by hadassah | Nov 17, 2015 | Greco-Roman Period, Talmud and Daily Life
In 1922, Nahum Slouschz, the first “Hebrew archaeologist,” associated the fine limestone menorah that he had recently discovered at Hammath Tiberias with supposed priestly behavior in that synagogue. Slouschz writes: “I could not doubt that we had found here a Menorah...
by hadassah | Nov 17, 2015 | Greco-Roman Period, Talmud and Daily Life
Beth Alpha Synagogue Mosaic Pavement: The Beth Alpha synagogue was discovered in 1929. The immediate response of scholars to the discovery of the Na’aran and Beth Alpha mosaics was to interpret them in light of Jewish literary sources and to compare these images with...
by hadassah | Nov 17, 2015 | Greco-Roman Period, Talmud and Daily Life
The popularity of the zodiac suggests that it was borrowed from the general context, but that its popularity in synagogues was related to the deep engagement of the Jews of late antiquity with the heavens, especially as given expression in a wide variety of ways in...
by hadassah | Nov 17, 2015 | Greco-Roman Period, Talmud and Daily Life
Here is the Zodiac panel, by Hammath Tiberias. One dark night in late May 2012, the Hammath Tiberias synagogue mosaic was vandalized by a group of irate ultra-Orthodox Jews. The 1,600 year old mosaics suffered irreparable damage.
by hadassah | Nov 17, 2015 | Greco-Roman Period, Talmud and Daily Life
Joan Branham has suggested that the synagogue “chancel screen” was related to the fence that surrounded the Temple of Jerusalem, beyond which gentiles were forbidden to enter. This relationship is in part linguistic, as the same word is used for the Temple partition...
by hadassah | Nov 17, 2015 | Greco-Roman Period, Talmud and Daily Life
In basilical synagogues, which date to the late fifth and sixth centuries, “chancel screens” served to enclose an often broad bema that stood before an apse on the Jerusalem-aligned wall. Within the apse stood the Torah shrine, and in some, one or more large stone or...
