“Contemporary Israeli concerns for the State of Israel and the Jewish people are projected onto the Arch, and new myths — like the one that claims the Temple menorah is stored at the Vatican ...

It operates from Vatican City, and Moskoff is its director. A French government lawyer named Michel Calvo had read Moskoff’s earlier book about the lost artifacts of the Second Temple.

The Temple menorah disappeared after vandals sacked Rome in 455, and legends persist that it remains hidden away in the Vatican. JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century.