Synagogue

The term synagogue may refer either to a building that serves as a site for Jewish prayer and study or to a collective of Jewish community members who constitute a congregation. Since the origins of synagogue buildings, likely in the first century CE, they have formed an essential component of Jewish community life. Synagogues have facilitated the preservation and innovation of Jewish practices and traditions in historical and geographical contexts in which Jews often constituted a persecuted minority of the population. Today, synagogues exist all over the world and serve as important prayer and meeting spaces for Jews both in Israel and in the Jewish Diaspora.

In Greek, “synagoge” means “gathering” or “assembly,” and although it is usually translated as a gathering place, it can also refer to a gathering of people or objects. In the Septuagint, the Greek version of the Hebrew Bible, the term is used in reference to many different Hebrew words. The Hebrew term for assembly place is “beit knesset,” or “house of assembly,” but other terms used for “synagogue” include “beit tefila,” which means “house of prayer,” and “beit midrash,” which means “house of study.”

In the early centuries of its existence, the synagogue referred specifically to an assembly of Jews who congregated for what scholars might today deem both religious and nonreligious purposes. Such purposes have included prayer and rituals, studying and debating texts, discussions regarding legal decisions, economic exchanges, social events, and informal meetings. Early references to synagogues exist in the writings of Josephus and Philo [Page 1249]and in the Gospels of the New Testament. For instance, Josephus referred to a large gathering in Tiberias, and Philo described a place where Jews met to study the law every 7th day and in every city. Philo also quoted an Egyptian official who wrote about Jews meeting regularly to sit in enclaves, read holy books, and discuss them.

Although the origins of the synagogue are ambiguous, some contemporary Jewish sources assert that synagogues originated during the Israelites’ exile in Babylon after the destruction of the First Temple in Jerusalem in 586 BCE. As synagogues became an institutionalized part of Jewish life, their presence in the tradition was emphasized in texts, such as the Babylonian Talmud, as having originated at the time of Moses. Synagogues from the first few centuries of the Common Era had what were called “seats of Moses,” small raised platforms at the front of the synagogue where esteemed community members sat and perhaps expounded on biblical texts.

In the archaeological record, the earliest synagogue buildings date to the first century CE. Archaeological evidence has uncovered three buildings that seem to have been synagogues that predate 70 CE, but these three did not have an ark that housed the Torah scrolls, which was an essential component of later synagogues. Synagogues became important meeting places after the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem in 70 CE, but they did not replace the temple. The temple served as the site for sacrifices and for thrice-yearly pilgrimages, on the Jewish holidays of Pesach (Passover), Shavuot (Festival of Weeks or of First Fruits), and Sukkot (Feast of Booths or of Tabernacles), and it is ascribed a deep sense of holiness that synagogues do not replicate.

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