A Rabbi's Guide To The Land Of Israel
Jerusalem of Gold of Copper & of Light
"The Scroll of Fire"

The Scroll of Fire is appropriately situated at the top of the Jewish National Fund Martyr's Forest which is the largest memorial to the Holocaust in the world. I find it particularly meaningful because it is a  living memorial coposed of 6 million trees-- 4.5 million pine trees (one for every adult who perished in the Holocaust) and 1.5 million cyprus trees (one for every child who perished in the Holocaust).

The Scroll itself is an awesome piece. The sheer size of it is impressive (notice how small the person standing in the crevice appears compared to the towering sculpture), but the detail of the artwork and the story it relates is even more impressive. The artist, Nathan Rappoport, made this while living in a sanitorium in Italy. He had already lost one lung to tubercluosis and yet even there, even then, he continued his work. The sculpture is not cast but hand-hammered copper.

As you walk around the piece you read the history of the Jews etched in permanent bas-relief from the tragedy of the death camps in Europe to the desperate attempts to find refuge in Palestine. At times the figures seem to float one into another until the final section depicts Jews living secure in their own homeland, from the people of the Kibbutz to the soldiers struggling to re-unite Jerusalem.

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Temple Israel Jerusalem