Ancient Synagogues as Indicators of Social Interaction

On October 21, 2010 I gave a presentation for the Summer Research Showcase entitled, “Was the Western Diaspora cut off from Israel and the Eastern Diaspora? A Case Study of Sardis and Hamath Tiberias: The State of the Research” The presentation was too large to upload, so I had to save in two parts. I hope it uploads properly Enjoy!
Presentation Part 1Presentation Part 2

It seems as though school just started and alas, we’re halfway through already! I entered my first meeting with my honors advisor with trepidation; I had the broken remnants of the research I had begun last year and a leading expert in the field of ancient synagogues had highly suggested that I change my focus as well as the synagogues to review from Ostia and Kfar Baram to Sardis and Hamat Tiberius (see my earlier posting). Professor Daise and I had a long discussion, weighing the pros and cons of accepting Professor Levin’s advice. I had stopped at Hamat Tiberius while I was in Israel and had photographed the sight and toured the national park. I had done some initial research on Sardis and I was fascinated, but I was disappointed at the prospect of writing on a site that I had not visited. In the end, we decided that Professor Levine’s advice contained merit and the final result would have more depth and carry more interest. Thus the focus of my project has shifted somewhat, although gentile interaction will play a part (especially at Sardis), the major thrust of the research will be on the continuity between these two synagogues in the fourth century C.E. and what that tells us about the state of Judaism at that time. The Israeli scholars Edreis and Mendel believe that as early as the first century C.E. the two Jewish Diasporas (Eastern and Western) had diverged so much that they weren’t even in direct contact. Here is a link to their article: http://www.tau.ac.il/law/members/arye_edrei/doron.pdf. It’s worth a read. Thus far, my review of Sardis and Hamat Tiberius has supported some of their lesser points, but not their final conclusions. More on that later.

As I am about to start school and begin the actual writing of my paper, I reflect on the summer I have had.  My summer was busy and exciting, and I’m glad to be returning to the relative normality of school life.  I learned a lot and not just about my project.   I hadn’t expected the increased level of difficulty caused by the almost five weeks of separation from my wife.  In an academic sense, I knew that I’d miss her, but I hadn’t expected the strength of that stress.  One learns much about vulnerability and trust.  Having to rely on complete strangers is a daunting task and I’m thankful for the safety I enjoyed.  In addition to my trips, my wife and I moved and I attempted to self-study Biblical Hebrew grammar.  While I didn’t get everything I wanted to accomplish done, on the whole, it was a productive summer.  Perhaps the best occurrence was that we found out that we are going to be parents in the coming year!  That bit of news added a whole humanistic vein to my research and I began to think of these sights and the events that occurred there through the lense of the lives of normal everyday families.

20 July 2010
On the way back to Jerusalem, stopped at Hamat Tiberius, the site of a fourth century C.E. synagogue.  Not much of the walls have survived, but the floor was quite magnificent!  A large circle with the elements of the zodiac with their Hebrew names around a depiction of the Greek god Helios formed the centerpiece of the floor.  Above and below it were mosaic depictions of the menorah and lions.  Elsewhere a dedicatory mosaic written in Greek was found.  One wonders just what sect of Judaism was worshipping here.  If those who worshipped here were not Rabbinic, they were in very close proximity to those who did follow the Rabbis.  Tiberius isn’t a very large town and while this synagogue was being used, the Sanhedrin, the Jewish religious legislative body was meeting in Tiberius!

20 July 2010

I was once told that bravery is not the absence of fear, but rather the mustering of courage to overcome that fear and complete the task at hand. I was very nervous about driving in Israel; I know that my nervousness was irrational, but it was very real at the time and I needed to overcome it. I picked up the car the evening before prior to my meeting with Dr. Levine. My first task was to fill it up with gas. In the U.S., that is a task akin to getting dressed or brushing one’s teeth – performed with little thought and often repeated…but try to do it when everything on the pumps are written in Hebrew and the attendant speaks mostly Arabic and only a little English. The Palestinian kid was very helpful and quite accommodating. On the way back, I had to fill up the car again and carried out the same procedure again, this time in a mixture of Hebrew and English.

