Sensing the Synagogue - The BAS Library

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Synagogues became vital centers of Jewish religious and community life after the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE. Written and archaeological sources provide vivid testimony of how these structures were built, decorated, and sustained across the Mediterranean world of late antiquity. What was it like to worship inside these spaces? Explore how early Jews experienced the sights and smells of ancient synagogues.

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Endnotes

1. See Eric Lapp, The Clay Lamps from Ancient Sepphoris (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2016); and Gregg Gardner, “Light, Lamps, and Material Religion in Early Rabbinic Judaism,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 91.1 (2023), pp. 136–153.

2. See Joseph Naveh, On Stone and Mosaic: The Aramaic and Hebrew Inscriptions from Ancient Synagogues (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1978), pp. 34–36 (Hebrew).

3. For the significance of scent in rabbinic Judaism, see Deborah Green, The Aroma of Righteousness: Scent and Seduction in Rabbinic Life and Literature (University Park, PA: Penn State Univ. Press, 2011).

4. Richard A. Freund, “A New Interpretation of the Incense Shovels in the Cave of the Letters,” in Lawrence Schiffman et al., eds., The Dead Sea Scrolls Fifty Years After Their Discovery (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2000), pp. 644–660.

5. See Yosef Porath, The Synagogue at En-Gedi (Jerusalem: Hebrew Univ., 2021), pp. 105–112.

6. See L. Michael White, Discovery, Excavation, and Development of the Ostia Synagogue Complex: Final Reports, Part III (forthcoming). I thank Michael White for the excavation photos, and Mary Jane Cuyler for sharing this information.

7. As cited in Jacob Mann, “A Tract by an Early Ḳaraite Settler in Jerusalem,” Jewish Quarterly Review 12.3 (1922), pp. 257–298 (266).