Polycharmos’s private home was right next door to the synagogue he dedicated. It had those features one might expect from a wealthy donor: beautiful mosaic floors, a colonnaded court, a fancy dining room (triclinium) with a fountain, and another large room with a reflecting pool. I would guess that the synagogue may originally have been part of Polycharmos’s house, which he subsequently donated to the community. The current archeological remains of the synagogue include a dining area, an entryway atrium, and a sacred space (labeled in Greek: hagios topos) arrayed as a basilica with an apse. The mosaics of the nave are still visible. The identification of the site as a synagogue is further assured by an incised menorah on a plastered wall in one of the rooms off the main hall. A church was later built atop the two layers of the synagogue, and all three building layers were subsequently excavated.
In the ancient North African town of Naro, in modern Hammam Lif, just south of Tunis, the three-door entrance to the synagogue interrupts the long wall opposite the so-called Torah shrine. This broad-house synagogue structure has a beautiful mosaic “carpet,” including a Latin inscription identifying it as “sancta synagoga.” The art of the central mosaic includes renderings of animals, waterfowl, fruit baskets, a palm tree, and sea creatures. It is flanked by mosaics of menorahs and rather minimalist, abstract mosaics of a palm frond and citron. The latter would be unidentifiable were we not trained to expect them as symbols in synagogue art. The building is double columned and dates to the sixth or seventh century. Hammam Lif is a nice example of ancient North African synagogue construction, not far from where the remnants of the Tunis Jewish congregation still gather for weekly prayer. When my wife and I visited there, we knew we had found the right place by noting the presence of armed guards on the street outside. Such is the fragility of synagogue life, ancient and modern.
We now look toward the Holy Land and briefly describe the layouts of synagogues discovered in three ancient urban Jewish centers: Caesarea Maritima on the Mediterranean shore, Tiberias at the Sea of Galilee, and Sepphoris/Diocaesarea in central Galilee. As the names of these cities indicate, they were built as Roman towns and had a pagan and Christian, as well as Jewish, population. These Jewish communities were embedded in thoroughly Roman contexts. All three of these sites remain available for tourists to visit, as my wife and I have. Go see these ancient synagogue remains with your very own eyes.
Caesarea Maritima served as the imperial port with a major harbor complex. The city was built by Herod in the first century BCE and was named for his patron, Emperor Augustus Caesar. Early in the first century CE, it became the Roman administrative capital, and its fortunes rose and fell with the successive rebellions and quiet of the Jewish population. The synagogue at Caesarea may have been built as a broad-house, with a door to the east. But the sanctuary of the later stratum of the building, dating to the third to fifth centuries, is a basilica with an apse, columns, and a north-south orientation. Congregants did not actually face Jerusalem as a point of worship. The inscriptions are mostly Greek and mention donors who have Greek names. This may be the synagogue where they recited the Shema in Greek during their prayers. Some short Hebrew and Aramaic inscriptions were found near the synagogue site. Not surprisingly, excavators also found menorahs incised or carved in relief on some of the remaining capitals.
On the shores of the Sea of Galilee lie the city of Tiberias and its suburb Hammat Tiberias. The synagogue is south of the town, near the hot springs that give the suburb its name (Hammat means “hot springs” in Hebrew/Aramaic). In the third and fourth centuries, Tiberias and Hammat more or less merged into one larger metropolis. The Patriarch of the Jews and the rabbinical academy held court there. The first draft of the Palestinian Talmud may have been compiled in rabbinic circles of fourth- to fifth-century Tiberias and Caesarea. This tells us that the rabbis were quite comfortable in what were thoroughly cosmopolitan Roman cities, each replete with pagan populations and imagery.
