Mysteries of the Menorah

In 2004, the two chief rabbis of Israel, Shlomo Amar and Yonah Metzger, traveled to the Vatican for a historic meeting with Pope John Paul II. An ambitious interfaith agenda had been planned for the encounter, but Rabbi Amar had more on his mind than religious dialogue. “I could not resist,” he told Israeli radio. “I asked them about the Temple vessels and the menorah.” In so doing, Rabbi Amar reflected a belief common among many Jews: that the solid-gold candelabrum taken by the Roman ravagers of ancient Jerusalem remains in the city that was once the heart of the empire.

There is, scholars have noted, no reason to think that the Vatican has been hiding the candelabrum these many centuries. All sources indicate that the seized Temple treasures were originally displayed by the Roman conquerors in an edifice called (in an antique instance of Orwellian usage) the “Temple of Peace.” The vessels were then taken from Rome when the city was plundered by the Goths in the 5th century c.e. The Vatican itself vehemently denies having any knowledge of the menorah’s whereabouts.

And yet “my heart tells me this is not the truth,” responds Rabbi Amar. Nor is he the only religious Jew whose heart dwells in longing memory both on the menorah and on the Temple from which its light once radiated to the world. Today, the site where the menorah proudly stood is an area physically empty of Jews, a fact commemorated every year on the ninth day of the Hebrew month of Av: the day on which, according to tradition, the First Temple was destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 b.c.e. and, half a millennium later, the even more magnificent Second Temple was sacked and burned by the Romans in 70 c.e.