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March 09, 2008
Raiders of the Lost Menorah
When I visited Rome in 1989, I thrilled at the site of the menorah carried by the victorious legionnaires on the Arch of Titus. It marked a Jewish defeat, to be sure, but the fact that 2,000 years later we are still around to look at it transformed the defeat into a victory. The "Am Yisroel Chai" graffiti on the arch didn't hurt, either.
Now, Meir Soloveichik has a long and riveting article in Commentary on the image and use of the menorah. He writes,
But if the menorah has indeed been returned, and if the defeat wrought by Titus has been reversed, why then do observant Jews continue to mourn what Titus brought about? Why does the ninth of Av, which embodies the twin ideas of exile and dispersion, need to be observed at all?In answering this question we need to examine the enigmatic image of the menorah more closely, and revisit a mystery that has confounded many over the centuries.
It's well worth printing and reading.
Van | 03/09/08 at 07:09 PM | Categories: Doing Jewish
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From the Article:
"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."
Gibbon wrote about the fate of the plundered treasure of Rome:
“the whole design was defeated by the premature death of Alaric, which fixed, after a short illness, the fatal term of his conquests. … By the labor of a captive multitude, they forcibly diverted the course of the Busentinus, a small river that washes the walls of Consentia*. The royal sepulcher, adorned with the splendid spoils and trophies of Rome, was constructed in the vacant bed; the waters were then restored to their natural channel; and the secret spot, where the remains of Alaric had been deposited, was forever concealed by the inhuman massacre of the prisoners, who had been employed to execute the work.”
* A city in Calabria 150 mi SE of Naples
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| March 10, 2008 12:27 AM