The synagogue of Tiberias’s suburb Hammat has three sets of columns instead of the usual two, and so the main sanctuary is divided into four sections. Congregants faced southward, in the general if not precise direction of Jerusalem, perhaps in accordance with the dictates of the rabbinic text quoted earlier about which way to face when praying. The Greek donor inscriptions were also quoted previously, seen along with a picture of the donor plaque. That inscription is framed on either side by lions and is part of the central section of the synagogue’s beautiful mosaic carpet. At the opposite end, the mosaic depicts the doors of the ark or of the Temple with menorahs on either side, and the predictable palm, citron, and shofar. The surprise is in the central panel. Here is a zodiac, complete with Greek mythical figures—including an uncircumcised boy representing the month of Tishrei (Libra). Smack in the middle of the zodiac circle is the divine figure of Zeus-Helios, riding his four-horsed quadriga. Depictions of Helios can also be found in synagogue remains at Na’aran (in the South), at Bet Alpha (also in the Galilee), and at Sepphoris. We’ll discuss these unexpected mosaics in our next chapter, I promise.
Right now, we have one more synagogue to consider. The excavations at Sepphoris uncovered significant sections of the Roman-era city. The town sits midway between Caesarea Maritima on the west and Tiberias on the east. Although Jewish sources indicate that it had a majority-Jewish population, the inhabitants did not join the first-century revolt against Rome. Instead, they opened the gates of the city to General Vespasian. Yikes! Its Jewish character, however, later was assured when Rebbi Judah the Patriarch moved to Sepphoris in the early third century. It is generally thought that Rebbi completed his editing of the Mishnah there. The Palestinian Talmud says that when Rebbi Judah the Patriarch died, the Jews of the eighteen synagogues of Sepphoris turned out to mourn for him.
The city is built on a Roman plan—with a cardo, or north-to-south main street, bisecting the city. Many mosaics have been recovered in the excavations, including the one of Aphrodite and Eros discussed earlier. The art and architecture of Sepphoris are, in the words of its archeologists Ze’ev Weiss and Ehud Netzer, “not very different from the pagan cities of the region.” The synagogue they excavated is in the northern part of town, “built on an east-west axis . . . to fit in with the topography and the alignment of the adjacent streets.” Congregants entered through a single door into an antechamber, turned left, and then passed through one of two doors into the main sanctuary.
The art of the Sepphoris synagogue is fascinating, with seven rows of panels making up the central mosaic carpet. Among them there are Greek inscriptions, a depiction of the Binding of Isaac, and the zodiac we just mentioned—with a faceless Zeus-Helios depicted as the orb of the sun in the center. And then there is a menagerie of beasts; the usual menorahs, palm, and citron; and symbolic doors. Captions on these mosaics are in Greek, as are a number of the donor inscriptions. Certain of the biblical scenes are captioned in Hebrew, while some donor acknowledgements are in Aramaic. We are left with an impression of an educated congregation—at least those who liked to look at the mosaic floor.
As these eight synagogues from the Diaspora and the Holy Land demonstrate, the architecture of Jewish buildings was Roman. The cities they were built in were Roman, be they in the Diaspora or in Palestine. Town plans, inscriptions, and public buildings all provided the Greco-Roman milieu in which the Jewish community flourished. City plans were a manifestation of Hellenistic culture. Earlier, we read about poor Rabbi Eliezer’s arrest. When asked why he was arrested, he reported, “Once I was walking on the main street (istrata) of Sepphoris . . .” I want to focus on that main street, the istrata.
Roman cities were planned on a grid, and the major arteries were built on a north-south axis. The main street that divided the town this way was called the cardo, while the east-west divide was the decumanus. The term Rabbi Eliezer used, istrata, is the same word as “street.” Some of you may recall the 1954 Fellini movie La Strada, which was about a road tri
p. In any case, Rabbi Eliezer was most likely walking on the cardo when he met with his trouble. That very same cardo has been excavated by archeologists in Sepphoris. But given the size of such a main street, we might expect a cardo to show up in many excavations of ancient towns, and indeed it has.
At the crossroads of the cardo and the decumanus, there was often a monument marking the intersection. This was called a tetrapylon, or four-arched gate (mentioned above in our visit to the Ostia synagogue, which grandiosely had its own mini-tetrapylon on the synagogue grounds). Archeologists have uncovered many of the grander tetrapylons that mark city crossroads. Below is one from Aphrodisias in Asia Minor. Earlier, we discussed the lengthy inscription from the synagogue at Aphrodisias that recognized the “God fearers.”
