Knesset Menorah

31°46′42″N 35°12′18″E / 31.7783°N 35.2051°E / 31.7783; 35.2051

The Knesset Menorah (Hebrew: מנורת הכנסת Menorat HaKnesset) is a bronze menorah that is 4.30 meters high and 3.5 meters wide and weighs 4 tons. It is located at the edge of Wohl Rose Park (Hebrew Gan Havradim, "Rose Garden") opposite the Knesset in Jerusalem. It was designed by Benno Elkan (1877–1960), a Jewish sculptor who escaped from his native Germany to the United Kingdom. It was presented to the Knesset as a gift from the British Parliament on April 15, 1956, in honour of the eighth anniversary of Israeli independence.

The Knesset Menorah was modelled after the golden candelabrum that stood in the Temple in Jerusalem. A series of bronze reliefs on the Menorah depict the struggles to survive of the Jewish people, depicting formative events, images and concepts from the Hebrew Bible and Jewish history. The engravings on the six branches of the Menorah portray episodes since the Jewish exile from the Land of Israel. Those on the central branch portray the fate of the Jews from the biblical return to the Land to the establishment of the modern State of Israel. It has been described as a visual "textbook" of Jewish history.^[1]