10 Lirot Hanukkah - Damascus Lamp

Issued as part of Israel's long-running annual Hanukkah commemorative series, this 1974 piece draws on a lamp from the Jewish community of Damascus — a tradition of featuring diaspora Hanukkiot from collections held at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. The series, which began in 1958, was specifically conceived to document the material culture of dispersed Jewish communities, each year selecting a lamp from a different country of origin.

The Damascus Jewish community, one of the oldest in the world, had by 1974 largely emigrated following decades of deteriorating conditions under Syrian rule after 1948.