Although archeologists have not yet discovered the tetrapylon of the Jewish Roman city of Caesarea, it is mentioned in a third-century rabbinic source and again, poignantly, in the ninth-century Midrash on Proverbs (chapter 9), where we read how Rabbi Aqiba’s disciple Yehoshua of Gerasa and the prophet Elijah accompanied the great rabbi’s corpse for burial:
They walked all night long until they reached the tetrapylon of Caesarea. When they arrived at the tetrapylon of Caesarea they first descended and then ascended some steps, and there they found a bier prepared, a bench (subsellium), a table, and candelabrum. As they placed Rabbi Aqiba on the bier, the candelabrum lit and the table set! . . . At that moment they said, “Blessed are you Rabbi Aqiba, who has found a good resting place at the hour of your death.
Tetrapylon of Aphrodisias
The text does not make any mention of Rabbi Aqiba having been tortured, but instead offers a kind of dreamscape in which his disciple Yehoshua walks with the prophet Elijah to accompany the good rabbi to his final resting place. I can’t imagine what the tetrapylon of Caesarea is doing in this “dream,” but might it symbolize the four-chambered heart of the bereft Rabbi Yehoshua? I am certain that it does not describe the actual burial of the sainted rabbi.
Let’s leave Rabbi Aqiba to rest in peace, but as we do so, we should take notice of his burial place. Yehoshua and Elijah made ascents and descents until they found the appropriate chamber for his burial. Earlier we saw a Jerusalem burial monument named for Absalom that was actually from the first century. But the most significant Jewish burial finds from both Rome and the Galilee have been those in catacombs. While many tourists visit the Christian catacombs of Rome, few get to see the Jewish ones, which also date back to the second and third centuries. I described my visit to one group of Roman catacombs in the opening chapter. Another of those Roman Jewish catacombs, at Vigna Randanini, is conveniently located right across the street from the Christian catacombs, just off the famous Appian Way. Meanwhile, in the Galilee from the same era, we have catacomb complexes at Beth She’arim, associated with the family of Judah the Patriarch. This site is one of the only places where we find inscriptions bearing the names of rabbis mentioned in the Talmud.
Catacombs tended to be below-ground complexes, using either natural caves or excavated ones to hold burial chambers on the floors or in the walls. Bodies were left to decompose in these niches, called sarcophagi (singular: sarcophagus, lit. “flesh eater”). After a year, the bones usually were gathered and reburied into smaller receptacles called ossuaries. Freestanding stone sarcophagi have been discovered in the catacombs, affording more dignified burial, perhaps, than the placement of bodies into the ubiquitous wall niches. Jews no longer use catacombs or sarcophagi and ossuaries to store bones. Even so, most of the Jewish mourning customs that follow burial remain the same.
In the photo are niches in the Roman Jewish catacomb of Vigna Randanini. Once a corpse was within the niche, it was plastered over or left open until the flesh decayed. It may not be immediately clear from the palm tree photo below how these niches were carved. On close inspection we can see that the fresco had been painted, and then, at a later time, when there was need, the community returned to carve new burial sites on either side of the painting. Below it is another example of how this was done. It makes the destruction of the earlier art even more apparent. Clearly, space for burial trumped the funerary art.
Vigna Randanini catacomb Fig. 1
Vigna Randanini catacomb Fig. 2
A great deal of information can be gleaned from the inscriptions left by the departed Roman Jews. They describe a broad Who’s Who of the ancient Jewish world—one in which Greek and Roman names are very common and the Hebrew language is quite rare. We find very few pagan catacombs in the Roman world. The pagan poor were cremated. Those who could afford sepulchers followed the common practice of placing burial monuments on ground level, at the entrance routes to major Roman cities.
Sarcophagus—Capitoline Museums, Rome
Indeed, the pagan sarcophagus was a ubiquitous feature of the ancient Roman landscape, as common there as they are in today’s museums. Here is a sarcophagus adorned with an image of the deceased couple, now reclining at that great symposium in the sky. Notice the motif of the boar hunt, which perhaps is meant to invoke the heroism of the late departed. Boar hunting is found on a number of ancient pagan sarcophagi. Note as well the adorable putti (little winged angels) holding a theater mask at the top left.
