Yeah, This Is the Nerdiest Menorah Lighting Ceremony Ever

On top of things like quantum levitation, gesture recognition, and sophisticated missile targeting, Israel can now add a new technological milestone to its long list: the lighting of the menorah in miraculous Rube Goldberg fashion, with the help of helium balloons, dominos, nitroglycerine, a robot, a sufganiyot (ceremonial jelly donut), and a number of other tchotchkes.

The definitely not-safe-for-Shabbat menorah lighter was devised by Eyal Cohen, Tomer Wassermann, Matan Orian and Dvir Dukhan, a group of engineering post-docs at the Technion, Israel’s MIT, where the Iron Dome missile defense system was pioneered and a slew of tech gurus were minted. See a making-of video below, and hope that a version comes to the States when Technion sets up shop alongside Cornell at that futuristic campus they’re building on Roosevelt Island.