Water Rockets and Raven Chasers

Iron roof tile with spikes for the
roof of the Sanctuary Building.

One of our family's pastimes is launching homemade water rockets at the park, and over the past few years we have also been bringing the rockets to our shul's annual barbecue where they have become an unofficial part of the day's activities. About a week before the big day we were out in the front yard doing some test flights when one of the rockets hit an ill wind and was blown off course. This is not really a problem since they are so light that they roll, or bounce, off any roof they land on. Usually.

Omni Wheels in the Temple

---

SUMMARY Omni wheels might be what King Solomon had in mind when he built his laver stands with "a wheel within a wheel."

---

Basic design of a First Temple laver stand.

In the First Temple, King Solomon built ten moveable stands [מְּכֹנוֹת] which supported the ten lavers [כִּיֹּרֹת] that stood in the Courtyard. These stands are described in I Kings 7:27-37 in very cryptic language, although the basic idea which emerges is that the stand was a type of wagon with four wheels and the laver rested on top of it. One drawback of the standard wagon design is that it can only be rolled forward or backward but cannot be steered. If the stand did need to be turned one way or the other, it would have to be done by pushing or pulling on one end, a difficult task considering that the stand was made of copper and quite heavy — just the laver itself, when full of water, weighed over 5000 pounds! While it is possible that a method of steering the stand was built into the design, the verses do not seem to indicate that this was so.

Plating the Sanctuary Building with Gold

The interior of the Sanctuary measured 20 amos wide (from north to south) and 61 amos long (east to west). In the First Temple this room had been plated with gold and magnificently decorated, but the original builders of the Second Temple could certainly not afford such a luxury. At some point during the Second Temple era, however, the following incident occurred which allowed for this chamber to receive the gold plating it deserved:

View of the Chamber of Hewn Stone

Based on the dimensions worked out in the last two posts, here are some renderings of the interior and exterior of the Chamber of Hewn Stone. In the first picture we are looking at the unconsecrated half of the chamber where the court would meet. A convening of the full court for judicial proceedings was rare, and most of the time the court was involved in confirming the pedigrees of Kohanim and Leviim who came to work in the Temple. I have set up tables and chairs for this purpose where candidates would present themselves before the judges.

A Kohen confirms his pedigree with a judge of the Sanhedrin court.