Rising Again

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In the rugged hills of the south-central Golan, a monumental ancient synagogue is rising again—literally.

Its original name is lost. The Arabic name it bears today, Umm el-Kanatir (“the mother of the arches”), derives from the three beautiful stone arches built over nearby pools that capture the flow of a perennial spring.

Erected during the Byzantine period (fourth–seventh centuries C.E.), the Umm el-Kanatir synagogue first came to Western notice in a report in the 1880s by Sir Laurence Oliphant, in the description of his discoveries on the same Golan 054expedition with his artist-wife, Lady Alice, during which he visited Deir Aziz (another ancient synagogue, discussed in the article).

Umm el-Kanatir makes a peculiar claim. It is almost totally collapsed; yet it can fairly be called one of the “best-preserved” ancient synagogues: Almost all the pieces are right there at the site. The standing elements include the doorway, the Torah shrine (where the Torah scrolls were stored) and three incomplete courses of stones from its outer walls. Otherwise, the synagogue exists as a jumbled heap of basalt ashlars and architectural fragments.

Even before excavation, exquisite decorations on some of the fragments signaled the beauty and richness of a bygone era. The synagogue probably collapsed in the devastating earthquake of 749 C.E. that left a trail of destruction in all the cities from the Negev to the Jordan Valley. BAR readers may recall the columns that fell like toothpicks at the cathedral of Sussita during this same earthquake.^a

Although the synagogue at Umm el-Kanatir collapsed, an estimated 90 percent of its stones remain where they fell. For the most part, the stones were not scavenged to be reused in other buildings or carted away by treasure hunters. The reason probably has a lot to do with the synagogue’s remote location on steep terrain not on the route to any significant towns. Like many other synagogues and villages in the Golan, the Umm el-Kanatir synagogue and village were abandoned in the early 055Islamic period (eighth or ninth century C.E.). The village remained unoccupied until the 19th century, when squatters came. The consequence, says Giora Solar, the conservation-architect at Umm el-Kanatir, “is that if we manage to go backward, as in a movie, from the end to the beginning, we could put the stones back and have a unique ancient synagogue still standing.”

Rebuilding Umm el-Kanatir in this way would accord with a fundamental ethical guideline of conservation—often violated—in the 1964 “Venice Charter,” which sets out principles for preservation and restoration of ancient buildings everywhere: “All reconstruction [that is rebuilding without having the original elements] should be ruled out a priori. Only anastylosis, the reassembling of existing but dismembered parts, can be permitted.”

Since 2003, reconstruction of the Umm el-Kanatir synagogue has been the objective of Yehoshua “Yeshu” Dray,¹ who came to the remote site^b with a 44-foot-high upside-down-U-shaped stationary steel crane that he had found in an abandoned factory in Beersheva.

Yeshu is neither an archaeologist, an engineer nor an architect. He says he’s “a lazy guy” who tries “to adapt existing technology to solve archaeological problems.” His formal classroom education ended with high school, but his fascination with how ancient technology worked led him to develop new theories about wine and olive oil production in antiquity and how to reconstruct ancient olive and grape presses, water-lifting devices and flour mills. When archaeologists and park developers in Israel are looking to reconstruct an ancient device, Yeshu has become the address. Says Yeshu’s research archaeologist at Umm el-Kanatir, Chaim Ben-David: “Yeshu has great hands and a Golan head. You 059need to have a Golan head because everything here is different. The stone in the Golan area is basalt, unlike the limestone of Judea and the Negev. The dfferent rock and soil make for many differences in the methods and style of building.”

Yeshu’s fascination has become his business. “Y. Dray, Restoration of Ancient Technology” appears in large Hebrew letters on the yellow horizontal beam of his huge crane at the site. To bring it down the steep hill to the synagogue, Yeshu cut the 110-foot horizontal beam in two so that tractors could pull each piece down the steep track. The first piece arrived without incident; the second came loose from its tractor, and 22 tons of steel went flying down the hill until a boulder stopped its descent just before hurtling into people standing below. At the site the two pieces were put together with a prepared joint, then lifted into place on top of the vertical legs by conventional cranes. The entire steel structure was then mounted on tracks, almost 200 feet long, laid parallel to, and outside of, the long fragmentary walls of the collapsed synagogue. From the beam of the crane hangs a winch that can be moved along the beam from one end to the other. The entire structure can also move along the tracks, allowing the winch, hanging from the beam, to be positioned 060anywhere within the tracks and to be lowered to reach any stone on the ground.

