Illuminating Form: Artists and Architects Reimagine the Menorah

It’s not uncommon for sacred objects to be re-envisioned with modern imagination. In the Jewish tradition, Sol LeWitt once designed a minimalist kippah, and Arman created a sleek, sculptural mezuzah—but it’s the menorah that has quietly inspired an impressive lineage of artists, designers, and architects. They see in its branching arms not only ritual function but a powerful framework for sculptural invention.

The menorah—a seven-branched candelabrum—embodies divine light and creation, while its Hanukkah counterpart, the nine-branched hanukkiah, celebrates the Festival of Lights and commemorates the miracle in which oil for the Temple menorah burned eight days instead of one. It embodies both faith and form—its glow a metaphor for endurance and renewal.

Artists such as Salvador Dalí, Arnaldo Pomodoro, and contemporary sculptor Peter Shire have all bent the menorah’s silhouette into daring renditions. Shire, the Los Angeles–based artist famed for his Memphis Group designs, crafts whimsical, vividly colored menorahs that dance between geometry and chaos—shattering linear tradition into jaunty diagonals and playful planes.

Michele Oka Doner, the visionary artist known for her nature-inspired bronzes, once created a menorah that feels as if freshly unearthed from an ancient site. Adapted from one of her existing candelabras, it seems to whisper across eras, linking spiritual ritual and archaeological memory. 

Nicki Green, meanwhile, reimagines domestic ritual through the lens of queer identity. Her glazed earthenware and soldered copper tulipières—with branching necks and vessel-like cavities that recall menorahs—blur the line between sacred object and sculpture. 

Renowned Israeli artist Yaacov Agam holds the Guinness World Record for the world’s largest menorah—a 36-foot-tall, 4,000-pound steel creation once displayed in New York City. More monument than object, the towering Agam Menorah transforms a public plaza into an open-air sanctuary of light. His smaller, gold-plated editions distill that larger-than-life sentiment into the intimacy of the home, infusing the candle-lighting ritual with kinetic shimmer and spiritual rhythm.

American artist Tobi Kahn, whose ceremonial objects appear in the Jewish Museum, the Guggenheim, and the Boca Raton Museum of Art, continues this dialogue between sculpture and devotion. His menorahs—crafted from wood, glass, and bronze—exude quiet gravitas, evoking landscapes, constellations, and vessels of remembrance.

For artist Hannah Polskin, light becomes both memorial and message. Her crystal menorah sculpture—encrusted with 12,500 hand-applied Swarovski crystals—was designed after her family’s loss in the October 7, 2023, Nova music festival massacre. Part beacon, part act of healing, the piece radiates resilience; its mirrored surface amplifies every flicker. All profits go toward the Tribe of Nova Foundation, which supports survivors through therapy, aid, and memorial projects.

The late Gloria Kisch brought her post-Minimalist rigor to the menorah, casting bronze and steel pieces that strip away ornament to reveal bold, architectural purity. Her menorahs stand less as ritual items than as declarations of structure—faith refracted through abstraction.

The design world’s luxury houses have long followed suit. Mario Buccellati’s midcentury sterling-silver menorah exemplifies Italian refinement—at once weighty and whisper-light in its restraint. Parisian silversmith Christofle, founded in 1830, approaches the menorah as it would a fine piece of heirloom serveware: silver-plated, perfectly proportioned, a study in balance and brilliance. These are menorahs meant to glow on the dining table or glint behind glass.

Architects have also reinterpreted the menorah through the lens of structure and symbolism. Daniel Libeskind, Richard Meier, and Frank Lloyd Wright all channel the interplay of shadow and proportion at an intimate scale. In 2010, Libeskind curated “Light and Shadows,” an exhibition of forty historic menorahs from the New York’s Jewish Museum, which holds the world’s largest collection, numbering more than a thousand pieces.

Contemporary designers like Michael Aram, Karim Rashid, and Jonathan Adler carry the menorah into the present with wit and wonder. Aram’s organic cast metals, Rashid’s fluid futurism, and Adler’s playful Pop sensibility ensure the menorah continues evolving across form, faith, and time. Each piece becomes both object and idea—a spark bridging art, ancestry, and the luminous future it promises.

Hanukkah begins December 14.