“Light up the nights, the candles burning bright…” ♫ ♪

What the title of my blog post alludes to is the upcoming holiday of Hanukkah. Hanukkah is celebrated by lighting a Menorah (or candelabra) all 8 nights of the holiday. The Jewish Museum on Fifth Avenue has the largest collection of Menorahs of any other museum, and they will be on display until January 30. The museum hired architect Daniel Libeskind to design the installation, and called it “A Hanukkah Project: Daniel Libeskind’s Line of Fire”. Libeskind designed a red base for the menorahs that zig zags in different directions, representing flames of lighted Hanukkah candelabras. “Line of Fire” refers to Libeskind’s 1988 sculpture. The Jewish Museum hired Libeskind to create this exhibition installation because “he has such a strong sense of memory, place and sensitivity for history in his work,” said Susan Braunstein, curator of Archaeology and Judaica.
There are 40 lamps that will be on display, that vary from modern, such as Karim Rashid’s “Menoramorph”, to Baroque repousse pieces. There is also a variation between oil lamps versus candles. According to Braunstein, typical households use oil, whereas Temples and Synagogues use candles.
Some of the Menorahs will be on sale at the Museum’s shop. For those on the run, and those who don’t have considerable amounts of money to spend on a Hanukkah lamp, can invest in the iMenorah iphone app which allows one to “light candles”. Although, be aware that this does not actually exempt one from the actual action of lighting the Menorah – in case you’re Jewish and wondering…
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