Tamid Photo Essay in Lego® #4

 The Shot

All In

The Kohanim gather to conduct a lottery.

The Story

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Many of the daily tasks in the Beis Hamikdash were assigned via lottery. The Kohanim would stand around the Memuneh and stretch out one of their hands toward him. He would announce a large number (much higher than the number of Kohanim present) and then go around the circle counting outstretched fingers until the number was reached. The Kohen where the counted ended was the winner of the task. Before the lottery began, the Memuneh would ask one of the Kohanim to take off his hat. The hatless Kohen would be the starting point and was easily identifiable in case the count needed to be restarted for any reason.

The Setup

This shot is modeled and rendered in Bricklink Studio (read more about this process in my introduction). I did create a custom Kohen hat (modeled in Cinema 4D and imported to Studio). 

The Kohanim are standing in the Beis Hamoked with the Chamber of Lambs across the top of the frame, the Chamber of the Makers of the Lechem Hapanim along the bottom, and a large gateway along the left side that leads into the Azarah. A close inspection will reveal that the two chambers are not the same size since the Gemara tells us that the room for the lambs was larger than the others. An even closer inspection will reveal that in between the setup shot and the final shot I changed the design of the doorframes on these smaller chambers. The greebles along the top of one of the chambers are tests I was doing for decoration. The gate to the Azarah is modeled in Chrome Gold. The two chambers in the other corners of the Beis Hamoked are removed temporarily (while I was trying out different camera angles) and the reason for the missing floor tile near the fire pit will be explained in the next post.

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