In another sarcophagus, from the Naples Archeological Museum, other pagan religious motifs are displayed. The bas relief of the deceased couple depicted is wreathed with garlands held up by putti. On the sarcophagus’s top, there is a kind of seahorse monster, or Cetus, with a corkscrew tail, being ridden, perhaps, by a nereid, or mermaid. This particular mythic animal will appear in our next chapter when we discuss Jewish art.
“Leda and swan” sarcophagus—Heraclion Museum
These types of pagan legends are common in the funerary art of Late Antiquity. Another sarcophagus from the Naples Museum depicts the mythic motif of Leda being impregnated by Zeus, who appeared to her in the form of a swan. Just above is an image of Leda and the swan from the museum in Heraclion, Crete (worth visiting if you visit the Greek islands). We will see another version of this motif, too, on a Jewish sarcophagus. Love that swan.
In our tour of synagogues, we visited the pagan world to demonstrate how thoroughly Hellenistic customs infiltrated Judaism, even its conservative burial customs. It’s time for a much closer look at Jewish art in the Roman world. Let’s move the tour indoors.
Chapter IX
The Handwriting on the Wall (and the Floor and Ceiling): Roman Jewish Art
When I visit synagogues in North America, Europe, and Israel, I am struck at the sheer ubiquity of artistic images: on the walls, in stained glass windows, in the prayer books and Bible volumes, all alongside beautiful Judaica objets d’art. If there was a time that the Jews refrained from making images, it is long, long over. In addition to displays of art, words also appear in synagogues. Clearly, you would expect words to appear in books, but words also are found on memorial and dedication plaques, on identifying inscriptions explaining the art on the walls and windows, and in listings of the names of synagogue leadership. In North America and Europe, these inscriptions are overwhelmingly recorded in Latin letters. Hebrew appears rarely, most often in biblical quotes or to identify holidays depicted in stained glass.
These combinations of pictorial art, along with the small or large inscriptions describing it, appear fairly regularly in American synagogues. For a very long time, folks who visited my boyhood synagogue in Chicago would return to New York to tell me with a smile that they had seen my Hebrew school and bar mitzvah pictures still hanging on the synagogue wall, neatly captioned with my name. Clearly, this was a high point in the history of Jewish art!
In antiquity Jews lived surrounded by artistic and idolatrous imagery also captioned with inscriptions. In bigger cities Jews were exposed to statues, mosaics, and frescoes in vivid, gaudy color. Our beautiful Aphrodite came from a mosaic floor in the banquet room of a home in Sepphori
s. In Hebrew the name for Sepphoris, Tzippori, means “birds.” The city’s Greek and Latin name, Diocaesarea, means that the imperial town (Caesarea) was dedicated to Zeus (in Greek inflected forms: Dia, Dios). It was a cultured city with a theater and a tetrapylon at the main intersection. Travel guides refer to the Aphrodite mosaic of Sepphoris as the “Mona Lisa of the Galilee”; still, the town has enough other pagan imagery to assure me that the mosaic is not just another pretty face but, indeed, depicts Aphrodite/Venus.
Among the other Greco-Roman art found in Sepphoris is a tiled floor from a private home called by its excavators “the Dionysus mosaic,” named after the god it depicts. That same floor also features a Pan-like centaur and Hercules. In case there is any doubt about who he is, there is a Greek caption identifying him as Herakles, as the name is spelled in Greek. He is engaged in a drinking contest with Dionysus. The centaur, or Pan character, is on the left panel, with the accompanying Greek caption “Bacchae.” The archeologists of Sepphoris also uncovered small statuettes of Pan and of Prometheus, complete with an eagle pecking at his liver. The significant polytheist population of Sepphoris enjoyed Roman-pagan artistic motifs and lived comfortably alongside the Jewish community. Given the art we have uncovered in the synagogue there, I must conclude that the Jews of Sepphoris also were comfortable living among their pagan neighbors.
Aphrodite and the Rabbis Page 18