The Kosher Bookmark: The Menorah’s journey, and films from old Poland

Dr. Dov Levitan of Ashkelon College and Bar Ilan University has penned a most learned essay themed to last week’s Torah reading of Bha’alotcha entitled, “On the Connection Between the Menorah and the Land of Israel.”

“The importance of the menorah in the context of the land of Israel is evidenced by the numerous places it was used as a motif in ornamentation of synagogues in Israel in the time of the Mishnah and the Talmud,” Dr. Levitan teaches. “Historical and archaeological research indicates that only after the destruction of the Second Temple did the seven-branched candelabrum become a widespread Jewish emblem of great symbolic significance.”

Today, we all know that the Menorah as depicted on the Arc of Titus in Rome is the centerpiece of the coat of arms of the State of Israel. This, according to Dr. Levitan, was adopted to symbolize the return of the menorah to the land of Israel, thus further underscoring the close connection between the Menorah and the newly reborn Jewish state after 2,000 years of exile.

“A straight line runs from the making of the Menorah by Betzalel ben Uri [as described in Shemot] through this week’s reading, which tells of the Israelites completing their preparations for the trek towards the land of Israel,” Dr. Levitan writes. All the rest is history.

Please Google “Bar Ilan Parashah” for more selections and options.

The YIVO research center has issued a notice informing of the video installation of an exhibit entitled “Letters From Afar,” at the Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw, through Sept. 30.

The exhibit will be based on home movies by Jewish immigrants in America visiting their hometowns in Poland during the 1920s and 30s. The films, which they carried back to America, were preserved to this day, some of the only motion pictures of pre-war East European Jewry now available, providing us with a snapshot of the diversity and richness of Jewish life in interwar Poland.

For more information, you can visit www.jewishmuseum.org.pl

My Last Word: For some fun and light reading, check out The Brooklyn Paper’s report, “If Knishes could tawk: Documentary explores the New York accent” by Jaime Lutz [http://bit.ly/119QrzE] and enjoy.