This week, The Prophet Zacheriah will be read, and in that segment, he mentions a vision of a golden menorah, and since this portion is read on Shabbat Chanukah, it was considered an appropriate link by many, ignoring that the current yearly cycle of Torah reading goes back less than 200 years.
But let's talk about the Menorah for a moment.
There is an organization in Israel called the "Temple Institute". It's goal is to get ready for the coming of the Messiah and the building of the Third Temple. It has garments already sewn for the High Priest, vessels, but what it really wanted to do was to make a menorah, one that was exactly as it was described in the Torah.
Of course, the Torah doesn't give a lot of details on design, just on materials. There are some general design information, such as how many arms, and that type of thing. But even the keepers of the Oral Tradition were not quite sure if the shamesh, the place where the initial lighting is held, was in the middle, or at the ends. There was even the question as to how the holders of the flame should be designed. Should they be shaped like flowers?
But with a pure heart and Godly purpose, the administrators of the Temple Institute petitioned for donations, because the one thing that they needed was what the Torah called a kikar of pure gold, which has been determined to be 1,530 ounces.
And they got it!
Their next step was to get designers to produce a form that was consistent with the traditional view of the Menorah. And while they tried several, they all failed for the same reason.
Pure gold collapses when very little weigh is applied.
So they contacted engineers who analyzed the problem, and they came up with a solution: create a form that is not-gold to support the gold that will be on top of it.
The result was a menorah of 100% pure gold, but was really only 30% gold overall.
This menorah was completed just before Chanukah in 2007.
But everyone was happy. The Temple Institute announced that it had a menorah for the Third Temple ready for use, and put it in a giant display case. It is rather tall and imposing. I am uncertain if they made it 70% bigger to still use up all of the gold, or if they just kept the residual gold for other projects.
But everyone seems to be happy with the menorah. And nobody is asking, "But, if you failed to make the one in the Torah, what does it say about the authenticity of the text?"
As with the story of Joseph, if your dream won't come true, manipulate the circumstances so that it appears to mostly come true.
Here's a meme that reflects this:
And here is a video by the Temple Institute talking about the construction and moving of the menorah:
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