I left the Albright at around 5;30 that morning and only getting lost once on the way out of Jerusalem, I made my way east towards the coast and then North into Galilee. Once I got out of the city, the roads were somewhat deserted and the landscape was rocky and sparse. Gradually I began to see dry and almost dead vegetation, which became progressively greener as I made my way further north, culminating in tree-lined hills nearer to my destination.

About an hour south of Tiberius I came to what looked like a tollbooth. (It was still early, probably around 7:30 a.m.) Two attendants were standing outside in vests and they greeted me in Hebrew. When I responded in English and they instantly switched to that language. They asked where I was coming from and where I was headed and then asked for my passport. They were unarmed (or appeared to be so) and it was only at this point that I realized that I was at a military checkpoint. They opened the gate and instructed me to pull into a small parking area to the side. I did so and was approached by several other people, these were carrying machine guns. They were really just teenagers, gun-toting teenagers. Their demeanor was cheery and they were friendly; all in all, I cannot complain of my treatment in the least, but I was a little freaked out by the principle of the whole thing. I was instructed to open my hood and trunk and all four car doors and exit the vehicle, bringing with me any bags I might be carrying. I sat on a small bench as they put my belongings through a metal detector. Outside, they walked around my car with a German Shepherd and manually searched under the seat, in the glovebox, etc. I kept thinking, “Oh no! I bet I crossed over some border or something…” When I inquired, a female soldier pointed into the distance and told me that there was a Palestinian village in that direction.

I got lost in Tiberius and as I wound further into the hills of a residential area, I finally stopped when I saw an older gentleman by the side of the road. After the requisite “Atah medaber anglit?” (“Do you speak English?”), he responded in a clipped accent, “Some.” He asked where I wanted to end up and I told him I needed to go toward Tsfat (I had to change highways there). He told me, “You are going the wrong way. Turn around and follow me and I will direct you out.” He was an immense help and I realized that I need to be nicer to those pesky tourists that converge on Williamsburg!

I got lost again in northern Galilee and this time, there was no one around the signs were only in Hebrew and Arabic (once I left the main road). I called my contact in Jerusalem, Dr. Sy Gitin and read him the Hebrew letters and he translated for me.

Finally I found Kfar Bar’am National Park. I paid the entrance fee and climbed the steps towards the ancient ruins and there it was right in front of me! After looking at so many pictures, it was surreal to actually be gazing at the real thing! I’ve included some of the pictures I took that day of Kfar Bar’am and I’ll tell you about the second site I visited in my next entry…

19 July 2010

Having arrived in Israel and gotten a sherut from Ben Gurion to the Albright Institute in East Jerusalem, I settled in and spent the majority of the previous day (Sunday, 18 July) catching up on sleep. I performed some research and determined that Khirbet Shema would not serve my purposes for my paper. The synagogue on that site is turned on its axis, very unique for a synagogue in Galilee or elsewhere and thus I felt that perhaps it was unwise to use it as an exemplar. I decided at that point to concentrate solely on Kfar Bar’am, a more typical Galilean type synagogue found in Northern Galilee, about three kilometers from the Lebanese border.

The afternoon of the 19th, I had an appointment to meet with Professor Lee Levine of Hebrew University. He set the location to be the Aroma Coffeehouse just across the street from the University. I did a double-take when I saw the name of the location and my initial reaction was, “Oh no! He’s in the U.S. and we’ve gotten our wires crossed (due to our own coffeehouse of a similar name just two blocks from William and Mary)!” I hailed a taxi and arrived in good time.

