When Professor Steven Fine talks about menorahs, his eyes light up. For this researcher, who is considered the greatest expert on Jewish candelabras today, the sacred objects are more than a reminder of the Temple that was destroyed 1,948 years ago.
"The Jews see the menorah as the ultimate Jewish symbol, and so do other peoples. It's no coincidence that it was chosen as the main element of the symbol of the State of Israel," Fine says.
Fine's love affairs with menorahs began in childhood. Growing up Jewish in the United States, he viewed the Jewish people's long history and renaissance in the Land of Israel through the menorah. His strong emotional connection could have been ignited through lighting Hanukkah candles; the nine-branched hanukkiah used during the holiday is after all a type of menorah. Hebrew reserves the word "hanukkiah" for Hanukkah candelabras – a word added to the dictionary by none other than Hemda Ben-Yehuda, wife of the resurrector of the Hebrew language, Eliezer Ben-Yehuda. She had picked up the term from Sephardi neighbors who used "hanukkiah" as opposed to "menorah," as was the custom among most Jews.
As the years went by, the study of candelabras become Fine's life work and field of expertise. Two years ago, he published "The Menorah," a summary of all his major findings. But he continues to chase down menorahs. Fine constantly receives reports about menorahs located throughout the old world, particularly in Asia Minor.
"One time, a rabbi came into my office and asked me if I knew about the synagogue in the city of Iznik [formerly Nicaea] in modern-day Turkey," Fine tells Israel Hayom.
"I said that I didn't and argued that there was no synagogue in Iznik. But the rabbi insisted that there was, and even showed me a slide of a photograph from the Iznik excavation that had been published in Germany in 1941, at the height of the war. The photo clearly showed a menorah, but who was thinking about synagogues in 1940s Germany?"
Socrates' contribution
Fine says that a few years ago, a stone was found in Laodicea, also in Turkey, that bore an image of a menorah beneath a carved cross. Researchers originally claimed that the combination of the Jewish and Christian symbols was an indication that Jews and Christians peacefully co-existed in ancient times, but the menorah and the cross actually tell of an attempt to convert the Jews, rather than co-existence.
"It was a familiar cultural trend in the ancient world. They would take a Jewish object and forcibly annex it to the new religion [Christianity]. Christians did the same to Roman pagan objects. They would take portraits of emperors or gods and draw crosses on their foreheads," Fine says.
Islam, too, tried to "borrow" the menorah from the Jews. At the end of the seventh century C.E., bronze Muslim coins bore an image of a menorah along with the words of the Shahada – "There is no god but Allah."
According to Fine, this was a Muslim response to the Jews' and Christians' claims of ownership of the Temple following the Muslim conquest of Jerusalem.
Depictions of menorahs have also been discovered in the Cairo Geniza, as well as in Jewish Spain, but they were most common in Roman times.
"Starting from the fourth century C.E., we see menorahs at the Tiberias hot springs, in Rome, in the Balkans, and in what is now Turkey. These places are far apart and Jews there spoke different languages (Aramaic, Greek, Latin), but still gathered around the same symbol. The natural conclusion is that the broad Jewish tradition of the time included the concept [of the menorah], and there weren't many other symbols that everyone agreed on," Fine says.
"I assume there were menorahs made of metal. But none have been found, and my assumption is based on pictures we have. A clay menorah from a later period has been found in the Rhine Valley. And starting from the fourth and fifth centuries, there were a lot of menorahs made from stone that have been found almost everywhere. The most beautiful one is a large menorah that stands about a meter [3 feet] high and was discovered in the ruins of a synagogue in the Hellenistic city of Sardis, the capital of Lydia in the Roman era. We even know that it was donated by a man named Socrates in the fifth century."
Menorahs multiply
With all due respect to archaeology, uncovering ancient remains is just the first step to understanding the past. Interpreting the findings is no less important, and sometimes even more so. Fine says that paradoxically, some examples show that the discovery of a menorah is an indication that a Jewish community was disappearing. At an excavation of one ancient city, a stone bearing the image of a menorah was discovered near the city gate. Unlike some who hurried to announce that a synagogue had once stood on the site, Fine declared the opposite. The stone had simply been used by the city's denizens to build up the lower section of the city, where water collected. The stone had been taken from a synagogue, but that very fact demonstrates that the house of worship was no longer in use and that the Christians' fierce attacks against Jews in Asia Minor in the fifth and sixth centuries were, sadly, successful.
Q: What connection do you see between the menorah and the cross?
"They are both tall, straight, and stable, and in both cases the symbol focuses on the upper part of the object. Clearly, Jews used the menorah in the same manner that Christians used the cross, and they were both fitting to be used as a sort of logo for each of these communities."
The menorah was certainly a successful symbol, but researchers have yet to agree on when, exactly, it became one. Some theorize that it began some 2,000 years ago. There is some evidence of that in a lovely mural of a menorah dating to the first century C.E. that was recently discovered at the ancient synagogue at Migdal.
