NINE

JUDAIZATION

THE DIFFUSION of the synagogue is evidence for judaization. By this I mean the reemergence of some version—altered but recognizable—of the ideological complex described in part 1 of this book as the ordering principle of the public life of most Jews. These qualifications are necessary because we have no way of knowing, for late antiquity as for the Second Temple period, how Jews actually lived their day-to-day lives, to what extent they conformed to Pentateuchal prescription. The synagogue remains and other artifacts provide excellent evidence for the symbolic importance of the Torah, but for only certain aspects of the lives of the Jews.

How are we to reconcile the claim that in late antiquity Judaism served to integrate the Jews with the obvious diversity of the synagogue remains, as well as the fragmentation of Jewish religious life implied by their very existence? I would argue that, as in the case of the literary remains of the Second Temple period, here too the diversity of the particular artifacts has drawn attention from the larger pattern. Clearly, by about 500 almost all Jewish villages, though they regarded themselves as religiously discrete, participated in a common ideology; all utilized surplus capital to build and maintain synagogues, all had placed the Torah at the the physical and perhaps symbolic centers of their world, and all regarded themselves as constituting “Israel,” or rather an agglomeration of discrete Israels. We may not be able to speak of a Jewish state or polity, but we can speak of the beginnings at least of a Jewish world, a collection of little Jewish polities loosely bound together into a community of shared symbols and discourse that, however diverse in their details, nevertheless served to mark them off from their (by now) mainly Christian neighbors.

The Centrality of the Torah

We have already seen that the reading or study of the Torah may not have been an original part of of the synagogue’s program. Whether the earliest communities possessed Torah scrolls and, if so, whether they kept them in the prayer houses, is unknown. Presumably, they were fantastically expensive, especially if written on parchment, which is, once again unknown, and this may argue against their general diffusion. It is certain, though, that by the first century Torah reading was widespread as part of the synagogue service, though there is no way of knowing if it was yet universal and if the scrolls were often kept in the synagogue. Josephus even claimed that the practice of Torah reading was instituted by Moses (AgAp 2.175). Josephus also reported that there were many holy books among the spoils of Jerusalem, which Titus allowed him to keep (Life 417–18). Were these all from synagogues, or does the story suggest that the well-to-do priests and functionaries of Jerusalem might own copies of their own (which should hardly come as a surprise)? Did their post-Destruction successors, among them the rabbis, also possess personal copies of the holy books?

The Mishnah, we have just seen, believed the synagogue’s sanctity was derived entirely from the Torah scroll—a view apparently shared by some members of John Chrysostom’s Antiochene flock in the late fourth century.1 This implies that all synagogues possessed scrolls. The Mishnah likewise takes it for granted that the Torah was read in the synagogue on Sabbaths and holidays (M. Berakhot 4:4; M. Megillah 3), though it does not yet describe a regular weekly lectionary cycle, still less a regular cycle of supplementary readings from the Prophets, though it presupposes the practice of prophetic readings. It was only at the very end of antiquity that the lectionary cycle began to acquire some regularity in Palestine, and even then, there were many local variations.²

There may be little reason to doubt the implications of the Mishnah in this case, and in fact no scholars have done so. But perhaps some qualifications are in order. The first is that we simply cannot be certain, in the absence of external confirmation, that Torah reading was universally practiced and that all synagogues possessed scrolls. Once again, the expense of the Torah scroll may have prevented some communities from owning one, though they may still have aspired to do so. It may be best to suppose that by the third century, the Torah scroll was deemed a regular feature of the synagogue, even if not every synagogue had one. (Certainly in the fourth and fifth centuries the image of the Torah shrine was a fixed component of synagogal iconography; see below.)

In the fourth to sixth centuries, as the synagogue itself was reaching its maximal diffusion in the Palestinian countryside, the scroll was gradually given an increasingly central place in the structure of the synagogue—a development paralleled in the Diaspora in the same period. That is, though it was uncommon before the fifth century for synagogues to be built with fixed Torah shrines, many older synagogues were then renovated to have one installed.3 By the sixth century, furthermore, many synagogues were built with apses—a feature borrowed from the basilical church but adapted for use as a niche for scrolls. Many such synagogues also had chancel screens, sometimes finely carved in marble, in front of the apses (another borrowing from ecclesiastical design), often produced in the same workshops as the church screens. The precise interpretation of this development is unclear; perhaps it is even unwise to attempt one.⁴ It seems obvious, though, that the construction of a special area for the scroll, the gradual establishment of zones of special sanctity around it, and the concomitant limitation of the congregation’s access to it mark a transformation in the popular conception of the Torah and/or of the notion of sanctity.

There are other indications, too, that the Torah came to possess an ever increasing numinosity, reflected in regularly performed ritual. Philo and Josephus claimed that the Torah was studied in the synagogues. Though this claim normally appears in an apologetic context (the Jews, unlike the Greeks, actually know their laws because they are obliged to study them every week), its persistence at least raises the possibility that it was true for some places, as is weakly confirmed by the fact that in Alexandria, the Torah was apparently read in Greek alone, the language of common speech. But the Palestinian Talmud and other late antique Palestinian writings indicate that something very different happened in the synagogues in the fourth century and following: not study but a highly ritualized performance.⁵ The reader would read a verse from the scroll (recitation from memory was forbidden); another functionary,⁶ who was required to stand beside the reader, would then improvise (not read, though written texts were available) a translation into Aramaic. The Talmud itself regarded this practice, called targum, as a ritual reenactment of the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai.⁷ This is why the reader was not permitted to act also as translator: “just as the Torah was given through an intermediary, so it must also be read through an intermediary.” This is why, also, the rabbis were less concerned (not to say unconcerned) about the text’s comprehensibility than about the correct performance of the rite. When Rabbi Simeon, the safar (i.e., probably schoolteacher but also general religious functionary) of Tarbenet, was asked by the villagers to read half verses of the Torah in the synagogue, rather than full verses, in order to help the children understand, he refused, with the approval of the rabbis, and so was dismissed (Y. Megillah 4:5, 75b, and see above).

This story once again reminds us not to be too quick to assume that rabbinic practices were universally followed. Even in this Talmudic tale, the villagers are obviously not committed to the rabbinic practice of Torah reading, and we have no way of knowing how the Torah reading was performed where targum was not practiced. But in synagogues with fixed shrines, raised platforms in front of them, and chancel screens, we can be fairly certain that it was performed.

We may also note here, while reserving detailed discussion for later, one of the most striking characteristics of the novel liturgical poetry of the sixth century, the piyyut. In the liturgically central part of the payyetanic performance, the qerovah (i.e., the versified version of the tefillah or amidah)—complex and allusive manipulation of the week’s Torah lection has replaced all other concerns. To put it differently, in the qerovah the Torah reading has encroached on and almost overwhelmed the rest of the liturgy.

The Emergence of a Jewish Iconography8

Every ancient synagogue that has come to light, provided its remains are sufficiently extensive, was more or less elaborately decorated, whether primarily on its facade or within.⁹ The fragments of painted plaster that have been found in some excavations remind us that though they do not survive, in some synagogues walls and ceilings, not just pavements, may have been decorated. The famous painted synagogue of Dura Europos may thus have had counterparts in Palestine. Though some of the surviving decoration resists even the most elementary interpretive efforts (what are we to make of Odysseus on the floor of the Bet Leontis, or the gladiator on the floor of the Meroth synagogue,10 images not uncommon in domestic decoration but, it seems to us, quite out of place in a synagogue?), much of it is part of a fairly limited iconographic repertoire that, however precisely we explain it, indubitably functioned to mark as “Jewish” the place or the object in or on which it was found. Of this repertoire, some is straightforwardly Jewish in content: glyptic and mosaic images of menorot, lulavim, Torah shrines, incense shovels, or biblical scenes (also used by Christians)—the binding of Isaac at Sepphoris and Bet Alfa, Noah’s ark at Gerasa, Daniel in the lions’ den, much damaged but still discernible, at Susiyah.¹¹ Other components of the iconographic repertoire—pairs of lions guarding narthices or arks, zodiac circles with Sol Invictus at the center inscribed in squares featuring personifications of the seasons at the corners—have no obvious Jewish content but appear repeatedly in synagogues and rarely or never elsewhere.¹² Still other common images appear occasionally in synagogues but are not restricted to them, for example, not quite nature scenes—mosaic “carpets” of animals (some of them saddled or caged) and vegetation framed by grape vines, derived from the still life, agricultural, and hunt scenes that decorated the floors and walls of the houses of wealthy Romans—Nile scenes, and so on, which are common also in the decoration of churches and private houses. These images are in fact more typical of church than of synagogue decoration, for in the preiconoclastic period, Christian iconography still consisted very largely of themes taken over from domestic decoration with little alteration.¹³

There had been a paltry and enigmatic Jewish iconographic language in the Second Temple period and immediately following, all the more difficult to interpret for being largely nonrepresentational. This featured such items as rosettes and arches and perhaps the menorot that decorated some lamps produced in Judaea immediately after the Destruction. But the first appearance of parts of the later repertoire is over the ark of the synagogue of Dura Europos, constructed in 244 C.E. A bit later, menorot were commonly carved on the walls of the catacombs of Bet Shearim, along with a repertoire of other items that differ both from the later synagogue iconography and from the funerary iconography of the Second Temple period.

Traditionally, the very existence of representational synagogue decoration—featuring images derived from Jewish religious life and biblical stories and also borrowed from pagan, secular, and Christian sources, all jumbled together—has been regarded as problematic. How could Jews ignore the Second Commandment, or why, in a more nuanced version of the question, did they now interpret it laxly after having interpreted it rigoristically in the Second Temple period? How could they juxtapose lulavim, or biblical scenes, with images of Sol Invictus derived directly from the iconography of late Roman paganism? How could descendants of the Jews who had risen up against Herod when he installed a golden eagle over the entrance to the Jerusalem temple install stone carvings of eagles over the entrances to their own synagogues?

These conventional concerns do indeed merit attention. Clearly, general Jewish attitudes toward representation were very different in late antiquity from what they had been in the first century and earlier. But we must remember the implications of the revised chronology of the synagogue. Although there are few traces of representational art in Jewish Palestine in the first century, the second and third centuries were rich in it, and it was without exception pagan in character, as we have seen. What we need to understand, then, is not so much the emergence of representational art among the Jews, already an old story by 350, as the emergence of a Jewish representational art.

Ancient Jewish Art in Context

It is generally acknowledged that most ancient synagogue art is symbolic. Whereas Roman temples were often decorated with reliefs more or less naturalistically portraying scenes of sacrifice, the images used to decorate synagogues (and churches) bear only an oblique relationship to what occurred in the buildings.14 Apart from the function that the synagogue art shares with the naturalistic decoration of pagan temples—marking the “otherness,” the concentrated sanctity, of the space they occupy—it seems intended to convey a religious message that stands outside of the images themselves yet was somehow intelligible to the congregants who viewed it.¹⁵

How precisely are we to recover this message? Here consensus breaks down. Programmatic readings of ancient synagogue art usually depend on texts. Of course, texts are indispensable for the interpretation of ancient art, especially the symbolic decoration of synagogues and churches: it is mainly texts that provide us with entrée into the ethos and cultural assumptions of the patrons, producers, and viewers of the art. Furthermore, the special status of some texts for Jews and Christians, and the fact that the art frequently refers to these texts quite directly, make recourse to them inescapable. Any approach to the interpretation of such pavements as those at Sepphoris, Bet Alfa, Gaza, Susiyah, and many others must begin with the Bible. But there are many nonbiblical elements in these pavements, and in any case it seems clear that the pavements are more than simply evocative of the biblical text. Consequently, many art historians depend on additional corpora of texts to supplement the Bible when they interpret the art. The nearly universal reliance on rabbinic texts for this purpose raises special problems.

