How did the menorah become one of the fundamental symbols of Jewish identity? This question and related ones are the subject of a new exhibition, titled The Menorah: Cult, History, and Myth, jointly held in Rome at the Vatican Museums and the Jewish Museum of Rome. Michael Frank relates some of the history:

Consider some of the most basic facts about the object, for starters. Why seven branches? [The ancient Roman-Jewish historian] Josephus mentions the planets (six in orbit around the sun); but there is also, he adds in a later passage, “the dignity of the number seven among the Jews”—derived from the six days of creation plus the Sabbath. Why lilies and pomegranates but no almonds? This would seem to be a confirmation that Moses’ menorah was, in fact, melted down after the destruction of the First Temple, and a new one, in a revised form, was fabricated later. Josephus describes the oil lamps lined up “in one row”; yet lampstands that were made around the time of Moses were more often arranged in three dimensions, with individual lights circling a single bowl. . . .

And then there is the fascinating puzzle of the menorah’s base. Josephus asserts that the Romans had modified it so that “its middle shaft,” he says in his account of the procession, “was fixed upon a basis.”

The menorah that was rescued from the Second Temple after it was set on fire by one of Titus’s soldiers—pointedly, the story goes, not by Titus himself, who was said to be against its destruction (see his troubled expression as depicted in two narrative paintings by Nicolas Poussin from the early 17th century)—stood up on a tripod, a detail confirmed by dozens of representations on view in these exhibitions. However, the menorah on the Arch of Titus is set in a hexagonal ferculum, or box, that was carved with animals and mythological creatures, in obvious defiance of the biblical injunction against graven images.

Yasir Arafat was often quoted as saying that his “strongest weapon is the womb of an Arab woman.” That is, he believed the high birthrates of both Palestinians and Arab Israelis ensured that Jews would eventually be a minority in the Land of Israel, at which point Arabs could call for a binational state and get an Arab one. Using similar logic, both Israelis and their self-styled sympathizers have made the case for territorial concessions to prevent such an eventuality. Yet, Yoram Ettinger argues, the statistics have year after year told a different story:

Contrary to the projections of the demographic establishment at the end of the 19th century and during the 1940s, Israel’s Jewish fertility rate is higher than those of all Muslim countries other than Iraq and the sub-Saharan Muslim countries. Based on the latest data, the Jewish fertility rate of 3.13 births per woman is higher than the 2.85 Arab rate (since 2016) and the 3.01 Arab-Muslim fertility rate (since 2020).

The Westernization of Arab demography is a product of ongoing urbanization and modernization, with an increase in the number of women enrolling in higher education and increased use of contraceptives. Far from facing a “demographic time bomb” in Judea and Samaria, the Jewish state enjoys a robust demographic tailwind, aided by immigration.

However, the demographic and policy-making establishment persists in echoing official Palestinian figures without auditing them, ignoring a 100-percent artificial inflation of those population numbers. This inflation is accomplished via the inclusion of overseas residents, double-counting Jerusalem Arabs and Israeli Arabs married to Arabs living in Judea and Samaria, an inflated birth rate, and deflated death rate.

The U.S. should derive much satisfaction from Israel’s demographic viability and therefore, Israel’s enhanced posture of deterrence, which is America’s top force- and dollar-multiplier in the Middle East and beyond.