With this contraption Yeshu can lift each stone in the fallen synagogue and deposit it in the temporary storage areas between the synagogue and the tracks. But keep in mind that the ultimate purpose of all this was to place the tumbled stones in their original locations in the restored synagogue.

This was the challenge for archaeologist Ilana Gonen, Yeshu’s partner together with Chaim Ben-David. Each stone was given a unique electronic ID. A tiny electronic chip was embedded almost invisibly in each stone in the pile. Before the stones were moved, Yeshu dangled himself precariously from the crane’s winch to take aerial still photos of the blocks. In addition, he attached a 3-D laser scanner to the winch, which documented the position of every stone in the exposed layer, including its embedded electronic ID. Sitting at the laptop on the ground, Yeshu and Ilana watched the progress of the scan and moved the winch to ensure that the entire area was recorded. The scan provides a record of the location of each stone in the place where it fell. Once this was recorded, the winch could pick up each stone—without losing information about its original location—and carry it to the storage area outside the synagogue wall. Each layer of stones was removed by the same method. Now that reconstruction has begun, it is possible to return to the scan on the computer, identify stones that belong in a particular part of the original building and identify them in the storage area by their distinctive electronic signature.

A thousand stones were moved in three months in this way—layer by layer, until the ancient synagogue floor was finally exposed. The Israel Antiquities Authority has since granted a license to rehabilitate the ruins. Yeshu and his team began the process of rebuilding (anastylosis) this past summer by repairing and reconstructing the underground room (possibly a genizah), the western entrance and the lower courses of two of the outer walls.

But even under the best of conditions, with almost all the building blocks waiting to be placed in their original locations, reconstruction will be complicated. For one thing, Umm el-Kanatir is in a seismically active region. Any rebuilt structure must be made stable in the event of future earthquakes. Other challenges, Solar points out, are making the site accessible for the disabled and deciding what kind of roof, if any, to reconstruct. Some of the original clay roof tiles have been found and the full height of the walls will probably become known, but details are still lacking.

Meanwhile, expectations are high. Excavation at the southern end of the synagogue, near the entrance, revealed intact stairs leading up to a Torah shrine. Two ashlar stones bore seven-branched menorahs.

On the pavement in front of the Torah shrine, beneath the collapse, lay an unusual basalt column, 4.5 feet tall and decorated with bunches of grapes, geometric figures, a double-arched design that seems to suggest two tablets of the law, a machtah (incense shovel) and a shofar (ram’s horn). The column also features the traditional four 086species—the date palm, willow, myrtle and citron—that are combined together in a bunch (lulav) for waving on Sukkot.

Outside the entrance to the synagogue the diggers found a similar column decorated with some of the same symbols. It has a basket-weave capital and a column base adorned with exotic animal forms.

In one sense the synagogue was saved—making reconstruction possible—because of its remote location. Looters rarely ventured here. But what can account for such an elegant synagogue in such a desolate place? How did the residents of this remote village have the means to build such a beautiful synagogue? Yeshu has an answer—or at least an intriguing speculation. The pools from the spring that gave the synagogue its name are the key. Yeshu speculates that at these pools, crushed limestone was used to bleach and abrade the fibers of raw flax brought from villages along the Jordan River at the northern end of the Sea of Galilee. To support his suggestion Yeshu points to worn stones at the edge of the Umm el-Kanatir pools, chalk and lime sediment in the pools, limestone pieces with sharp edges stockpiled in the synagogue, eroded limestone pieces found near the spring, a small column with a basin on top, and bottom drainage from the pools—a necessity to remove accumulated limestone sediment. Putting all this together Yeshu finds clear evidence for a flax-bleaching establishment at Umm el-Kanatir.

The final product would be fine, white linen fibers, destined to be woven into prized garments. The availability of freely flowing water, a source of limestone for bleaching and the proximity of flax farms led to a flax industry that brought the wealth required to build the elaborate synagogue that may one day stand again. Perhaps somewhere in the rubble we may even find the synagogue’s original name.

In the rugged hills of the south-central Golan, a monumental ancient synagogue is rising again—literally.