The next findings date to the third century, and the gap can be explained by the general lawlessness that followed the suppression of the Bar-Kochba Revolt.
In any case, time passed and menorahs began to reappear, becoming much more common in the fourth century. This might have to do with the competition that developed between Judaism and Christianity, or the prosperity of the time. Either way, by the fourth century, menorahs were everywhere and had become the main Jewish symbol.
Q: Is it possible that the Romans established the menorah as a Jewish symbol, without meaning to, when they eternalized it on the Arch of Titus?
"The famous relief on Arch of Titus in Rome, which shows the victorious Romans carrying the objects of the Temple back to their land as booty, became a part of the collective consciousness much later, starting in about the 19th century.
"The Jews of Rome refused to pass beneath the arch because it symbolized the destruction of the Jewish [Temple]."
Seeing the full spectrum
Fine says the rabbis hated the Arch of Titus for other reasons.
"The menorah on the arch has no similarity to the menorah [as portrayed] in Jewish sources or in the Rambam's manuscripts, even though Rambam's writings make it clear he didn't know what the Temple menorah looked like and included no picture of it. The problem is that the Torah doesn't say what the base of the menorah should look like.
"The menorahs in the Temple – we can't know how many there were, exactly, but there were obviously more than one – were donated by the wealthy, some of whom lived outside the Land of Israel. They were provided with the vital parameters of how the menorah was supposed to look, the ones set down in the Torah, and the other elements might have been different."
Q: Still, what can we learn from the Arch of Titus relief?
"We can learn a lot from it. First of all, despite the prevailing belief, the relief was [originally] in color. I proved that in 2012; before that, I saw references to the menorah on the arch being in color in [Jewish literature]. At the same time, scientists began searching for color in other antiquities, at sites that we'd been used to seeing as colorless for generations – white or gray. I think that this is really a generational issue. Until a certain point, we lived with black and white TV and the idea of a world without color was something to take for granted. Research shows that until the 1960s, people in the U.S. would even dream in black and white. I found a group of scientists in Germany who specialized in searching for color in Roman works of art, and together we approached the Italian antiquities authorities," Fine says.
Some six years ago, following Fine's "assumption of color," the Italian authorities allowed an international team of experts from Germany, Italy, and the U.S. to investigate the menorah on the Arch of Titus.
"We looked for the gold of the menorah. The Italians were eager for us to find it, because it would be an international sensation," Fine says.
And indeed it was an international sensation. Traces of ocher were found on the menorah in the relief, proving that the builders of the arch had indeed included a gold menorah on it.
It is assumed that the table that appears in the relief was depicted in the same color.
"Theoretically, people before me could have discovered the color, too, if they had thought of it and used modern technology," Fine says. "But archaeologists were used to expecting finds without colors."
"After my discovery, a few told me that when they found colored artifacts, they would generally clean the color off because they were sure it was just another layer of dirt."
Contrary to expectations, Fine's team was barred any further access to the arch. So they resorted to recreating the colors on the basis of historical knowledge. The process of restoration and computerized processing of the famous relief allowed the experts to restore missing elements that had disappeared over time – parts of heads and legs of Roman soldiers.
Fine jokes that it was easy, and cheap, to boot – 24 legs cost him a mere $3,500.
Q: But the discovery of the color doesn't answer the main question – what happened to the captured menorah, and can it, and the rest of the objects taken from the Temple, ever be found?
"People are always asking me that. The answer is made up of two contradictions: The menorah is gone, and the menorah exists. When ancient Rome fell to the barbarians, all its treasures were stolen. The Goths, who conquered the city, took everything. It's no coincidence that all the glory of ancient Rome we know today is stones – the conquerors couldn't take the stones with them. But gold never disappears completely. They smelt it down and create something else from it. So the [gold] particles of the Temple menorah could be anywhere – in my wedding ring or any other gold object."
Q: So what are all the adventurers looking for the menorah supposed to do now?
"They'll probably keep looking, going off legends, and there are plenty of legends about it. A Jewish legend from the eighth century says that the menorah is still in Rome; [medieval Jewish traveler] Benjamin of Tudela tells us of a parochet [an ornamental curtain that conceal the Torah ark] from the Temple is kept in one of the churches in Rome; a Christian legend has it that the menorah made its way to Constantinople [now Istanbul], and might have been returned to Jerusalem from there. But these are all later legends, from the 19th century. After World War II, Professor Yohanan Levi gave a lecture in Jerusalem and mentioned the possibility that one menorah might have been transferred to the [Byzantine-era] New Church of the Theotokos in the Old City, but there was no basis for that [idea].
"We can't give up on the dream of finding the Temple menorah. The desire to approach it is something cultural and psychological that gives a sense of continuity. The menorah brings us back to our roots – Jews of all types can connect to it, and even the Christian world recognized it as a Jewish symbol. But the true continuity is given expression when the menorah is within us, in the memory of the Temple on Tisha B'av, in lighting Hanukkah candles, in the menorah of the Jewish people as the symbol of the state of Israel."
