Chabad Rabbi of Italy Decries "False Menorah"

Crown Heights Rabbi Levi Garelik joined his father Rabbi Gershon Mendel Garelik to protest the "false Menorah" as depicted in the Arch of Titus in Rome.

Rabbi Levi Garelik, a Rov in Crown Heights and Brussels, has dedicated a class back in 2012 to discussing how the Menorah looked like in the Beis Hamikdash in Yerushalayim.

The class comes in light of a trip he made with a group of Lubavitchers to the Arch of Titus, a 1st-century honorific arch located on the Via Sacra, Rome, that commemorates the Siege of Jerusalem in 70 AD.

It was to there that his father and Chabad Shliach of Italy, Rabbi Gershon Mendel Garelik has pointed to and declared it a "false Menorah."

The elder rabbi said the rounded Menorah that the Roman Emperor Titus has looted from Jerusalem was not the one that was used in the Temple which had diagonal branches.

Back in 1982 the Lubavitcher Rebbe has highlighted this opinion in a series of talks, proving that the real shape of the Menorah was not the one usually depicted in pictures.

Equipped with sources in Rambam and Rashi, Rabbi Levi Garelik presents here the full argument for how the "real Menorah" looked like.