We had a very stimulating and encouraging conversation. Professor Levine is a wonderful person and expressed a genuine interest in both my project and my future plans. He suggested that I spend six months at a Conservative yeshiva to get a better background in Rabbinic, even if I do end up specializing in the pre-Rabbinic period. As he put it, “You want to at least know what Jewish scholars are talking about when referring to Rabbinic arguments.” He seemed to like my research and he was familiar with each of the synagogues to which I referred. He did however complicate matters: He suggested that I not write my paper on the synagogues at Ostia and Kfar Bar’am. The first problem he illuminated was the nature of the contention over the dating of the Ostia synagogue. While I think that this could perhaps add pages to my finished product, he had a point: the volatile nature of the current scholarship on the site could make my research obsolete shortly after completion. The second thing Dr. Levine pointed out was that neither of these synagogues had much decoration which would perhaps make them difficult topics about which to write. He suggested a comparison of the synagogue at Sardis (in Turkey) and the synagogue in Hamat Tiberius. I was disappointed; I had really wanted to do my project on two synagogues that I had personally visited, but I must admit that there is merit to his argument. This is the first topic for discussion with my advisor, Professor Daise, when he returns to William and Mary. Both of the synagogues he suggested are contemporary and both have extensive mosaic floors. I determined to visit the Hamat Tiberius site the next day on the way back from Kfar Bar’am…but that is another entry.

16 July 2010

On my way to Israel, I stopped in the UK for one full and two partial days.  I stayed with friends which was very enjoyable.  On Friday, I took the train up to Oxford to meet with Dr. Martin Goodman at the Oriental Institute.  I purposely arrived early in the morning (my meeting wasn’t until 4:00 p.m.).  I enjoyed walking around the town and had a tolerable Cornish pasty.  To kill some time, I went to the Ashmolean Museum; it was wonderful!  I especially enjoyed the Egyptian galleries.  I bought a book of the table graces of the various colleges of Oxford and Cambridge and retired to the museum’s café read it while sipping tea (Earl Grey) and eating a piece almond raspberry tart.  My meeting with Dr. Goodman went very well.  I’m very appreciative that he took the time to meet with me.  I also presented my research to him and he was complementary of my research and gave me some pointers regarding the danger of applying rabbinic principles on pre-rabbinic practice and the proclivity of archaeologists to apply a religious connotation to every hole in the ground, identifying it as a mikvah.  He encouraged me to continue studying early and pre-Rabbinic Judaism and perhaps to continue with this topic into graduate school.  He also signed my copy of his “Rome and Jerusalem.” J

Sunday, 30 May
On this day we went to Ostia via train. We began by taking the bus to the Pyramid of Cestius and ate breakfast across the street from it. The train station was located right nearby. Ostia was definitely a highlight of the trip. Most of the buildings are preserved up to the second story. One really gets a glimpse of daily life of the average man by walking the same streets with their enormous grain warehouses (Ostia was the port by which the grain supply got to Rome), storefronts and eateries. One of my fellow students put it best when she said, “I like that when you visit these sights, you find that the Romans were very different from us.”
I was able to give my lecture today on the object of much of my study over the last semester: the ancient synagogue at Ostia. The first difficulty was finding it and the second was getting there. The building is located well outside the city walls and unless a person was specifically looking for it, I’m not quite sure they’d find it. We had to blaze new trails through waist- and chest-high weeds, all the while watching out for holes and pits. One of our group was especially susceptible to allergies and was in misery by the time we reached our destination; kudos to her for being such a trooper!
The ruins were discovered in 1961 quite by accident as work crews were building a highway, which now lies nearby. Squarciapino, the original excavator dated the building to the end of the first century C.E., a fact that has been hotly contested since.

Here is a comparison I drafted showing the chronological differences between Squarciapino in her original report of the site and L. Michael White in his more recent excavations [White, L. Michael, “Synagogue and Society in Imperial Ostia: Archaeological and Epigraphic Evidence” The Harvard Theological Review. 90.1:23-58 (1997)]:

Squarciapino’s Chronology:

1. “First century: the opus reticulatum structure, consisting of three rooms (D, B/C, and G) was built de novo as a synagogue; it included hall D, lined with benches and the tiered bema on its western wall.

2. Late second to early third centuries: Remodeling of the synagogue included division of the areas in B/C and the construction of the Torah “ark” mentioned in the Mindi(u)s Faustus inscription.

3. Fourth century: substantial renovation produced the present plan, with the addition of the rooms A, E, and F along with the interior decoration.