Interpreters of Jewish art have as a matter of course adopted the methods used by classical and early Christian art historians. The latter concern themselves mainly with elite products—monuments produced by emperors and senators, art that decorated public and private buildings commissioned by, at the very least, local aristocrats, the decorations in churches like those at Ravenna or in the great monastic centers. (Scholars rarely attempt more than the most modest and general interpretation of nonelite products, such as the mosaic pavements of small parish churches.) Emperors, senators, decurions, the leading bishops, and ascetics were the people by whom and for whom the surviving classical and patristic literature was produced. It is perfectly reasonable to assume that the literature reflects, if only roughly and indirectly for the most part, the cultural assumptions of the patrons, and in some cases even the audiences, of the art. Its interpretation remains a complex and necessarily imprecise undertaking, but it is not, obviously, a misguided one.

But there are no ancient Jewish counterparts to the Ara Pacis, the Ravennate churches, or the monastery of St. Catherine at Mount Sinai, and the domestic art commissioned by the curial classes of the cities of high imperial Galilee so obviously participates in the ethos of empire wide Greco-Roman culture that it is not clear in what sense it can be considered Jewish. By contrast, no patrons of late antique Jewish funerary or synagogue art can be definitely connected to any corpus of literature except the Hebrew Bible. There is no way to know, a priori, whether the intentions of the patrons and the assumptions of the viewers are best sought in the Palestinian Talmud, the midrashim, the Hekhalot, the piyyut, Sefer Harazim, and related magical material, the late antique apocalypses, or indeed the works of Philo and the later Platonic tradition. Or they may have been incorporated in literary works that do not survive, in a body of lore that was never committed to writing, or all of the aforementioned. Some of these works may provide evidence for the variegated, even conflict-ridden reception of the art (for late antique Jewish literature is very diverse) but not the motivations of those who commissioned it.

There are strong reasons for rejecting a rabbinizing approach to the interpretation of the synagogue art, reasons provided mainly by the synagogue remains themselves. It is well-known that the ancient synagogues often violated rabbinic rules by facing in the wrong directions, having their entrances in the wrong places, being decorated with images forbidden by the rabbis, such as those of the ubiquitous seven-branched menorah or of gods holding scepters and orbs.16 But such violations may not in fact be terribly significant in themselves: some can be explained away by clever exegesis of rabbinic laws, and the rest might be attributed to the ignorance or recalcitrant eccentricity of a handful of synagogue patrons.¹⁷

A more compelling objection to rabbinizing readings of the synagogue art is that the rabbis and the synagogue builders had very different notions of the sacred—a suggestion that may be understood as a modification, a toning down, of Goodenough’s extreme contention that the synagogue art and the rabbinic texts are evidence for utterly different varieties of Judaism.¹⁸ The very idea, apparently universal among the Jews by about 500, that a synagogue should be housed in a special building, indicates the distance of the villagers from the rabbinic ideology discussed above. In fact, the essential “otherness” of the synagogue was overdetermined; it was marked not only by the monumentality of its structure but invariably in other ways as well. Every synagogue so far discovered is decorated, either on its facade or within, with iconographic indications of sanctity. In some cases these decorations are not specifically Jewish in content. Eagles, wreaths, and vines, carved on the facades of several synagogues, were also the standard decoration of the Syrian pagan shrines surveyed early in the last century by Butler, and they seem to be markers of a kind of generic sanctity.¹⁹ Even geometric mosaic carpets common in synagogue decoration and simple wall paintings resembling the so-called first style of Pompeii, for which there is some evidence, mark the synagogue interior as “other” because of their disorientation of the viewer’s sense of space and surface.²⁰ Types of decoration that in their original domestic context had been expressions of a mildly subversive wit became in late antique synagogues and churches adjuncts of spirituality.

Most synagogues, though, utilized elements of the specifically Jewish iconographic language just discussed. Whatever precisely the elements of this language may have meant to the people who used and contemplated them, they clearly served as indications of the sacred; it would, I hope, be uncontentious to suggest that the sanctity of the synagogue was somehow embodied in its decoration, that it was not only the Torah scroll that made the place holy, as in the rabbinic scheme, but the character of the synagogue’s structure and art.

Some of the motifs used in synagogue decoration—especially menorot, arched structures, and lulavim—were also used to decorate small objects such as stone plaques, lamps, glasses, plates, and rings. Such items may often have been used in synagogues, and they were certainly used in tombs; sometimes the same motifs were carved on tombstones. If these items were also used in homes, which is unknown but not unlikely, they would have lent them a kind of diffuse sanctity. For the rabbis, the home was ritually charged: blessings and prayers were constantly recited, meals echoed, if only faintly, the sacrificial cult, commandments were observed even in the bedroom. We do not know if nonrabbinic Jews shared this view, but to the extent that it is foreshadowed in the Hebrew Bible and was common, mutatis mutandis, in the Jews’ Christian environment,21 the notion that a diffuse sanctity pervades the home is likely to have been widespread and thus marked, in nonrabbinic style, iconographically.

In sum, there is little justification for a rabbinizing approach to synagogue art, which is not to deny that rabbinic texts may occasionally help explain peculiar details of the art. The explosive diffusion of the synagogue itself, no less an overdeterminedly holy place than the consecrated church (though there is no evidence for a formal ritual of synagogue consecration), warns us against a rabbinizing approach. The synagogue’s sanctity was inherent and constituted in part in the structure and decoration of the building. All of this is dramatically at odds with what we know of the rabbis’ ambivalence (not straightforward hostility) to figurative representation.²² But more to the point, it reflects an attitude to the sacred that has little in common with the rabbis’ formalism.

On the Program of the Sepphoris Mosaic

In the following pages I discuss one aspect of Ze’ev Weiss’s reading of the recently discovered mosaic pavement of the Sepphoris synagogue. This is the most fully elaborated programmatic reading of a synagogue mosaic that I am aware of.23 Indeed, many treatments of synagogue art are content to describe, compare, and (often dismissively) discuss the “meaning” of individual motifs, especially zodiac circles. In view of what I have already written, there is little reason to discuss the consequences of Weiss’s assumption that the rabbinic corpus constitutes the best set of texts through which to view the Sepphoris mosaic—which is not to deny the importance (indeed, in a limited way even the validity) of Weiss’s work on the pavement. Rather I want to examine a more fundamental assumption, which he shares with most interpreters of ancient Jewish art.

Weiss argues that the pavement conveys a clear, simple message. The panels nearest the entrance, containing scenes from the book of Genesis, “symbolize the promise for the future implicit in the story [of the patriarchs].” The central panel, the zodiac circle, “symbolizes God’s power as sole ruler of the universe and creation.” As to the remaining panels, which depict a series of little scenes taken from the account of the consecration of the Tabernacle in Exodus 28 and following, and, closer to the bema, the familiar image of an ark flanked by menorot and other ritual objects:

The … combination [of images on the panels] represents man’s basic needs—bread, fruit and meat—and within the context of this structured iconographic scheme, conveys a clear eschatological message. These elements were selected … to express the hope that just as God had filled the world with abundance in the past, by virtue of the Temple cult, so would He redeem His people in the future, rebuild the Temple, cause the Shekhina to dwell there, and return prosperity to the world. This eschatological message, which expresses the world view and religious aspirations of the Jews of the Land of Israel, is a theme that runs throughout the rich fabric of the entire mosaic. (Weiss, Promise and Redemption, p. 38)

Let us leave aside some of the particular problems with this reading—its romanticism (all the Jews of the Land of Israel?), its inevitability (is it possible to imagine an identifiably Jewish iconographic scheme that, in a post-Destruction context, could not be read as suffused with the pathos of loss and therefore as looking ahead to redemption?). Let us attend instead to a more basic issue. What, specifically, is the epistemic status of Weiss’s reading, and of others like his? What, precisely, is he trying to reconstruct? Is he suggesting that the intentions of the patrons alone are recoverable, while tacitly admitting that the reception of the art may have been complex and shifting? Or is he arguing that the art had a stable meaning, known not only to the patrons but to all viewers, and somehow transmitted across the generations in which the synagogue was in use?

If, as seems to be the case, Weiss is suggesting that the pavement had a single stable meaning, then he is necessarily supposing that its elements constituted a kind of code, that the iconography had a fixed set of significations readily accessible to all worshipers. This could be the case if we were to suppose that the art was somehow closely connected to the ritual and liturgy of the synagogues, so that these functioned to convey the meaning of the art to the viewers. The supposition of a connection between art and liturgy is by no means implausible and will be explored below. But it seems overwhelmingly unlikely that the Palestinian liturgy of late antiquity was stable in any way. On the contrary, the great period of synagogue construction was also, as far as we can tell, a period of unprecedented liturgical dynamism, characterized in some places by gradual rabbinization, probably almost everywhere by a tendency toward professionalization, and the development and spread of the piyyut, among other things; in any case, according to the consensual view, even the rabbinic liturgy of the fifth and sixth centuries was characterized in Palestine by a marked lack of fixity.24 Not only did the liturgy vary from community to community, but even within communities, prayer leaders were expected to improvise their prayers. If the mosaics conveyed a single message to their viewers, then that message must have been fixed by some means other than the liturgy.

However, the variety of late antique synagogue decoration, the fact that identical pavements have never yet been discovered, argues strongly against the supposition that the art constituted a kind of iconographic code. Many pavements have a roughly similar design, and many more use similar motifs in distinctive and unpredictable ways. That the same are used individually to decorate small objects and tombstones in itself implies the existence not of a code but of a loosely constituted and unstable symbolic language, multivalent or vaguely evocative rather than straightforwardly denotative. A useful counterexample is the Mithraic tauroctony, the complicated scene of the god slaying a bull found, with only minor variations, at the focal point of every Mithraic shrine in the Roman Empire. The elements of this remarkably consistent image obviously do constitute an iconographic code, known in principle to every initiate (if not to modern scholars), which almost certainly refers to the central mysteries of the cult. Conversely, the stability of the Mithraic iconography implies the essential unity and stability of Mithraic ritual.²⁵

We may illustrate the implausibility of Weiss’s ascription of stable meaning to the iconography by examining his treatment of one section of the pavement. His interpretation of the panels drawn from the Abraham stories as suggesting God’s promise to Israel, and thus his interpretation of the pavement as a whole, depends heavily on his identification of the heavily damaged panel nearest the narthex as the angels’ visit to Abraham and Sarah. It must be admitted that this identification, suggested to Weiss by the juxtaposition of the angels’ visit and the binding of Isaac in the apse mosaic of the Church of San Vitale in Ravenna, is very attractive. The only readily construable piece of the panel shows the top of a hooded, almost certainly female head (which is almost identical to the [female] personification of Winter in the zodiac panel), situated in a rectangular structure. Although this structure seems more like a doorway than a tent flap (as required by the biblical story, and in contrast to the more obviously tentlike entrance Sarah stands in at Ravenna),26 there is only one other biblical story in which such a scene would be expected, that I can think of—the story of Jephthah and his daughter, that is, the other biblical narrative, aside from the binding of Isaac, of human sacrifice. Though Jephthah’s daughter, like the female figure on the pavement but unlike Sarah, lived in a house, not a tent, I hesitate to suggest that the mosaicist was trying to represent this strange and not readily interpretable biblical tale, though the possibility should perhaps not be excluded; nor should the possibility that the damaged scene is not drawn from a biblical story.

