Maimonides’ Straight-Branched Menorah: A Samaritan Parallel

Abstract

The straight-branched pattern of the so-called “Rambam menorah” is today a ubiquitous presence on the Jewish street. This symbol of the Chabad Lubavitch movement has increasingly found a place among Jews across the ideological spectrum as a cipher for the biblical menorah. Samaritan art provides a surprising parallel to Maimonides’ schematic menorah drawing and its reception – limited as that was beyond the small circle of Yemenite scholars of Maimonides before the modern “publication” of a manuscript facsimile, its popularization in rabbinic circles by Rabbi Yosef Kapach, and its wide dissemination by the seventh Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, and his followers.