The lights of the Menorah are beacons in the renewal of Jewish life in the Land of Israel. So it was only natural that with the hard-won independence in 1948, the Menorah was chosen by the founding fathers as the official emblem of the modern State of Israel.
The Menorah has accompanied the children of Israel for three-and-a-half millennia, throughout the Hebrew scriptures, into the New Testament, and onward in diaspora Jewish culture and tradition. It was first lit in the Tabernacle on the desert journey toward the Land of Promise, and its light illuminated the First and Second Temples. When the Roman general Titus took Jerusalem and destroyed the Second Temple, he was aware of the central importance of the golden branched candelabra. Titus triumphantly carried the Menorah to Rome as a symbol of the destruction of Jerusalem, the Holy Temple and the Jewish people.
But the lights of the Temple Menorah did not go out. Thousands of symbolic menorahs have been lit in Israel and in the Diaspora ever...
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Zechariah 4:6 is a fitting scripture as the Menorah is a symbol of the sevenfold Spirit of God who is described in Isaiah. “And the Spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD.” Isaiah 11:2
Learning the Moriah plant resembles the menorah reminds us that the Spirit of the Lord is bring many sons to glory, Heb2:10. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit, John 3:6. They are planted in the house of the LORD; they flourish in the courts of our God, Psalms 92:13.