This fragmentary scene is, as already suggested, crucial to Weiss’s interpretation of the pavement as a whole. Without the angelic visitation, there is no divine promise, only a scene of primeval sacrifice or of a righteous man’s submission to God’s will. (Indeed, even the angelic visitation should perhaps be understood as an image of offering.) Plausible as Weiss’s identification of the scene on the fragmentary panel is (and he must wish it was more than merely plausible), his interpretation of the juxtaposed scenes of the angelic visitation and the binding of Isaac, though perfectly acceptable in itself, strikingly contradicts his own assumptions about how the art conveyed meaning. The same scenes, for example, must have had a different sense in Ravenna, where they constitute part of an utterly different kind of decorative program. And how does the absence of the “promise” theme affect the meaning of the pavement of the Bet Alfa synagogue, which is otherwise very similar to that of Sepphoris? If two pavements use almost the same repertoire of images to tell different stories, if, that is, the images themselves have no stable meaning, how can Weiss’s reading of the Sepphorite art be correct?

A New Programmatic Reading

The evident instability of the images’ meaning suggests the need for a different type of programmatic interpretation, more modest in its claims and more complex in its results. We may as well admit at the outset that we cannot recover the intentions of the mosaic’s patrons. We do not know who they, or the other congregants, were, what, if anything, they are likely to have read or heard read aside from the Hebrew Bible, what it was that shaped their intellectual and religious environment. The synagogue art cannot be approached in the same way, with the same pretense to certainty, as the contemporaneous art of such imperial foundations as the churches of Ravenna or monastic/pilgrimage centers such as St. Catherine’s near Mount Sinai, whose social, intellectual, political, and religious contexts are relatively well known. Though the quantity of surviving late antique Jewish texts is considerable, none of these texts can be connected with certainty to the synagogue art, as already suggested.

Nevertheless, it may be worth trying to suggest a kind of minimalistic programmatic interpretation, which the texts are likely to have appropriated and reacted against. After all, everyone, patrons and viewers, saw the same sweep of images when they entered the synagogue. The impression created by this experience may have been relatively unspecific—the pavement may first of all have produced a mood, not told a story. But the mood, if not the story, was shared. How then to proceed?

The Physical Setting

The interiors of many synagogues, which often required artificial lighting, were riotous.27 Floors and walls were decorated with brightly colored mosaics and paintings, columns were topped with ornately carved capitals, and the congregants faced elaborate stone arks sometimes, though apparently not always, covered with embroidered cloths28 and flanked by metal or stone menorot.²⁹ For city dwellers, such a concentration of visual stimulation was not unfamiliar; bathhouses and other public buildings, and some private houses, were similarly colorful. The fifth-century Sepphorite could see in his city not only his rather magnificent little synagogue but also the “Nile Festival” mosaic in a public building (whose function is unknown); and perhaps the probably fourth-century Orphic mosaic in a nearby private house was still visible.³⁰

Villagers, though, lived surrounded by nature, a delicate and tenuous green a few months of the year, but otherwise severe brown and gray. There may have been a few large houses in the village, but most dwellings were small (dwarfed by the synagogue) and undecorated.³¹ To enter the synagogue was to leave the world of the village and enter a place alive with color and filled with evocations, first of all, of Jewishness, and of a general numinous sanctity, but also (and we should not minimize this element) of wealth and urbanity. Even in an urban setting, such as Sepphoris, the synagogue interior featured a remarkable and distinctive assemblage of visual stimuli. The art of the synagogue would never have seemed routine to its viewers: it was always the object of careful scrutiny.

Apparently the Galilean-type, and some other, synagogues had relatively simple interiors but grand gabled façades. In some cases these were decorated with friezes of the standard Jewish symbols, while elsewhere the decoration consisted of such less obviously Jewish symbols as eagles, wreaths, vines, animals, or mythological creatures.³² The monumental doorway was thus a kind proscenium arch, which framed the “otherness” of the interior space and, where the lintels were decorated, gave the congregant some notion of the character of this otherness—its “Jewishness” or its general sacrality, for eagles, wreaths, and so on, were standard features of the decorated facades of southern Syrian temples. Such synagogues (which one entered facing the back of the hall, so that the first thing to come into view were benches where fellow congregants sat) usually were paved in stone, not mosaic, but may have had frescoes on their walls.33

Other synagogues were entered at the rear of the hall. It is not clear whether in such synagogues wooden benches, or perhaps straw mats, were set on the mosaic pavement of the nave facing front, or whether people sat only along the walls or in the aisles.³⁴ A priori, the latter option seems more plausible, if only because it would restrict wear to the relatively inexpensive and easily repaired geometric aisle mosaics. Sepphoris may be a special case because it had only a single narrow aisle, which may not have been able to accommodate all the congregation; some may therefore have had to sit (or stand?) in the nave. However, the rather crude repairs to the nave mosaic are concentrated in the area in front of the bema, where liturgical activity was naturally concentrated; there is no evidence of wear elsewhere, as far as I can tell. This seems to imply that the nave was not much used by the congregation for seating or standing, unless it was protected by a carpet or mats (but even so, the mosaic would have become worn). In any case, one certainly saw, upon entering, first of all the narthex mosaic, then, if the nave was clear, a sweep of images leading up to the officiant, who stood before the ark at the front of the hall. This sweep of images is, as suggested above, an important stabilizing element in the interpretation of the pavements because it is an inescapable sensory reality, visible to every congregant, regardless of status, as long as the pavement was in place.³⁵

In many such synagogues the nave floor featured a design that had three fixed elements: the zodiac circle toward the center of the nave and, at the front, a scene containing a Torah shrine, flanked by menorot, lulavim, etrogim, and incense shovels, with additional elements in some places (e.g., Daniel in the lions’ den at Susiyah and Na’aran). The third shared scene, of lions or other large animals protectively flanking an inscribed wreath, appears in different places in the pavements. At Hammat Tiberias and Bet Alfa, the animals are closest to the narthex, but at the latter, where they are a lion and a bull, they rather oddly have their backs to the entrant, and additional lions, if that is what they are, guard the ark, while at Sepphoris, the lions guard not the entrance but only the ark, and they hold bull’s heads in their paws, a motif used also in the lintel frieze of the synagogue of Horvat Ammudim. Such animals are often designated “heraldic” in the scholarship but may be more accurately regarded as apotropaic or protective. It may be relevant to mention an amulet from the Cairo genizah in which a pregnant woman invokes the sign of Leo (mazal aryeh) to protect her from evil spirits.36

In some of the synagogues, the next panel contains a biblical scene or several at Sepphoris,³⁷ but at Na’aran, the corresponding panel contains a vinescroll pattern peopled with animals. It is perhaps significant that the earliest pavement, that of Hammat Tiberias, has no such scene but moves directly from the guardian lions to the zodiac circle. In all the synagogues, these circles, which occupy the center of the nave and are usually the largest panel, have certain commonalities. The circles are inscribed in squares that feature at the angles personifications of the seasons drawn without significant modification from Roman domestic decoration (the seasons do not necessarily line up with the appropriate quadrant of the zodiac, which argues against the view of Hachlili and others that the synagogue zodiacs were intended to function as a kind of liturgical calendar); all except Sepphoris contain at the center a representation of Sol Invictus riding a quadriga, once again derived directly from Roman iconography. Though the Sepphorites did not hesitate to have human and even mythological figures (Sagittarius is depicted as a centaur and, as at Hammat Tiberias, several other figures—most prominently Gemini—appear to be nude) depicted in their synagogue, Sol apparently aroused anxiety—a strong argument, if any were needed, against the view of Urbach and his followers that Jews even earlier were simply unaware of what representations of the gods denoted.³⁸

Aramaic and Greek tend to prevail in synagogue inscriptions, but the zodiac circles invariably feature inscriptions in Hebrew, perhaps because it was understood to be the language of creation, of the cosmos, or of God. In any case, the use of Hebrew marks the zodiac as somehow special.³⁹ At Sepphoris, too, the signs and the seasons are marked in Hebrew, but the seasons are marked in Greek as well (perhaps because the seasons belong also to the earth?), and the quadriga circle is surrounded by a narrow band containing a dedicatory inscription in Greek. The Sepphoris zodiac is also unique in identifying the signs of the zodiac with months (thus Libra is marked both moznayim and Tishri, Scorpio both ’aqrav and Marheshvan, and so on) and here the signs of the zodiac do line up correctly with the seasons represented in the angles of the square. This identification of the zodiacal signs with the months is, in fact, rather odd. Assuming that the Sepphorites in the fifth century used for liturgical purposes something like the periodically intercalated lunar calendar common in the Near East (and still in use as the Jewish liturgical calendar), the months actually fail to correspond precisely to the zodiacal signs, in some years in quite a significant way.40 The introduction of the month names into the design may thus be another hint of anxiety, an attempt to tame a symbol that some people found problematic because of its obvious associations with astrology.

In all the synagogues but Sepphoris, the next panel after the zodiac contains the ark flanked by menorot and associated symbols. This panel in fact mirrored the real scene that stood before it, since it seems likely that synagogue arks were normally flanked by menorot (notwithstanding the strictures of the rabbis), remains of which have been found in several places.⁴¹ But it was a distorting-mirror effect, for the mosaic panels always add elements that seem intended to heighten the evocation of the temple cult already present in the use of actual seven-branched menorot in the synagogue. Represented on the pavements, floating alongside the menorot, are lulavim, shofarot, and incense shovels.⁴² Though the rabbis authorized the use of lulavim and shofarot outside the temple (i.e., in synagogues), in the Pentateuch their association with the cult is unmistakable and there is no way of knowing if they were actually used in nonrabbinic synagogues. The incense shovel is certainly strongly associated with the cult. Though incense apparently was burned in some synagogues, the two extant censers I am aware of are not shovels.⁴³ In Bet Alfa, the ark has standing on each half of its gabled roof a peculiar bird, plausibly identified as a representation of the cherubim. At Sepphoris, the evocation of the temple cult is heightened by the intervention of four panels between the zodiac circle and the ark scene, all of them straightforward representations of cultic prescriptions from the Pentateuch, marked (like the binding of Isaac at Bet Alfa, the Daniel scenes at Na’aran and Susiyah, Noah’s ark at Gerasa, but, curiously, not the other biblical scenes at Sepphoris itself) with the appropriate biblical verses.

Interpretation

What are we to make of this? The floors (except perhaps the poorly preserved floor at Usfiyeh/Husefa) tend to suggest a movement from the world, in idealized form—nature scenes, scenes from biblical narrative—through the heavens (the zodiac circle),44 to the temple cult, and back to the reality of the synagogue. It may be worth pointing out, though perhaps not too much should be made of it in light of the paucity of the evidence, that the two most popular scenes from biblical narrative are primal scenes of worship—the binding of Isaac, the story of the prototypical sacrifice, and Daniel in the lions’ den, a story of immediately efficacious prayer offered by someone without access to the temple, now destroyed.⁴⁵ Such an interpretation, at least of the binding of Isaac, is slightly strengthened by the location of the same scene in the synagogue of Dura Europus, directly over the ark, where it shares a panel with a depiction of the temple and associated objects. The scene seems, in fact, to have a similar meaning in the Church of San Vitale in Ravenna, where it is juxtaposed with the scene of the angelic visitation of Abraham and Sarah. The biblical scenes may somehow be meant to represent the activities of the congregants. Perhaps all the images taken together should lead us to think of the synagogue as a kind of reflection of the heavens or a microcosm.⁴⁶ Our prayers are not simply dim echoes of a long-defunct sacrificial cult but are in fact (we hope) its equivalent. There is perhaps still a cult performed on high (as some apocalyptists thought) in which we participate through our actions below.