4. Late fourth century: Further remodeling and addition of the present Torah aedicula.

White’s Chronology:

1. Beginning 2nd century C.E. – Construction of insula complex as part of general expansion of the Porta Marina

2. Mid to late 2nd century C.E. – First renovation for synagogue use; no major structural changes or modifications. Form of a collegial or dining hall. Under patronage of Mundi(u)s Faustus. There are two phases of renovation (2a and 2b), 2b formal synagogue structure, although 2a may have served as a synagogue.

3. Late 3rd to early 4th century C.E. – Major renovation project; expansion. Mundi(u)s Faustus inscription; full Torah aedicula an afterthought (C3)[replacing stairs?]. Torah ark of MF (located on western bema in D remained in use.

4. Mid or later 4th century C.E. till the end of use of the building – further embellishment and decoration.

Implications of White’s assumptions:
a. Ostia serves as an indicator of the development of synagogue liturgy. Intro of built-in Torah shrine generally a later innovation in synagogue architecture and liturgy (not seen before the last quarter of the 2nd century C. E. and is not common until the middle of the 3rd. This is consistent with the progression of other Dispora synagogues
The later renovations significantly altered the spatial orientation of community worship. Reorientation on east-west axis (i.e. towards the east) in Phase 3 (Late 3rd to early 4th centuries). These changes, although late, are consistent with patterns of reorientation in other synagogues.

b. Major renovation projects at Ostia suggest substantial social energy by the Jewish community and an active role of patron figures. Cf. Mundi(u)s Faustus. (Phase 3, Late 3rd to early 4th century C.E.)
Monumental changes in building suggest that the community itself was growing in both numbers and economic strength and was finding a high degree of social acceptance in the local environment.

Since the publication of his article, Dr. White has continued to excavate the synagogue and surrounding area. Although the synagogue is outside the wall, White seems to believe that more buildings existed around it. Thus, it wasn’t as isolated as one would believe when visiting site today. Dr. White has also suggested a later date for the building of the insula, part of which became the synagogue: 3rd Century at the earliest. What I have not been able to ascertain is when Dr. White believes that the building became the site of Jewish worship. He is scheduled to present his findings on the Ostia synagogue at the annual conference of the Society of Biblical Literature in Atlanta this November. L-rd willing, I hope to go.

Tuesday, 1 June

Today was perhaps one of the most exhilarating days I’ve had. We began out day by going to the Villa Torlona, the home of Mussolini, to see the Jewish catacombs found underneath. This was extremely ironic since Il Duce was a collaborator with the Nazis. We were given hardhats and lanterns and were led to the entrance. We could only spend about 30 minutes down in the catacombs due to the Radon and Carbon Dioxide that seeps in underground. The passages were dark and smelled musty; by the end of our tour, it was becoming somewhat difficult to breathe. This site was absolutely amazing! My pictures don’t do it justice! The catacombs were discovered in 1918 and cover 140,000 square feet over seven levels. They were used between the second and fifth centuries. The one room we went to was decorated with two menorahs and what appeared to be the symbols of the holiday Sukot, the etrog and the luluv. These symbols identified the deceased as Jewish, but did not necessarily tie him to Israel. The catacomb was used from the second to the fifth centuries C.E., so we may be seeing here the distancing of belief from place, which was such a component of Judaism in the earlier phases. While down in the catacomb, I chanced to look to my left and saw the top portion of the skull of a small child, not six inches in diameter. This thrilling event was a stark reminder that these were real people down here. What was the story of this child? I cannot imagine the grief his or her parents must have felt to bury one so small. The mortality was so much higher then, but the grief was still very real I’m sure. See if you can tell which picture is of this skull.

Our group fully realized the unadulterated state of the Villa Torlonia catacombs when we visited the Christian Catacombs of San Sebastiano later that day. These catacombs are open to the public and were sterile by comparison. Everything was swept and clean and all the remains from the exposed shelves were removed and reburied. The guide that led our tour rushed us through with a German tour at our heels. There is talk of opening the Villa Torlonia catacombs to the public once they have been able to handle the radon problem and the archaeological authorities have been in contact with the Jewish community of Rome regarding the removal and reburial of the exposed remains. I, for one, hope that this doesn’t happen and that the raw integrity and beauty of the place would remain.