Chanukiahs on view in a Christie’s Chanukah lamp sale in New York City in December 2025. Photo courtesy of Anna Rahmanan.

By ANNA RAHMANAN JNS

Several menorahs from the early days of the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design—the school founded in Jerusalem in 1906 and named for the biblical Tabernacle architect—are at the center of a sale of 35 Chanukah lamps at the auction house Christie’s. The menorahs, which Christie’s is exhibiting at its Rockefeller Center lobby in Manhattan and which it intends to show until Dec. 12, come from the Judaica collection of Max N. Berry.

The auction house has been showing the Chanukah lamps to private collectors since Nov. 18 and plans to continue to do so until Dec. 22. Chanukah this year is from the night of Dec. 14 until Dec. 22 at night.

Israeli Art

Berry, who was born in Cushing, Okla., in 1935, grew up in Tulsa and has “had a long career as an attorney in both public service and in private practice,” the auction house said . It added that he supports more than 80 nonprofits and has held board-level positions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution and Museum of Art, among other institutions.

The 35 lamps on sale date largely to the 19th and 20th centuries, are made of brass and silver and come from Europe, America and Israel. There are also modern sculptures in hammered iron by Israeli artist David Palombo. “We assembled a group of lamps, many hand-selected by Mr. Berry, that we believe reflect the breadth and depth of his collection,” Casey Rogers, head of sale at Christie’s, told JNS during a walkthrough of the exhibit.

An early 20th-century silver lamp i s an “exquisite example of silversmithing by artisans in the Bezalel School, utilizing a variety of techniques and materials,” according to Rogers. The menorah uses a technique called filigree, in which twisted wires create patterns. Two lions flank a six-branched Temple menorah, which has carnelian red stones to suggest the lights. An inscription below in Hebrew states that “these candles are holy,” and in the background, two crowned figures—perhaps references to Temple priests—hold torches, readying to light the menorah.

Rogers noted the “fine chasing of the priestly figures to the background, contrasting beautifully with the applied filigree to form the lions in the foreground.”

She added that the Israeli school has “a robust history of pioneering design and aesthetic at the beginning of the 20th century.”