The movement from the world, from actual scenes of worship, or of nature, to the cosmic realm (not an easy movement, guarded as it is by fierce creatures, reminiscent of the guardians of the heavens in the Hekhalot texts), within the space of the synagogue, may also reflect, or be reflected in, the increasing ritualization and professionalization of the liturgy, the increasingly elaborate performance associated with it. These synagogues, that is, are not loci of undifferentiated sanctity, like the generally slightly earlier “Galilean” synagogues, where the markers of sanctity are apparently confined to the façade. Such developments—the differentiation of the sanctity of the synagogue interior, and the ritualization of the liturgy—are suggested by the tendency in the fifth and sixth centuries increasingly to mark off, to block general access to, the most potent space in the synagogue, that surrounding the ark, and perhaps in a rather different way by the rise of the piyyut. Both may imply a service conducted by a clergy and a basically passive congregation; both, and the pavements as well, imply a service increasingly pervaded by an aura of hieratic mystification.

Of course matters were not so simple. Some synagogues were decorated with only single components of the common scheme. Others featured several of the elements but in a different order or had altogether different types of decoration—geometric patterns, birds, nature scenes, or narrative scenes not easily identified. This decorative variety strengthens our reluctance to suppose that the synagogue images worked as a kind of simple code, which we could break with enough effort and if only we knew more. Even in the synagogues that did use the common scheme, the reception of it was infinitely more complex than I have just suggested. For example, the congregant who visited the synagogue repeatedly for many years certainly had occasion to reflect on the components of the decoration individually. That some of these components were used to decorate graves and a variety of small objects confirms the notion that they could be meaningful even in isolation. Furthermore, in view of the importance of astrology in late antique Judaism in general, as indicated in the Hekhalot texts and magical books like the Sefer Harazim, it is not surprising that the commissioners of the Sepphoris mosaic would have been anxious that the zodiac might be used as a horoscopic aid, in a way that abstracted it from its artistic context in the synagogue pavements. Indeed, a liturgical poem discovered some years ago among the Cairo genizah documents in the Cambridge University Library, peculiar for having been composed in Aramaic, may confirm that zodiac circles were sporadically used as such. For this poem, composed to be recited on the Sabbath preceding the new moon of Nisan (the beginning of the year, according to Exodus 12), is nothing more than a versified horoscope.47 Indeed, since this text is a lunar horoscope, the juxtaposition of month names and zodiacal signs at Sepphoris may even have been meant to facilitate its use as a horoscopic aid!

Rabbinization

Thus, the ancient synagogues as a group seem to embody a different notion of sanctity from that evident in rabbinic texts. The synagogue seems often to have constituted an unearthly realm, a reflection of the heavenly temple, an inherently sacred space, and the community that built and maintained and attended the synagogue regarded itself as a holy congregation, an Israel in miniature (see below). The rabbis, by contrast, regarded the synagogue as primarily a place of Torah, which belonged to benei Torah, a place whose sanctity was a formal derivative of the physical presence in it of the Torah scroll; as to the sanctity of the community, the rabbis never bothered to try to theorize it and in general had little interest in it. The Torah was, as we have seen, important in the actual, nonrabbinic synagogues, and it may have grown in importance as time went on. But it was embedded there in a type of religiosity that apparently owed little to the rabbis’ “covenantal nomism,” and quite a lot to general late antique (i.e., Christian) conceptions of the sacred.

Caution is in order, however. Varieties of religiosity can coexist in the same social group; indeed, even if inherently contradictory, they can function complementarily. Specifically, there is some reason to think that the rabbis came to play an increasingly important role in late antique Jewish society, especially in the sixth century, though there is no reason to believe that they were an essential part of the picture until the Middle Ages. In late antiquity, where they were influential they normally supplemented, subtly shaped, and were shaped by, rather than replaced, local varieties of Judaism. Next I will discuss some physical and literary artifacts of this complex social interaction.

Physical Remains: Anxieties of Representation

The Sepphorite zodiac, made in the fifth century, reminds us that for some Jews in late antiquity, the very act of figural representation, if not problematic per se, had its problematic aspects; in the sixth and early seventh centuries, Jews in some places began plastering over the painted walls of their synagogues, laying flagstones, or geometric mosaics, over figurative mosaic pavements, and sometimes even gouging out the eyes or in other ways disfiguring the human or divine figures portrayed on their synagogue floors.48 In the following section I will discuss a case of sixth-century Jewish iconophobia.

There is no reason a priori to consider ambivalence about representation a tracer for rabbinization. It is true that the rabbinic documents themselves express ambivalence about representation; and it is true as well that some of the specific contents of synagogue art were prohibited, or at least deemed problematic, by the rabbis. But nonrabbinic Jews might have had reasons of their own for avoiding figural representation. Those of the Second Temple period had been far more rigorous in their avoidance of figural art than the rabbis were, and a case could surely be made for regarding the evidence for a move away from figural representation among the Jews in the sixth century as part of a general late antique and early medieval Near Eastern tendency toward iconophobia—presumably an aspect of the more or less self-conscious rejection of the Greco-Roman ethos or aesthetic as a cultural model in favor of ideological systems whose central concerns often involved renunciation or subordination of the body.⁴⁹

Sometimes the Jewish ambivalence toward images has a distinctly rabbinic character. The Rehov synagogue, which in the fourth and fifth centuries was decorated with friezes of lions, was decorated in the sixth and seventh with a geometric mosaic pavement but, most famously, with a vast mosaic inscription that closely parallels a series of rabbinic texts concerning the sabbatical year.⁵⁰ In any case, the growing aniconism should perhaps be taken together with the contemporaneous rise of the piyyut and the appearance of collections of ma’asim, handbooks for Jewish judges trying cases according to rabbinic law.51 Jewish aniconism may have been part of a widespread tendency but, like its Christian and Muslim counterparts, it had its own dynamics. We ought to recall here a point made earlier: for the rabbis, the sanctity of the synagogue was marked not architecturally and iconographically but by the presence of the Torah scroll; regardless of the details of their attitude toward figural decoration, they seem to have been entirely apathetic toward the idea, which prevailed among Palestinian Jews in the fourth and fifth centuries, that the sanctity of the place could be meaningfully conveyed through its structure. It is plausible to attribute to rabbinic influence, or at least to the same complex of factors that favored the growth of rabbinic influence, the fact that some other Jews began to question this idea in the course of the sixth century.

En Geddi

The mosaic pavement of the sixth-century synagogue of En Geddi is the locus classicus for the Jewish anxiety about representation.⁵² The nave is paved with a geometric carpet design that has at its center a kind of square emblema, in which is inscribed an octagon; in the octagon is inscribed a circle. The arrangement is not unlike that of the zodiac circle that appears in the corresponding location in other synagogues. But here, instead of personifications of the seasons, the angles of the square feature pairs of peacocks pecking at grapes.⁵³ Within the circle are four birds, two of them with peculiarly elongated and curved necks. In front of the apse, instead of an ark flanked by menorot, there is still another bird. Yet the quadripartite scheme discussed above is preserved in the En Geddi synagogue, but in a startlingly different form. It has been moved from the nave to the aisle, and its order has been altered. Most remarkably of all, it is not pictorial, but verbal, an inscription:

(Panel 1, closest to the ark but directed away from it) Adam Seth Enosh Mehallalel Jared / Enoch Methuselah Lamech Noah Shem Ham and Japheth

(Panel 2, in Hebrew) Aries Taurus Gemini Cancer Leo Virgo / Libra Scorpio Sagittarius Capricorn and [sic] Aquarius Pisces / Nisan Iyar Sivan Tammuz Av Illul [sic]/ Tishri Marheshvan Kisliv [sic] Tevit [sic] Shevat/ and Adar Abraham Isaac and Jacob. Peace / Hananiah Mishail [sic] and Azariah. Peace on Israel

(Panel 3, in Aramaic) May Yosi and Azrin and Haziqin sons of Halfai be remembered for good. / Whoever causes faction between men and their fellows, or recounts / slander about his fellow to the nations [’amemayah], or steals / the property of his fellow, or whoever reveals the secret of the village [qarta] / to the nations54—may He whose eyes wander through all the land (cf. Zechariah 4:10; 2 Chronicles 16:9) / and who sees what is hidden, may He set His face against such a man / and his seed, and uproot him from beneath the heavens / and let all the nation [’amah] say, Amen and Amen, Selah.

(Panel 4, in Aramaic) Rabbi Yosi ben [sic] Halfai, Haziqin bar Halfai—may they be remembered for good, / for they did very much for the name of the Merciful One.

Peace. (Naveh, On Mosaic #70; my translation)

Despite its disarrangement, this inscription is quite obviously a verbal representation of the common decorative scheme discussed above. The first panel stands in for the biblical scene, and the second for the zodiac circle, the signs identified, as at Sepphoris, with the lunar months. What follows in the second panel is not a continuation of the first panel’s biblical genealogy; rather, it is likely to be the counterpart of the prototypical scenes of worship found at Susiyah, Naaran, Sepphoris, and Bet Alfa. Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah, like their associate Daniel, are the types of successful (i.e., immediately answered), prayer, and Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, perhaps of sacrifice, the activity Genesis most frequently reports of them. The third panel is puzzling by any criteria. That it begins with a short dedicatory inscription is unproblematic, since dedicatory inscriptions are frequently found in the corresponding position on the figural pavements. It is of great interest that the donors chose to have their names placed in the inconspicuous aisle, not in the nave. They presumably believed that their names belonged with the most potent evocation of the synagogue’s sanctity, the zodiac scheme, even if this evocation was now somewhat discredited. The third panel is odd because where we would expect some verbal allusion to the ark and menorot, we have instead a curse. This curse bears a loose resemblance to those inscribed on amulets produced in the same period, collected by Naveh and Shaked.⁵⁵ Like many of them, it uses an allusion to a biblical verse as a periphrastic way of referring to God, and it concludes not just with a single “amen,” but “amen, amen, selah.” The rhetoric is rather different, though, perhaps in part because it is, unlike the amulets, a public text, as the inscription itself acknowledges (“let all the nation say”). Perhaps invocations of angels, a feature of most amulets but absent here, were considered improper in a public text. In any case, the third panel’s resemblance to contemporaneous amulets may offer a key to its presence in this inscription, for amulets were often deposited in the apses of ancient synagogues, either in or near the ark.56 Thus the En Geddi inscription may be evoking the apsidal assemblage of the synagogue by miming its contents. It may be worth adding that the periphrasis used for God comes from the prophet Zechariah’s vision of the menorah, and so may serve as another very indirect evocation of the synagogue apse. I suggest this with diffidence, because if this is what the Engeddites wished to do, why did they not quote a relevant portion of the Torah—surely a more obvious evocation of the contents of the apse? Were they squeamish about having it stepped on?

For the present purposes though, what is important, even rather poignant, about the En Geddi pavement is the tension it implies between the old and the new, the continuing embrace of the potency of the zodiacal iconography, but its quite literal marginalization, for that matter its literalization, its reduction to writing.⁵⁷

The Piyyut

The piyyut offers unambiguous evidence for the rabbinization of liturgical practice in sixth century Palestine. All extant Hebrew piyyutim are constructed around the armature of the rabbinic liturgy as prescribed in Mishnah, Tosefta, and Yerushalmi Berakhot. Starting with the work of Yannai, in the sixth century, all are packed with allusions to rabbinic laws and exegesis (and it scarcely matters for our purposes whether these allusions were to written texts or unredacted “traditions”); frequently, as their Babylonian critics noted, the piyyutim are little more than versified summaries of rabbinic halakhah and exegesis.58 However, we have no idea how widespread the piyyut was in sixth century Palestine, so its value as evidence for rabbinization is limited. Furthermore, some recently published Aramaic piyyutim may provide evidence for the existence of a nonrabbinic version of the practice, though the dating and function of these texts are for the most part unknown.⁵⁹ Be this as it may, Hebrew piyyutim were unquestionably performed in some synagogues, so examination of them can enrich our understanding of the synagogues and their functioning. Indeed, the piyyut can help us reconstruct some aspects of what must have been the kaleidoscopic reception of the synagogue art.

