The Synagogue

We know that the Synagogue was the religious and social centre of the Jewish community, holding the Jewish people together in a united community after the destruction of the Beit ha-Mikdash. But today we do not know very well when the existence of the Synagogue began. The word synagogue is a Greek word meaning 'place of assembly'. In Greek there is another word that says the same thing: 'ekklesia', 'place of assembly'. In Hebrew we say 'Beit Knesset', 'house of assembly', or 'Beit Tefila', 'house of prayer'. In Ladino we say 'kehila', which also means a place where the 'kahal', or group of people, gathers. In Turkish we say 'cami', which means place of assembly. The root of this word is 'cem', meaning the 'sum' of things or people. So the Synagogue served as a house of prayer, as a community centre, as a house where the community meets, as a place to celebrate festivals all together or to console the relatives at a funeral, as a place of charity and piety. So the Synagogue was a very radical innovation in the life of the Jew, because he began to gather with more people for prayers or social activities, which they could not do in the Beit ha-Mikdash, where only the officiants such as the Kohanim and the Leviim entered.

A great majority of academics think the Synagogue began with the exile to Babylon, in order to teach the Torah to the children, to maintain the traditions and take care that they were not lost. The academic Aharon Oppenheimer does not agree with this theory, saying that the Babylonian Talmud, which deals with the period of the exile, was written 1,000 years after that event and that there is no archaeological evidence relating to that period. A second theory says the Synagogue began with Ezra and Nehemiah after they returned from Babylon, in the 5th century BCE. According to Ismar Elbogen, the time of Ezra was the time that served to develop the liturgy of the Synagogue, such as the ceremony of reading the Torah. A third theory says the Synagogue began in the Hellenistic period (4th century BCE) in Egypt. According to Rachel Hachlili, it was there that the inscription 'Synagogue' was found for the first time.

A fourth theory says the Synagogue began with the Pharisees in the time of the Hasmoneans. The fifth theory says the Synagogue developed after the fall of Jerusalem in the year 70 CE. The fact is that the Synagogue must have existed well before the fall of Jerusalem: according to the writings of the philosopher Philo, according to the historian Josephus and according to the book of the Maccabees, synagogues existed both in Palestine and in the diaspora, such as the synagogue of the City of David, which existed even 150 years before the fall of the Temple to the Romans in the year 70 CE. According to the writings we know that this synagogue served for prayer, for teaching the Torah and even for people who came from afar and had no place to stay. Of all these theories, the theory of the Hellenistic period of the Diaspora convinces us more than the others, having the proof of archaeological remains. We can say that the Jewish community in the Galut made the Synagogue the place where the traditions of Jewish identity were preserved, taking into account politics, liturgy, social life, education, justice and spiritual life. Source: S. B. Jang of Bar-Ilan University