known it" By Dr. Yehiam Sorek on the Hidan site.

I already published at the time, in one or two articles on the Hidan website, the musings, revolutionary-something in all modesty, about the Maccabean revolt (166/167 BC), in which I presented the thesis as follows: It is true that Matthew wanted to rebel against the Greeks (although it is not about the Greeks), in the Greeks (and it would be more correct to say in the Hellenistics) and in the Middle Ages, but behind all this aggressive, predatory move, another, manipulative and unusual intention was hidden - to transfer the birthright of the Holy - the leadership of the temple, which is, as we know, not only a political, social and religious-religious center, but also a very economic one (and the The rebellion, as we know, it is necessary to finance) from the Zadok family to the Hasmon family which constitutes the Yehoirib guard - an important and first-born guard who in turn served in the temple.

Judas Maccabeus, similarly, albeit implicitly, declared himself a high priest during the purification of the temple and the restoration of the holy service in it. The reliable hazel was discovered in the writings of Yosef ben Matthiyahu, who tells that at the death of Judah the Maccabee, at the battle of Elasha - 160/161 BC, his great priesthood had completed three years, that is, from 164 BC. His successors - Yonatan, Shimon, Yohanan Hyrcanus and their descendants, were all high priests and this in the confirming Goshpanka of the Hellenistic kings ruling from the house of Seleucus in Syria.

And not without reason, by the way, that the legend about the stored oil pan was wrapped up in Hanukkah, when it is actually connected to the Sukkot holiday, but that is another "opera".

The Hasmonean kings chose other symbols of leadership and sanctity than the temple lamp and even the Roman rebel, the one who declared his kingship in Judah (37-40 BC) and was a scion of the Hasmonean "warrior family", i.e. Mattathias Antigonus, and who minted coins bearing the inscription "Mattathias the High Priest" , did not dare to stamp the Menorah seal on them. Not even Herod, who built the temple and turned it into an impressive religious center, dreamed of commemorating this by stamping the temple lamp on his coins. and like his heirs and heirs of his heirs. Even the leaders of the great rebellion in their rebellious natures and in the mention of Jerusalem within them acted like this.

We all remember the classic image of the seven-branched lamp being carried by the captive priests of the Temple on top of the Gate of Titus, when they are seen in their best Greek-Hellenistic clothing with the crown of Olympic victory on their heads. However, it was not the custom of the Romans to loot local temples, but nevertheless it was convenient, for various reasons, to attribute the stoppage of work in the temple to the looting of the temple lamp by the Romans. And this even connects to the silent cry towards God - why did you allow your temple to fall and be destroyed.

However, one should not ignore the letters of Josephus describing the triumph that Vespasian and Titus held in the streets of Rome, which reads, among other things: To use them: Fixed in the middle of the base (the menorah) and rising from it was a stem from which thin reeds branched out, which resembled a trident in shape, and at the top of each reed was a copper candle. The number of reeds was seven, and they clearly point to the prestige of the book seven among the Jews" (Wars of the Jews in the Romans, Book Seven, 149:148-XNUMX).

Whether the menorah fell at the hands of the Romans, whether it was melted by the terrible heat that spewed out when the temple site was burned, or whether it was blown up and looted, its disappearance became a central symbol of destruction and was condemned to complete silence in the literature of the Sages.

The sages of the Mishnah, the Tanaim, and following them the Amorites, the sages of the Talmud, formulated a number of laws that forbid the use, after the destruction of course, of the symbols of the menorah, the temple menorah, which has seven reeds, such as the one that prohibits the making of a "temple house... A lamp against a lamp (like a temple), but he who makes (it is permissible to make/produce) (a lamp) of five (reeds), and of six, and of eight, and of seven, shall not make" (Babili Minachot XNUMX, p. XNUMX; Babili Rosh Hashanah XNUMX p. XNUMX ').

It is accepted by me, logically, and experimentally-historically, that where reservations are made, one must learn precisely about the explosiveness of the phenomenon that they sought to eradicate and uproot. And the rule that "from the law you learn about them" is a muscle and exists to this very day. That is to say, there were indeed attempts, and not too few, to plaster, to carve, to make the seven reeds menorah stand out after the destruction of the Second Temple.