I will present two piyyutim that seem plausibly readable as reflecting the decoration of the synagogues: first, Yannai’s qedushta for Numbers 8, which uses the menorah as its main conceit, and then a well-known anonymous qinah, perhaps one of the earliest piyyutim (following the common assumption that anonymity and rhymelessness imply early date) to be constructed around the signs of the zodiac. It should be unnecessary to add that there is no way to prove that these piyyutim and others like them really were understood by their audience as commenting on the synagogue art; I am, however, suggesting that the assumption that they were explains a great deal not only about the piyyutim but also about the art.⁶⁰

A few preliminary remarks about the chronology and social history of the piyyut are in order, in part because we need to consider whether the audience of the piyyut is likely to have understood it at all.⁶¹ It may be worth noting that the social history of the piyyut is still largely unexplored. The piyyutim are a relatively recent discovery, and the scholarship on them has been largely concerned with such basic issues as textual criticism, attribution, prosody, and generic history.62 What follows should be considered tentative.

The piyyut is an artifact of the professionalization of liturgy in some Palestinian synagogues, for it is a type of poetry produced by a newly emerged professional class, the payyetanim (piyyut is a hebraized back formation of the Greek loan word payyetan = poietes, or poet). In brief, it seems that starting in the sixth, or possibly the fifth, century, some Palestinian synagogues began employing poets whose job it was to compose a new cycle of liturgical poetry for each Sabbath and holiday.⁶³ This development may be seen as the institutionalization, perhaps under the impact of a similar development among Christians, of the practice of liturgical improvisation that had prevailed in at least some Palestinian synagogues—a practice that had favored employing the eloquent and learned as prayer leaders.⁶⁴ In the eighth century and following, the piyyut was taken up in communities under Palestinian influence, for example, in Egypt and Asia Minor. By then, though, a certain conservatism had set into the liturgy, so that older piyyut cycles were frequently reused—fortunately for us, because this guaranteed their preservation, at least long enough to be deposited in the genizah of the Palestinian synagogue of Fustat (Old Cairo).65 It was there that massive quantities of late antique and early medieval Palestinian piyyut came to light at the end of the nineteenth century, material previously almost wholly unknown because in the high Middle Ages, the Babylonian rabbinic hostility to the piyyut prevailed throughout the Jewish world, so that the old piyyut cycles largely fell into desuetude.

It is not known how widespread the piyyut was in sixth century Palestine. It seems a priori likely that only wealthy urban communities could afford the services of a full-time payyetan, as was true also of professional cantors in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in eastern Europe amd America, or professional organist/choir masters in the eighteenth century in western Europe. But there is no reason why rural communities should not have occasionally commissioned piyyutim for special occasions, or that, like famous orators during the high Roman Empire, famous payyetanim might not occasionally have gone on tour.⁶⁶ Perhaps there were also semiprofessional payyetanim working outside the cities, like the homespun ba’alei tefillah and church organists of later periods, but their works, if any, have apparently not been preserved, so we know nothing of them.

The piyyutim were usually composed in Hebrew, are characterized by an obscure and allusive style, and make frequent use of neologisms.⁶⁷ The striking formal resemblance of some piyyutim to the kontakion, a type of Christian liturgical poetry written in Greek and, like the piyyut, introduced in the sixth century, would benefit from a more thorough examination than it has so far received.⁶⁸ What is certain, though, is that some of the payyetanim were intellectuals of the first rank, masters of biblical and rabbinic lore, allusions to which often seem the main point of their work. The piyyut is above all a learned poetry that could be fully appreciated only by the highly educated and highly refined.

This point requires emphasis, since it is often assumed that the piyyut was in general readily comprehended by its real audience, the men (and women and children?) who attended synagogues in places like Tiberias, Sepphoris, Caesarea, and Bet Shean-Scythopolis in the sixth and seventh centuries.⁶⁹ At first glance, this is a fair point: after all, why use piyyutim if few people understood them? But the piyyut was not simply read: it was performed, probably almost always sung, sometimes with choral accompaniment, as part of the larger performance that constituted the synagogue service as a whole.70 We must not forget that the synagogue service was, among other things, entertainment,⁷¹ a commodity always hard to come by in antiquity, and all the more so in the fifth and sixth centuries, when rhetorical, theatrical, and athletic performances were no longer available, and even horse racing was coming under increasing attack. The piyyut and the sermon (and there is no reason to see them as mutually exclusive), as well as their Christian counterparts, were the functional equivalents of the sophistic performance, and we have no more grounds for thinking that the piyyut was generally fully understood than that most of Libanius’s audience grasped the dense webs of classical allusion that constitute his speeches.

The real reception of the piyyut must have been complex. There must have been in every large Jewish settlement, and more so in places like Tiberias, with its long tradition of rabbinic study, small numbers of highly learned men who really could grasp the allusions of a poet like Yannai; for such people, indeed, the enigmatic character of the songs must have provided much of the pleasure to be derived from them. Perhaps Fleischer was right to suppose that the piyyut originated in synagogues connected with rabbinic academies. If we may trust Jerome, and the implications of rabbinic literature, Jewish primary education in late antiquity consisted in part of memorization of the Bible.⁷² People with such an education constituted a larger part of the piyyut’s audience, and such people, provided they remembered something of what they had learned, may have understood some of the poetry, especially the simpler sections analyzed by Elitzur. But probably most of the audience had little or no education and only a poor grasp of Hebrew, which was no longer spoken.⁷³ Such people may naturally have had little control over the employment of a payyetan in their synagogue, but to the extent that they considered the payyetanic performance more than merely tolerable, they may have regarded the musical elements of the performance as primary, or have responded, no less than their wealthier and more educated fellow congregants, to the atmosphere of numinous mystification surrounding the piyyut, which was an important aspect of its performance. We should, however, acknowledge the important argument of Shulamit Elitzur (n 61) that qedushtaot of the “classical period” usually contained several relatively simple stanzas that even the moderately well-educated could probably more or less understand. Nor should we ignore the likelihood that people discussed payyetanic performances, and such discussions may have helped the uneducated get the gist of the contents of the piyyutim.74

Qerovah of Yannai for Numbers 8⁷⁵

(I) By day we grope like blind men/ and by night we feel our way like the sightless/ and we say, “The Lord is my light (Micah 7.8), and a lamp for the pathway of my feet” (cf. Palms 119:105).

The branches of the menorah/ were broken with wrath/ and the city which was as a light to all/ lo, it is darkest of all.

Search Jerusalem by lamplight/ and we shall see ten menorot (2 Chronicles 4:7)/ which were arranged within it/ precisely set near the menorah of the Faithful.⁷⁶

They will see her power,/ those who hear the vision of her greatness [in this piyyut?];/ she is entirely of pure gold/ and on her head is a bowl, as it is written (Zechariah 4:2), “He said to me, ‘What do you see,’ and I said, ‘I saw a menorah entirely of gold with a bowl on its head and its seven lamps were upon it, seven, and seven attached to the lamps which were on its head.’ ”

(II) Light which shows and makes seen/ of action and of deed/ You instructed to the humble [i.e., Moses]/ and his eyes flowed.

With Your finger You showed him/ with Your mouth You instructed him/ in Your dwelling You entrusted to him/ as an artisan You taught him.

…./ [etc. The poem continues with a detailed description of the menorah, drawn from biblical and rabbinic sources.]

(III) The lamps of Edom (the Christian empire) grew strong and numerous/ the lamps of Zion were swallowed up and destroyed.⁷⁷

The lamps of Edom were mighty and flared forth/ the lamps of Zion flickered and were extinguished.

The lamps of Edom pass before every pit (?)78/ the lamps of Zion were set back.

The lamps of Edom, their brilliance is clear/ the lamps of Zion were darker than black.

The lamps of Edom were laden and brimful/ the lamps of Zion fell and shattered.

The lamps of Edom were honored and attended/ the lamps of Zion were constrained by force.

The lamps of Edom glow for a corpse (i.e., Jesus)/ the lamps of Zion are forgotten like a corpse….[the MS breaks off, and resumes with fragments of the silluq; the last stanza of the silluq is largely preserved].

(IV) … [the heavenly bodies (identified here with the angels)] arise at night/ to declare Your faith by night/ trembling like slaves before You/ those who are made according to Your plan/ who run alongside the wheels of Your chariot/ who face the surfaces of Your throne/ but see not the likeness of Your face/ but rather the luster of the light of Your face/ surrounded by snow and fire/ and its wheels [of the divine chariot] are burning fire/ and a river of fire is drawn out before it/ from which they [the angels/heavenly bodies] are created/ and through which they pass/ but their light avails You not/ for it was You who lit the lamps/ You who make the lights/ who create the heavenly bodies/ who bring forth the constellations/ who spread out the stars/ who light the light of the sun/ who cause to shine the luster of the moon/ which runs to the light of the sun/ who cause the sun to shine/ and Mercury to scintillate/ who set Venus in its place/ who correct the moon-star/ who illuminate the light of Jupiter/ who enrich the splendor of Saturn/ who make red the light of Mars/ and all of these are lamps in the heavens/ and You wished to light lamps on earth/ like…the appearance of the tent of heaven/ was made the likeness…[of the Temple?]…[the MS breaks off]

The first stanza resembles the midrashic petihta, or proem, in that it uses a prophetic text to illuminate a Pentateuchal one, which is, however, implied rather than quoted. In doing so, it also uses the common exegetical technique of reading the biblical text into the present, conceived as an episode in the historical mythology of the nation of Israel: with the destruction of our temple and holy city we live in darkness, yet those who persist in hearing of its past glory, by listening to the biblical readings and their poetic adaptations, will yet see its restoration. The vision of Zechariah, which closes the stanza, symbolized, according to the prophet’s angelic guide, the victory of Yahweh’s spirit—at the End of Days, as all later interpreters believed.

The first stanza is in all likelihood meant as introductory, for what follows begins with a straightforward ecphrastic expansion of the biblical description of the menorah, different from its ultimate models in Greek rhetoric only in that it is written in rhyming Hebrew. The third stanza, finally, returns to the gloom of the present, tacitly accepting the worldview of Christian triumphalists by contrasting the glory of the Byzantine empire with the debasement of Israel.79 This stanza is an alphabetic acrostic, and the manuscript breaks off after the letter nun, four lines before the end of the poem. The last of the surviving verses may indicate that a change is about to occur, and the poem will conclude with the punishment of the Christians and the restoration of Israel. The menorah is thus used in this poem as a symbol of the historical myth of Israel, a myth of Israel’s past glory, its present degradation, and its future restoration, which awaits especially those who continue to remember, to witness performances of, the myth (shom’ei hezyon godlah).

However, the menorah also serves, in the silluq (i.e., the final extant stanza) as the earthly counterpart of the heavenly bodies, identified with the angels. The notion that our liturgy corresponds to an angelic or a planetary liturgy is a commonplace of the silluq, for the qedushah (i.e., the sanctus), which forms the core of the silluq, has as its main theme that Israel joins with the angels in their praise of God. The divine chariot, an allusion to the first chapter of Ezekiel, also inescapably evokes the solar chariot of the synagogue mosaics; but in this poem, the subordination of all the heavenly bodies, especially the sun, to God is given repetitive (one might almost say, polemical) emphasis. The angels do not serve here even as intermediaries; instead they are the heavenly counterparts of the menorah. When humans conform to God’s will by lighting the menorah, they imitate God in his creation of the heavenly lights. In this way, the cosmic imagery of the synagogue is tamed by subordinating it completely, in an ecstatic litany, to God’s will and Israel’s action (but its past action, for the menorah is no longer lit).

