As can be seen in the photograph, the opening page of the primer shows on the left, the Hebrew aleph-beit, and on the right, a very clear depiction of a round branched menorah.
The hand written primer was first made some 100 years before the Rambam's time, but was still in use during Rambam's years in Cairo. Of interest for our purposes is a grade school Hebrew primer found in the geniza. Included in the geniza were hand written documents by the Rambam. The discovery of the geniza, in the synagogue's attic, during a restoration of the building in the 1890s has enabled scholars to reconstruct the daily and communal lives of the Jews during that era. In practice, the Ben Ezra geniza was used by generations of the local Jewish community for all books and documents, business transactions and personal letters.
A geniza is a repository of Hebrew books and documents that contain G-d's name in them and therefore cannot be discarded, but are instead put in storage, or sometimes buried. The Ben Ezra synagogue is also famous for having housed one of the most extensive and historically important genizas ever found in modern times. Whether these two menorahs, (now electrified, as can be seen in the photograph), or similarly shaped ones once stood in the synagogue during Rambam's day is uncertain. A contemporary photograph shows two six branched menorahs standing before either side of the Aron Hakodesh - the Ark of the Torah. In the 1980s the Egyptian government restored the synagogue. The synagogue was built in the year 882, nearly 300 years before the Rambam would pray in it. The Menorah: Straight or Round Branches? The Rambam: One Last Wordĭuring the latter part of his life the Rambam lived in Cairo, Egypt, where he prayed, studied and taught at the Ben Ezra synagogue. Top left: The frontispiece of the Hebrew primer showing Hebrew letters to the left and a round-branched menorah on the right. Bottom left: A model showing people emptying the geniza upon its discovery in the 1890s. The book, which appears in Hebrew only, can be purchased here.Ībove picture: Right: The Ben Ezra synagogue where Rambam prayed. The pictures and research used throughout our Menorah feature all come from the book "מנורת זהב טהור," "A Menorah of Pure Gold," written by Rabbi Yisrael Ariel, based on the research of the Temple Institute. Rabbi Ariel has thus determined that either menorah - round-branched or straight-branched is kosher and fit for use in the Holy Temple. Nevertheless, there are distinguished rabbis of recent generations who opine that the Temple menorah must be made with straight branches.Ĭuriously, the highly detailed description of the menorah in the Torah text itself omits any reference to the shape of the six branches. This opinion is further strengthened by certain contradictions that appear between the Rambam's written description of the menorah and his schematic design.
Rabbi Yisrael Ariel, founder of the Temple Institute, and the world's foremost expert on the Holy Temple, surmises that the Rambam didn't intend for his simple drawing to be a literal representation of how the menorah should appear, but rather was a schematic drawing intended to clearly show how the different details of the menorah were laid out. It is clear that the Rambam was constrained by the small dimension on the page in which he allowed himself to place the drawing. The picture in question is approximately 10圆 centimeter. Based on the explanation of the Rambam, the triangles are meant to represent the "goblets" of the Torah description, and the circles are meant to represent the "knobs" of the Torah description. As can be seen by the image below, the sketch of the menorah, which is rather crude, is made up of lines, circles and triangles. The rabbis who are of the opinion that the menorah must have straight branches base their opinion on a drawing found in the Rambam's magnum opus, Mishnah Torah, written in Maimonides' own hand. The Menorah: Straight or Round Branches? The Rambam Above picture: Left, the original drawing from the hand-written copy of the Rambam's Mishnah Torah Middle: The Rambam's drawing reinterpreted by Rabbi Yosef Kapach, foremost expert on the writings of the Rambam Right, a copy of the Rambam's drawing, by an unknown artist, with certain changes, studied by the Jews of Yemen.
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