Object Name: Hanukkah lamp
Subject: Hanukkah lamps
Filigreed Hanukkah lamps like these are known as Ba’al Shem Tov lamps because they were created in the region of the Ukraine where the Ba’al Shem Tov (Rabbi Israel Ben Eliezer, founder of the Hasidic movement) lived. Fashioned with silver-thread lacework, the lamps are all made to look like elegant sofas or benches, and their candle sockets like a row of tiny oil jars on a shelf. The lamps differ from one another in terms of the decorations on the back plate, which include a row of columns, a small Torah ark, and the eastern wall of a synagogue. The back plate is sometimes surmounted by birds, or a large crown flanked by lions, or by a crowned eagle, emblem of the Russian Czar.