In several extant piyyutim, the zodiac is pressed into service directly to testify to Israel’s past and its future restoration.⁸⁰ Best known of these is an anonymous alphabetic piyyut, sometimes thought “preclassical” (i.e., fifth rather than sixth century) because of the absence of rhyme and the relative simplicity of its language.81 This poem was composed for the fast of the Ninth of Av, which commemorates the destruction of both temples. It is one of the rare late antique piyyutim still used liturgically and thus appears in every Ashkenazic prayer book:⁸²

So by our sins was the temple destroyed, and by our iniquities was the sanctuary burnt;/ in the land joined together⁸³ they wove elegies, and the heavenly host lifted its voice in dirges// How long will there be weeping in Zion and mourning in Jerusalem!

The tribes of Jacob wept bitterly, and even the signs of the zodiac shed tears,/ the banners of Jeshurun bent their heads, and the Pleiades and Orion, their faces darkened// How long will there be weeping in Zion and mourning in Jerusalem….

Aries first wept with embittered soul because his lambs were led to slaughter/ Taurus let its cry be heard on high because we were all pursued to our necks.// How long, etc.

Gemini appeared divided because the blood of brothers was spilled like water,/ Cancer sought to fall to earth because we fainted from thirst.// How long, etc….

We offered a sacrifice and it was not accepted, and Capricorn cut off the ram of our sin offering,/ merciful women boiled their children, and Pisces averted his eyes.// How long will there be weeping in Zion and mourning in Jerusalem!

We forgot the Sabbath with back-turning hearts, so the Almighty forgot all our merits./ Be greatly zealous in avenging Zion, and grant the populous city [Jerusalem, Lamentations 1:1] of Your light!// Take pity on Zion, and build the walls of Jerusalem!

Here the signs of the zodiac are made to mourn the downfall of Israel as described in the book of Lamentations, in a way that mirrors the mourning of Israel itself.⁸⁴ The signs of the zodiac are apparently supposed normally to act as intercessors for Israel, but their intercession is effective only as long as Israel is righteous. The piyyut thus retains the sense, perhaps implicit in the synagogue decoration itself, that the ritual of the synagogue, in this case the communal mourning on the Ninth of Av, mirrors heavenly ritual, but it also strives, like the qerovah of Yannai, to read the iconographic motif in light of Israel’s historical mythology. Our mourning echoes and continues the mourning of Israel in its destruction, and is in turn echoed by the mourning of the heavenly host, now, like us, reduced to ineffectuality—Gemini appears divided, Cancer wishes to fall to earth, and Pisces averts his eyes. But when we end our neglect of God’s law, he will avenge us, and once again cause his light, that is, the signs of the zodiac, to shine upon us.85

These poems, and the many others like them, cannot be understood in any simple way as the key to the interpretation of the synagogue decoration. They are occasional pieces, perhaps performed once and forgotten, and thus are elements in the kaleidoscopic, constantly shifting reception of the art. Images that at this moment figure Israel’s catastrophic decline and glorious future restoration may, at another moment, figure something else entirely. Taken cumulatively, the piyyutim are in some tension with the synagogue decoration. Though some of the piyyutim, like those just discussed, retain the idea that earthly ritual mirrors cosmic ritual, they relentlessly incorporate the decoration into a rabbinic-style reading of Pentateuchal narrative and prophetic oracle as prefiguring the great cycle of Israel’s past glory, present punishment as recompense for its sins, and future messianic restoration. In this way, they constitute an attempt to subvert any notion of the synagogue service as an adequate substitution for the temple cult or as a reflection of some cosmic worship of God. Those who witness the performance of the synagogue service, Yannai claims, will one day witness the restoration of Israel’s glory. Although Israel must continue to proclaim God as its source of light, it now gropes in darkness, and, the anonymous poet claimed, its heavenly intercessors, the zodiacal constellations, are now rendered powerless by Israel’s sins. To engage in a perhaps rather vulgar generalization, the payyetanim strove to read the synagogue art against the grain, as commemorating not Israel’s place in the cosmos but its place in history.

In sum, the late antique remains from Palestine—the wide diffusion of the synagogue, the emergence of a Jewish iconographic language used not only to decorate synagogues (and graves) but also to mark all sorts of small objects, the evidence from archaeology for an increasingly Torah-centered, numinous ritual, and finally the first expressions in the fifth and sixth centuries of anxiety about the use of representation and the contemporaneous emergence of the piyyut—all indicate that the period was characterized by a process of judaization. The Jews once again began to construct their symbolic world around the Torah, the (memory of the) temple, and related items, and they began once again to think of themselves as constituting Israel.

Of whatever else their Judaism may have consisted, precisely what effect the symbolic importance of the Torah had on their lives, apart from its occasional public reading, we can scarcely say. The decoration of the synagogues, which is our main evidence outside rabbinic literature and its midrashic and piyyutic offshoots, though obviously “Jewish,” is irreducible to theology. It provides some hints, though: the synagogue was a holy place and for some Jews its sanctity may have consisted partly in the fact that it was a kind of microcosm, a reflection of the heavens, so that the rituals performed in the synagogue both reflected and influenced a heavenly ritual. In some synagogues, especially in the sixth century, both the floor decoration and such items as chancel screens served to demarcate zones of special sanctity, culminating in the niche containing the Torah scroll. This tends to conform with the rabbinic idea that the Torah was not simply read but performed, in what the rabbis regarded as a reenactment of the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai. How widespread the rabbis’ interpretation was we have no way of knowing, but this development, together with the emergence of the professional class of payyetanim, suggest the increasing importance of the synagogue as a site of elaborate performance, led by a clergy, of a numinous type. The religiosity of the synagogue was very much like that of the church.

But the very emergence of the piyyut, and of a discernible iconophobic tendency among some Jews in the sixth century, hints at the appearance of a new tension, or rather the surfacing of an old one. The payyetanim whose work is extant relentlessly rabbinized. Their poems were constructed largely out of complex webs of allusions to biblical texts and rabbinic lore; they propounded rabbinic halakhah in rhymes; in the qerovot, they transformed the prayer service into an extended paraphrase of and commentary on the weekly Torah reading; concurrently, they strove to read the synagogues’ decoration in the light of the Deuteronomist’s historical mythology of Israel in its rabbinic version. They tried, in sum, to transform the synagogue from a space that marked Israel’s place in the cosmos to one that marked its place in a historical drama.86

Payyetanim were of course employed by communities, and their poetry was learned, obscure, allusive, and performed to music. Some community leaders must have approved of their message, but others may have approved mainly of their singing, or may have delighted in their penchant for mystification. The payyetanim, and the iconophobia that seems a related phenomenon, are evidence for the beginnings of a process of rabbinization. They serve as powerful reminders that, even in the fourth and fifth centuries, the synagogues, the art with which they were decorated, and the rituals performed in them, not only conveyed meaning but also served as arenas in which meaning was contested.

 

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1 John Chrysostom, Discourses against the Jews 1.5.1–8.

² See Shinan, in Fine, Sacred Realm, pp. 132–33. In Babylonia, by contrast, the cycle achieved something like its present form by the time of the Amoraim, at least among the Amoraim; see now S. Naeh, “Sidrei Qeriat Ha-Torah Be-eretz Yisrael: Iyyun Mehudash,” Tarbiz 67 (1998): 167–87.

³ For a survey, see Hachlili, Ancient Jewish Art, pp. 166–92; Levine, Ancient Synagogue, pp. 291–356.

⁴ See J. Branham, “Vicarious Sacrality: Temple Space in Ancient Synagogues,” in D. Urman and P. V. M. Flesher, eds. Ancient Synagogues: Historical Analysis and Archaeological Discovery (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 2: 319–46, and in greater detail, “Sacred Space in Ancient Jewish and Early Medieval Christian Architecture” (Ph.D. diss., Emory, 1993), for an attempt, with responses of Fine. See also Hachlili, Ancient Jewish Art, pp. 187–91.

⁵ My discussion is informed by S. Fraade, “Rabbinic Views on the Practice of Targum, and Multilingualism in the Jewish Galilee of the Third-Sixth Centuries,” in Galilee, pp. 253–86, the most sophisticated treatment of this issue I am aware of.

⁶ So I assume he was, notwithstanding Fraade, “Rabbinic Views,” pp. 261–62.

⁷ For the rabbis, the practice also resonated with what some of them regarded as the second giving of the Torah, reported in Nehemiah 8, according to which Ezra and his assistants read the Torah out to the people meforash, which the rabbis understood (probably correctly!) to mean, “with translation”; see S. Schwartz, “Language, Power, and Identity,” 12 n. 14.

⁸ This section appears in a slightly different version as “On the Program and Reception of the Synagogues Mosaics,” in L. Levine and Z. Weiss, eds., From Dura to Sepphoris: Studies in Jewish Art and Society in Late Antiquity (JRA suppl. 40, 2000) pp. 165–81; for a different approach, see Levine, Ancient Synagogue, pp. 561–79.

⁹ For a full survey, see Hachlili, Ancient Jewish Art, pp. 234–365; as a collection of material and formalistic observations, this work is unsurpassed. In her interpretations, though, she follows the Avi-Yonah school.

¹⁰ See S. Mucznik, A. Ovadiah and C. Gomez de Silva, “The Meroth Mosaic Reconsidered,” JJS 47 (1996): 286–93; on Bet Leontis, see Roussin, cited below.

¹¹ There is no convenient recent reference work in English listing and discussing the synagogue remains (the books of Hüttenmeister and Reeg, and Marilyn Chiat, are out of date); the NEAEHL has separate entries for many of the sites discussed, and much information can be found in Levine, Ancient Synagogue; Hachlili, Ancient Jewish Art; and in A. Ovadiah and R. Ovadiah, Hellenistic, Roman, and Early Byzantine Mosaic Pavements. Most convenient is a Hebrew publication: Z. Ilan, Ancient Synagogues.

¹² An apparently non-Jewish example of the zodiac motif has now come to light in a bathhouse of approximately the fifth century on the Aegean island of Astypalaea, excavated in the 1930s and never published but recently seen by Ruth Jacobi: see her brief note, “The Zodiac Wheel from the Greek Island of Astypalaea,” Qadmoniot 118 (1999): 121.

¹³ See E. Kitzinger, Israeli Mosaics of the Byzantine Period (Milan: Collins/UNESCO, 1965), pp. 8–15; in general, A. Grabar, Christian Iconography: A Study of its Origins (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968). On the zodiac circles, see especially Foerster, “Zodiac in Ancient Synagogues.”

¹⁴ Cf. J. Elsner, Art and the Roman Viewer: The Transformation of Art from the Pagan World to Christianity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 190–210.

¹⁵ For the conceptual background of this paragraph, see N. Bryson, Word and Image: French Painting of the Ancien Régime (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 1–28; cf. Grabar, Christian Iconography, pp. 7–30.

¹⁶ See Levine, “Sages and the Synagogue,” pp. 215–18.

¹⁷ The most recent attempt to defend the synagogue art in terms of rabbinic halakhah is Stern, “Figurative Art.”

¹⁸ See Jewish Symbols, 12: pp. 40–49, for his most concise statement of the issue.

¹⁹ H. C. Butler, Syria: Publications of the Princeton University Archaeological Expeditions to Syria in 1904–5 and 1909, 9 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 1907–1949).

²⁰ Cf. N. Bryson, Looking at the Overlooked: Four Essays on Still Life Painting (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990), pp. 17–59.