It seems that this matter involves the destruction on the one hand and the restoration of Jewish society by Rabbi Yohanan Zakai on the other hand. Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakhai, who established his seat in Yavneh (lest it be rape, which involves the policy of the Romans towards Jews who surrendered and no Roman blood was found by them), and there, while committing a mini-rebellion in the presidential dynasty, crowned himself by allusion and secretly, so it seems, as the president of Israel under the dynasty of Beit Gamliel.

Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakai called himself (rabbi) in a title that was reserved exclusively for presidents and amended important regulations in the Sanhedrin, which were also prerogatively reserved for the presidency, such as Kiddush of the month and the passing of the year. In other words, Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakhai sought to assimilate, in a gradual and slow way, his position among the public, when he received, at least de facto, recognition from the Romans, who saw him and his actions as important provincial assets, appreciated the "industrial quiet" of his day and still defined the Rabbi's house Gamaliel as a rebellious factor that must be uprooted.

Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai, when he builds his presidential image, is stable, few, pragmatic, in the importance of Jerusalem from one and the Temple (for fear of the rebellion of the priesthood) from that, and he put, seemingly of course, Yavneh and the Sanhedrin as an alternative to Jerusalem, and in this context we understand the reduced status of The priesthood house in his days, on his initiative of course.

In light of this, it is beneficial to understand the pragmatic infrastructure for the possibility of "copying" the temple menorah in an artistic way outside of Jerusalem. Indeed, from the end of the first century CE and during the second century, there is archaeological evidence of the appearance of the 7-caned temple menorah on oil candles from one and glosskamaots (coffins) from another.

This move was laughable in the eyes of some of the sages of the Sanhedrin, and those who decreed against "doing ... and of (a lamp) ... and of seven (reeds)", to teach us as mentioned that the practice was becoming more widespread among Jews. Sages therefore sought to hedge against the custom out of fear that the expectation of renewing the temple and the work in it would dissolve over time.

During this period, during the presidency of Rabbi Gamliel, an attempt was made to establish a temple at the initiative of the leadership of the Jewish community in Rome. This was avoided, it seems, as a result of the decisive intervention of the president who initiated the sending of a delegation of the Sanhedrin sages to Rome to rebuke the Jewish archsynagogue, Thodus the Roman, and threaten to depose him. This move reflects, it seems, an atmosphere that prevailed outside of Judah and perhaps even in Judah.

A somewhat similar picture is taking place in Egypt, which may have drawn some encouragement from the course of Hunio IV (160 BC), the scion of the great priestly family, somewhat persecuted by the Belga and Hoyarib families (the Hasmonean Mattathias family), to build a temple in Egypt like the one in Jerusalem. The reference is to that magnificent and unprecedented synagogue in the splendor of the Jewish community in Alexandria, which in the Talmudic texts makes a certain connection between it and the intention to build a kind of temple in Egypt.

And let's not forget that the Jewish community in Egypt, unlike the one in Babylon, suffered from a deliberate lack of contact with the center of the Land of Israel after the destruction, and that center was in no small measure at the mercy of the Alexandrian Jewish community and the synagogue within it, which was completely destroyed as a result of military conflicts that involved a rebellion against Trianus (116 AD approximately ).

We note that also the rebel Ben Kusaba, (135-132 CE), who minted coins with an informative and even tactical message, including the minting of the front of the temple and even a pair of temple trumpets, as well as inscriptions along the lines of: "Holy Jerusalem", "Year four for the redemption of Zion", "For the sake of Jerusalem", he never thought of commemorating the temple's seven reeds menorah.

And here we find some kind of transformation in the reference to the temple lamp in relation to devaluation that increased with the degree of centralism of the Jewish center from the generation after Yavneh onwards.

There are therefore signs of the loosening of the mythological Jerusalem sanctity, and these were also reflected in the artistic circulation of the temple lamp symbol.

Indeed, in synagogues from the second century CE onwards, the seven-caned menorah is carved in stone on pillars, capitals, lintels and bars, and even painted on walls. Even in Sage sources (Tosefta Megillah 14:XNUMX; Yerushalmi Megillah XNUMX to XNUMX) it is told about a menorah that was donated to one synagogue.

We will finish with the archaeological evidence dating to the middle of the third century AD and highlighting the menorah of the local synagogue in Dora Europos.

In any case, it is clear to us why the menorah has not always had seven reeds.