Hanukkah Lamp

Cast and engraved brass
Prague, Czechoslovakia, 1927
B’nai B’rith Klutznick Collection of the Skirball Museum, gift of Louise Oestreicher, 1969, 2018.5.1

This lamp is one of a group of Hanukkah lamps made in 1927 to commemorate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the founding of the Prague B’nai B’rith Lodge in April of 1902. The bench-style lamp, copied from a seventeenth century Italian prototype, features a lion poised in the outline of a crown. The Hebrew inscription reads: “to kindle the Hanukkah lights.” Podwal inserts olives into the candle holders, a tangible reminder of the source of the small amount of oil used to rededicate the menorah in the Temple in Jerusalem that miraculously lasted eight days.

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