²¹ Cf. E. D. Maguire, H. P. Maguire, and M. J. Duncan-Flowers, Art and Holy Powers in the Early Christian House (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989), pp. 1–33; Elsner, Art and the Roman Viewer, pp. 251–70.

²² See Stern, “Figurative Art.”

²³ See Netzer and Weiss, Promise and Redemption. Other attempts at programmatic reading include J. Wilkinson, “The Beit Alpha Synagogue Mosaic: Towards an Interpretation,” JJA 5 (1978): 16–28; L. Roussin, “The Beit Leontis Mosaic: An Eschatological Interpretation,” JJA 8 (1981): 6–19. For Goodenough (Jewish Symbols [1953], 1: 241–53), the Bet Alfa mosaic represents the ascent of the soul—a predictable reading but perhaps less implausible here than usually.

²⁴ For general accounts, see S. C. Reif, Judaism and Hebrew Prayer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 146–52; I. Elbogen, Jewish Liturgy: A Comprehensive History (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1993), pp. 205–47; J. Heinemann, Prayer in the Period of the Tannaim and Amoraim (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1984).

²⁵ See Elsner, Art and the Roman Viewer, pp. 211–21. For the image, see M. Vermaseren, Corpus Inscriptionum et Monumentorum Religionis Mithraicae, 2 vols. (Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1956), passim, especially plates; see also R. Gordon, “Franz Cumont and the Doctrine of Mithraism,” in J. R. Hinnells, ed., Mithraic Studies: Proceedings of the First International Congress of Mithraic Studies (Manchester, U.K.: Manchester University Press, 1975), pp. 215–48; R. Beck, “Mithraism since Franz Cumont,” ANRW 2.17.4, pp. 2002–15 (Berlin: DeGruyer, 1981).

²⁶ A wall mosaic unambiguously depicting this same scene from the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome offers some support to Weiss’s interpretation, for here Sarah stands in an entrance whose framework is rectangular, with the fabric hanging from the transverse of the doorframe held open by cords; see the photograph in Goodenough, Jewish Symbols 3 (1953) fig. 1.

²⁷ Z. Ilan, “Survey of Ancient Synagogues,” 171, observed that oil presses have often been discovered in the immediate vicinity of synagogues and suggested that they were used primarily to provide ritually pure oil for lighting the synagogue. Synagogues frequently had menorot and/ or polycandela. Windows may in some cases have been arranged to highlight features of the interior (e.g., at Dura Europus, the ark was in constant sunlight): see A. J. Wharton, Refiguring the Post Classical City: Dura Europos, Jerash, Jerusalem, and Ravenna (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 31. Palestinian synagogues have generally not survived to the level of the windows.

²⁸ See Hachlili, Ancient Jewish Art, pp. 191–92.

²⁹ See Levine, Ancient Synagogue, pp. 333–36. Such menorot have been found primarily in Judaea, but also at Hammat Tiberias and at Merot, in Upper Galilee.

³⁰ For these mosaics, see Hadashot Arkheologiyot 99 (1993): 12–4; 106 (1996) 31–39, with color photographs inside the front cover.

³¹ As far as the report indicates, there is no trace of either wall painting or figurative mosaic in the big house excavated at Meiron: see Meyers, Strange, and Meyers, Excavations at Ancient Meiron, pp. 50–72.

³² On the monumental doorways of the Galilean-type synagogues and their implications, see Levine, “From Community Center,” 41–45. Eagles, wreaths, and so on, marked the place as sacred, though not necessarily as Jewish. This fact, in Levine’s view, explains B. Shabbat 72b, a story of a man who mistook a temple for a synagogue. Jewish symbols were not commonly carved on the facades of Galilean synagogues, but were elsewhere; it now seems unlikely that the zodiacs once thought to have been carved on the façades of seven Galilean and Golanite synagogues (see Levine, “From Community Center,” 64–65) are what they originally seemed (I thank Lee Levine for this observation).

³³ On the likelihood that Galilean-type synagogues (as well as others) were decorated with frescoes, see Hachlili, Ancient Jewish Art, p. 224; add to Hachlili’s list the Meroth synagogue: Z. Ilan and I. Damati, Meroth: The Ancient Jewish Village (Tel Aviv: Society for the Protection of Nature, 1987), p. 49 (pl.); and Levine, Ancient Synagogue, pp. 336–40.

³⁴ Levine, “From Community Center,” pp. 45–47, is inconclusive.

³⁵ I owe this point to Natalie Kampen.

³⁶ Leo is also asked to “stand and pray and beseech for her in front of the King of all kings … so that all kinds of demons be driven away from her.” See Naveh and Shaked, Magic Spells and Formulae, genizah text no. 10.

³⁷ Weiss and Netzer, Promise and Redemption, p. 32; on biblical scenes in general, see Hachlili, Ancient Jewish Art, pp. 287–300. Hachlili somehow states as fact that “the scenes had in common the illustration of the theme of salvation and were associated with prayers offered in time of drought [!] … there was no intention of using these themes for symbolic or didactic purposes.”

³⁸ Urbach, “Rabbinical Laws of Idolatry.”

³⁹ See S. Schwartz, “Language, Power, and Identity,” 31–35.

⁴⁰ Yet Jewish astrological texts, which seem on the whole somewhat later than the mosaics, persistently identify the signs and the lunar months, though the months play no role at all in their horoscopic calculations; see, e.g., Sefer Yezirah 5:2; Beraita deMazalot, chapter 1 (see S. A. Wertheimer and A. J. Wertheimer, Batei Midrashot (Jerusalem: Ktab Wasepher, 1968), 2: 12; the text, indebted to both rabbinic and Ptolemaic cosmology, has been attributed to Shabbatai Donnolo, a southern Italian physician and magician of the tenth century: see G. Sarfatti, “An Introduction to Berayta De-Mazzalot,” Bar-Ilan 3 (1965): 56–82); Pesiqta Rabbati, ed. M. Ish-Shalom [Friedmann], (reprint Vienna: Kaiser, 1880 Tel Aviv, 1963), 95–96 (on the vexed question of the dating of this text—conceivably any time between c. 400 and the high Middle Ages, see H. Strack and G. Stemberger, Introduction to the Talmud and the Midrash [Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992], pp. 325–29).

⁴¹ See Hachlili in Fine, Sacred Realm, p. 111.

⁴² This mirroring effect is already present in the synagogue of Dura, where over the aedicula is a painting of the Temple ark, with images of the menorah, lulav, and etrog to the left, and, to the right, an aqedah scene. See C. Kraeling, The Synagogue (= A. R. Bellinger et al., The Excavations at Dura Europus, Final Report VIII, pt. 1) (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1956), pp. 54–62; Goodenough, Jewish Symbols 9 (1964): 68.

⁴³ For the incense burner from Sepphoris, see above; it is not necessarily “Jewish”; the other is from late antique Egypt and is marked with a menorah; see Fine, Sacred Realm, p. 87, fig. 4.18, catalogue no. 2, an entry that is a masterpiece of equivocation—explicable by the fact that for the rabbis, burning of incense was the halakhic equivalent of animal sacrifice.

⁴⁴ For Hachlili, the zodiac symbolizes the Jewish liturgical calendar—a problematic view because calendar mosaics were commonplace and easily adaptable to Jewish needs; why then use the zodiac, whose relation to the Jewish liturgical calendar is far from obvious? For Foerster (“Zodiac in Ancient Synagogues,” p. 225), “the primary intention [sic] was to represent the sanctity and blessing inherent in the divine order of the universe [this is practically a quotation of Donnolo—S.S.], expressed in the images of the seasons, the zodiacal signs, the months, and the heavenly bodies which bring with them the renewal of nature, growth, and crops” (my translation). For Weiss and Netzer, it symbolizes God’s intervention in history, at least at Sepphoris.

⁴⁵ Cf. Goldman, Sacred Portal, p. 56; Grabar, Christian Iconography, pp. 7–30, for a similar interpretation of the same scenes in a Christian context.

⁴⁶ See Foerster, “Zodiac in Ancient Synagogues,” p. 227, for a discussion of Josephan and Philonic echoes of this theme, which he also sees in the synagogue mosaics.

⁴⁷ See J. Greenfield and M. Sokoloff, “Astrological and Related Omen Texts in Jewish Palestinian Aramaic,” JNES 48 (1989): 201–14.

⁴⁸ See Hachlili, Ancient Jewish Art, pp. 371–72; D. Amit, “Iconoclasm in Ancient Synagogues in Eretz Israel,” Proceedings of the Eleventh World Congress of Jewish Studies, Division B, vol. 1 (Jerusalem: World Union of Jewish Studies, 1994), Hebrew section, pp. 9–16; Levine, Ancient Synagogue, pp. 340–43.

⁴⁹ For an account emphasizing the shared elements in Jewish, Christian, and Muslim iconophobia and proposing a (perhaps excessively) specific hypothesis about how they came to be shared, see P. Crone, “Islam, Judeo-Christianity, and Byzantine Iconoclasm,” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 2 (1980): 59–95. Crone also assumes that Judaism was inherently iconophobic. Perhaps; but the Jews were a different matter. Elsner argues that the stylistic shift visible in late antique Christian art reflects the art’s new status as normative and exegetical, as opposed to descriptive. Such a shift, arguably characteristic of contemporaneous Jewish art as well, should allow anxieties about the act of pictorial representation to come to the fore (or may indeed be somehow generated by them); see Art and the Roman Viewer, pp. 190–245.

⁵⁰ Naveh, On Mosaic, no. 49. For a summary of the archaeology of the Rehov synagogue, see F. Vitto in NEAEHL, s.v.; the most extensive discussion of the inscription is Y. Sussmann, “A Halakhic Inscription from the Beth-Shean Valley,” Tarbiz 43 (1973–1974): 88–158, concerned mainly with its relations to rabbinic texts. To the more puzzling and difficult questions, What were the purpose and function of the inscription? Saul Lieberman devoted an assertive paragraph (“The Halakhic Inscription from the Beth-Shean Valley,” Tarbiz 45 [1975–1976] 1: 54–55). That the inscription “was intended to publicize the pertinent halakhot to the local Jewish inhabitants” (in Aaron Demsky’s English formulation, “The Permitted Villages of Sebaste in the Rehov Mosaic,” IEJ 29 [1979]: 182) rests on a series of assumptions, for example, about the extent of literacy in rural Palestine, about the social structure of synagogue dedications, and about the diffusion of halakhic rigor, which cannot withstand scrutiny.

⁵¹ For a survey, see Brody, Geonim of Babylonia, pp. 109–13.

⁵² According to Z. Ilan, Ancient Synagogues, p. 321, the village, including the synagogue, was destroyed soon after 540; cf. D. Barag, “En-Geddi: The Synagogue,” in NEAEHL.

⁵³ For similar design from the much earlier (early third century?) “House of Orpheus” at Volubilis, in North Africa, see C. Kondoleon, Domestic and Divine: Roman Mosaics in the House of Dionysos (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995), pp. 248–49.

⁵⁴ For a speculative interpretation of this curse, see S. Lieberman, “A Preliminary Note on an Inscription from En-Geddi,” Tarbiz 40 (1971): 24–26.

⁵⁵ Amulets and Magic Bowls; and Magic Spells and Formulae.

