Hershel Shanks

Expertly carved steps lead up to a Torah shrine on the southern wall of the synagogue. The Torah scrolls would have been stored in a wooden cabinet, which was within a stone niche. As excavator Chaim Ben-David points out, the raised platform was not large enough to accommodate a person standing and reading from a scroll, so the Torah would have been brought down from its shrine and recited elsewhere. The drawing above reconstructs what the Torah shrine would have looked like.