⁵⁶ See comments on Naveh-Shaked, no. 10 (Horvat Rimmon), no. 11–13 (Maon-Nirim, all found in the apse), no. 16 (apse of Meroth synagogue)

⁵⁷ I suggest here with diffidence, and in a footnote only, that the uniquely schematic and nonnaturalistic style of the Bet Alfa mosaic, which is roughly contemporaneous with that of En Geddi, may be the product of a similar sort of anxiety about physical representation. This point could be made more strongly (1) if there were any reason to believe that Tzori was wrong to think that the nave mosaic of the northern synagogue of Beth Shean, executed in classicizing style, was not the work of Marianos and Hanina, who signed their name to an apparently later, very poorly preserved, mosaic in a sideroom of the synagogue (“The Ancient Synagogue in Beth Shean,” EI 8 [1967] 149–67); and (2) if we could be certain that Ernst Kitzinger (Israeli Mosaics, p. 15) was right to suggest that Marianos and Hanina had some role in producing the pavements of the Monastery of Lady Mary, again in Beth Shean, and again in an utterly different style from the Beth Alfa pavement. These considerations would suggest that Marianos and Hanina were not lively rustic naifs, as they are normally represented, but highly competent metropolitan artisans, who in the Bet Alfa mosaics were fulfilling the wishes of their employers. But this must remain a suggestion.

⁵⁸ See Rabinowitz, The Liturgical Poems of Rabbi Yannai, 1: 55–68, and in greater detail, the same author’s Halakha and Aggada in the Liturgical Poetry of Yannai: The Sources, Language, and Period of the Payyetan (Tel Aviv: Alexander Kohut Foundation, 1965).

⁵⁹ See Yahalom and Sokoloff, Jewish Palestinian Aramaic Poetry, pp. 39–45. It is furthermore my impression that as a group the Aramaic piyyutim are more closely linked thematically to the synagogue art than their Hebrew counterparts. Further study of these remarkable poems may produce more certainty.

⁶⁰ Cf. Shinan in Fine, Sacred Realm, pp. 146–48; Y. Yahalom, “The Zodiac in the Early Piyyut in Eretz-Israel,” Mehqerei Yerushalayim Besifrut Ivrit 9 (1986): 313–22.

⁶¹ The most sustained treatment of this question is S. Elitzur, “The Congregation in the Synagogue and the Ancient Qedushta,” in S. Elizur [sic] et al., eds., Knesset Ezra: Literature and Life in the Synagogue, Studies Presented to Ezra Fleischer (Jerusalem: Yad Ben Zvi, 1994), pp. 171–90, who confirms an old suggestion of Fleischer that qedushta’ot of the “classical” (i.e., pre-Islamic) period tend to start with complex and allusive language and grow gradually simpler, with complexity reemerging only in the silluq—the poetic version of the qedushah. She follows Fleischer in supposing that this variety of tone constitutes the payyetanim’s attempt to appeal to a broad audience. While preferable to the view that “everyone” could understand the piyyut, it still seems to me to overestimate the extent to which a large and probably mainly Hebrew-less audience could make sense of the poems. Even the simpler stanzas assume extensive knowledge from memory of the biblical text, not to mention the Hebrew language. The recently published Aramaic piyyutim, usually composed in relatively simple language with many similarities to that of the synagogue inscriptions, are suggestive—if only more were known about their function and dating; see Yahalom and Sokoloff, Aramaic Poems.

⁶² Even J. Yahalom, Poetry and Society in Jewish Galilee of Late Antiquity (Tel Aviv: Ha-kibbutz Ha-me’uhad, 1999), has mainly these traditional concerns, despite its title.

⁶³ See Schirmann, “Yannai Ha-payyetan”; Yahalom, “Piyyut as Poetry”; Levine, Synagogue, p. 119. In fact, the “Bach-at-Leipzig” model, as Schirmann and Yahalom characterized it, can be demonstrated only for Yannai and Rabbi Shimon bar Megas (see Yahalom, Liturgical Poems of R. Simon bar Megas [Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1984], p. 13).
As to the date of the development of the piyyut, the reviser of I. Elbogen, Jewish Liturgy, pp. 220–21 (apparently H. Schirmann), argues that “we can no longer distinguish between a period of statutory prayers and a period of piyyut that followed”—a statement true, if at all, only if we imagine piyyut purely as a literary form rather than as a literary form embedded in a social practice, and furthermore adopt a kind of genetic fallacy according to which the classic piyyut was already present in its sources. For what Elbogen’s reviser means is that Hebrew poetry was written before the sixth century that featured some elements characteristic of the piyyut, e.g., use of archaizing periphrasis. There is no evidence that the piyyut as social practice, or even as fullblown literary form, existed before the fifth or sixth century. Au contraire, the silence of Y. Berakhot and Y. Megillah seems decisive.
The earliest payyetanim are thought to have been Yosi ben Yosi and Yannai; for their dates, see A. Mirsky, Yosse ben Yosse: Poems (Jerusalem: Mossad Bialik, 1977), pp. 8–14; and Rabinowitz, Liturgical Poems of Rabbi Yannai, 1: 45–54.

⁶⁴ At least this is how Palestinian rabbinic texts describe it, and they are followed by most modern scholars; see, e.g., Yahalom, “Piyyut as Poetry,” pp. 111–12; R. Scheindlin, The Gazelle: Medieval Hebrew Poems on God, Israel, and the Soul (New York: JPS, 1991), pp. 13–18. E. Fleischer, Shirat Hakodesh Ha’ivrit Biyemei Habeynayim (Jerusalem: Keter, 1975), pp. 47–54, suggests a different trajectory of development; prayer, in his view, had not been improvised but fixed in an infinity of local variants; thus, much as in modern synagogues, the congregation recited the prayers and the leader then repeated them. After several centuries, boredom set in (!), so some prayer leaders, especially those in the synagogues connected to the rabbinic yeshivot, began to compose new liturgies, which they performed while the congregation continued to recite the traditional liturgy. Fleischer was apparently disturbed by the congregational passivity implied by an improvisational liturgy.

⁶⁵ See Fleischer, Shirat Haqodesh, pp. 14–22.

⁶⁶ For similar speculation, see Fleischer, Shirat Haqodesh, p. 54.

⁶⁷ See in general J. Yahalom, Poetic Language in the Early Piyyut (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1985).

⁶⁸ See H. Schirmann, “Hebrew Liturgical Poetry and Christian Hymnology,” JQR 44 (1953): 123–61; Yahalom, “Piyyut as Poetry,” pp. 121–25. Schirmann was mainly interested in arguing that Romanos the Melode, the main composer of kontakia, who was allegedly of Jewish origin, was influenced by the piyyut; but the chronological issues are at present unresolvable.

⁶⁹ See, e.g., Rabinowitz, Liturgical Poems, pp. 72–76; Yahalom, Poetic Language, pp. 12–13; Schirmann, “Yannai Ha-payyetan,” p. 50 (with reservations).

⁷⁰ Fleischer, Shirat Haqodesh, pp. 134–36. Fleischer notes that the evidence for extensive use of choirs begins with Qiliri, probably at the very end of our period.

⁷¹ Cf. Fleischer, Shirat Haqodesh, p. 51. Note also the account, from a medieval genizah document, cited by Rabinowitz, Liturgical Poems, p. 74, mentioned here for the sake of illustration: one Yom Kippur, a cantor from Damascus performed a piyyut composed by the great philosopher and poet Ibn Gabirol in such a stirring manner that when he finished the crowd shouted, “Encore! Encore!” The cantor, according to his own account, was then inspired by God to improvise additional stanzas—this at a time when liturgical improvisation was no longer practiced.

⁷² See S. Krauss, “The Jews in the Works of the Church Fathers,” JQR 6 (1894): 231–33.

⁷³ See S. Schwartz, “Language, Power, and Identity,” pp. 12–9.

⁷⁴ Some payyetanim, most prominently Qiliri, delighted in displays of virtuosity that were almost certainly wholly incomprehensible, even to the most learned and attentive members of the congregation. Qiliri’s qerovah for the Sabbath before Purim (its first lines are: Atz qotzetz ben qotzetz/ qetzutzai leqatzetz/ bedibbur mefotzetz/ retzutzai leratzetz/ letz bevo lerotzetz, etc.) was notorious for its incomprehensibility even in the Middle Ages, and yet it was exceedingly popular—one of the few ancient piyyutim to survive long enough to have been included in the standard modern liturgies. See Yahalom, Poetic Language, pp. 16–18.

⁷⁵ See M. Zulay, Piyyute Yannai (Berlin: Schocken, 1938), pp. 188–89; Rabinowitz, Liturgical Poems, 2: 35–40, with commentary. The translation is my own.

⁷⁶ I.e., of Moses—the very menorah mentioned in the week’s Torah lection; cf. Y. Shekalim 6:4, 50b.

⁷⁷ A similar conceit appears also in Midrash Tadshe, chapter 2, a medieval collection that like the piyyutim, often draws on lost midrashim: “ ‘And he made ten golden menorot’ (2 Chr 4:7), corresponding to the Ten Commandments, and each menorah has seven lamps—for a total of seventy, corresponding to the seventy nations; and whenever the lamps burn the nations are restrained, but as soon as the lamps were extinguished, the nations prevailed”; see A. Epstein, Beiträge zur jüdischen Alterthumskunde (Vienna: C. D. Lippe, 1887), pp. xvii–xviii.

⁷⁸ Perhaps, following Rabinowitz, Liturgical Poems, “reach every corner,” an allusion to the spread of Christianity.

⁷⁹ On this stanza, see Yahalom, Poetry and Society, pp. 73–75.

⁸⁰ Qerovot for the first day of Passover and the eighth day of Tabernacles, which contain prayers for dew and rain, respectively, conventionally mentioned the signs of the zodiac (equated with the twelve tribes of Israel and the months). But this practice is first attested in the work of R. Elazar Qiliri (fl. c. 600), and its subsequent transformation into a topos (with, naturally, less and less connection to the realia of the synagogue) may have been due to his influence; see E. Fleischer, “Lekadmoniot Piyyutei Hatal (Vehageshem): Kerovah Kedam-Yannait Ligevurot Hatal,” Kobez al Yad 8 (1975): 91–139, especially 107.

⁸¹ See Yahalom, “Zodiac in the Early Piyyut,” pp. 316–17.

⁸² For the best text, see D. Goldschmidt, Order of Elegies for Tishah Be-Av (Jerusalem: Mosad HaravKook 1977), pp. 29–30. The translation is once again my own.

⁸³ From Palms 122:2, “Jerusalem the rebuilt, as a city joined together.”

⁸⁴ Cf. the piyyut for Yom Kippur published by Yahalom (“Zodiac in the Early Piyyut,” pp. 319–22), in which the signs of the zodiac are said to rejoice along with all humanity when the high priest exits the holy of holies on the Day of Atonement.

⁸⁵ This sounds almost like a conscious attempt to stake out a compromise position in the rabbinic debate, ascribed to R. Yohanan and R. Hanina b. Hama, about whether Israel’s fate is ruled by the signs of the zodiac; B. Shabbat 156a.

⁸⁶ Somehow connected to this may be the inscriptions listing the twenty-four priestly “courses,” mainly from the sixth century, and the piyyutim based on them. It is worth noting that these inscriptions have so far been found only on separate plaques and not worked into the mosaic pavements, unlike donor inscriptions. For discussion, see L. Levine, “Caesarea’s Synagogues and Some Historical Implications,” in A. Biran and J. Aviram, eds., Biblical Archaeology Today, 1990: Proceedings of the Second International Congress on Biblical Archaeology, (Jerusalem: IES, 1993) 666–78; Levine, Ancient Synagogue, pp. 491–500; and cf. Yahalom, Poetry and Society, pp. 107–36. Levine concludes that there was a genuine revival of priestly power in late antiquity, in a way that challenged the rabbis, a theme taken up by several participants at a conference on Jewish culture in late antiquity held at the Hebrew University in July 1999. While possible, the evidence seems to me poor.