Synagogue

A synagogue or synagog, also called a shul or a temple, is a place of worship for Jews and Samaritans. It serves as a house of prayer where Jews attend religious services or ceremonies such as weddings, bar and bat mitzvahs, choir performances, and children's plays. Synagogues often also contain study rooms, social halls, administrative and charitable offices, classrooms for religious and Hebrew studies, and spaces for community gatherings. They frequently display commemorative, historic, or modern artwork alongside items of Jewish historical significance or exhibits about the synagogue itself.
Synagogues are buildings used for Jewish prayer, study, assembly, and reading of the Torah. The Torah is traditionally read in its entirety over a period of a year in weekly portions during services, or in some synagogues on a triennial cycle. However, the edifice of a synagogue as such is not essential for holding Jewish worship. Halakha states that communal Jewish worship can be carried out wherever a minyan, a group of at least 10 Jewish adults, is assembled, often led by a rabbi. This minyan is the essence of Jewish communal worship, which can also be conducted alone or with fewer than ten people, but that excludes certain prayers as well as communal Torah reading. In terms of its specific ritual and liturgical functions, the synagogue does not replace the long-destroyed Temple in Jerusalem.
Any Jew or group of Jews can build a synagogue. Synagogues have been constructed by ancient Jewish leaders, wealthy patrons, and as part of a wide range of human institutions, including secular educational institutions, governments, and hotels. They have been built by the entire Jewish community living in a particular village or region, or by sub-groups of Jewish people organized by occupation, tradition/background, style of religious observance, or by the followers of a particular rabbi, such as the shtiebelekh of Hasidic Judaism.

Terminology

The Hebrew term is ' or "house of assembly". The Koine Greek-derived word synagogue also means "assembly" and is commonly used in English, with its earliest mention in the 1st century Theodotos inscription in Jerusalem. Ashkenazi Jews have traditionally used the Yiddish term ' in everyday speech, and many continue to do so in English.
Sephardi Jews and Romaniote Jews generally use the term kal. Spanish and Portuguese Jews call the synagogue an esnoga and Portuguese Jews may call it a sinagoga. Persian Jews and some Karaite Jews also use the term kenesa, which is derived from Aramaic, and some Mizrahi Jews use kenis or qnis, the Arabic word for a synagogue, or ṣla, the Arabic word for prayer.

History

In the First Temple period, Jewish communal worship revolved around the Temple in Jerusalem, serving as a central focal point and significant symbol for the entire Jewish nation. As such, it was the destination for Jews making pilgrimages during the three major annual festivals commanded by the Torah: Passover, Shavuot and Sukkot. There is no evidence of non-sacrificial worship during this period. There are several known cases of Jewish communities in Egypt with their own temples, such as the Temple at Elephantine established by refugees from the Kingdom of Judah during the Twenty-seventh Dynasty of Egypt, and a few centuries later, the Temple of Onias in the Heliopolite Nome.
The first synagogues emerged in the Jewish diaspora, probably after the Babylonian Exile of Judaea in 586 BCE, several centuries before their introduction to the Land of Israel. Evidence points to their existence as early as the Hellenistic period, notably in Alexandria, Ptolemaic Egypt, the world's foremost Greek-speaking city at the time. There, the first proseukhái were built to provide a place for communal prayer and reading and studying the Torah. Alexandrian Jews also made a Koine Greek translation of the Torah, the Septuagint. The earliest archaeological evidence for the existence of synagogues is stone dedication inscriptions from the third century BCE prove that proseukhái existed by that date. Philo and Josephus mention lavishly adorned synagogues in Alexandria and in Antioch, respectively.
More than a dozen Second Temple period synagogues in use by Jews and Samaritans have been identified by archaeologists in Israel and other countries of the Hellenistic world. Following the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai, who is often credited with reformulating Judaism for the post-Temple era, advocated for the establishment of individual houses of worship since the Temple was no longer accessible.
File:Dohány Street Synagogue in Pest, Budapest - Hungary.jpg|alt=Dohány Street Synagogue|thumb|299x299px|The Dohány Street Synagogue, the biggest synagogue in Europe. Budapest is known to be a central location in Jewish enlightenment.
It has been theorized that the synagogue became a place of worship in the region upon the destruction of the Second Temple during the First Jewish–Roman War; however, others speculate that there had been places of prayer, apart from the Temple, during the Hellenistic period. The popularization of prayer over sacrifice during the years prior to the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE had prepared the Jews for life in the diaspora, where prayer would serve as the focus of Jewish worship.
Despite the certain existence of synagogue-like spaces prior to the First Jewish–Roman War, the synagogue emerged as a focal point for Jewish worship upon the destruction of the Temple. For Jews living in the wake of the Revolt, the synagogue functioned as a "portable system of worship". Within the synagogue, Jews worshipped by way of prayer rather than sacrifices, which had previously served as the main form of worship within the Second Temple.

Second Temple period

In 2018, Mordechai Aviam reported that there were now at least nine synagogues excavated known to pre-date the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 CE, including in Magdala, Gamla, Masada, Herodium, Modi'in, Qiryat Sepher, and Khan Diab. Aviam concluded that he thought almost every Jewish settlement at the time, whether it was a polis or a village, had a synagogue.

Gamla – a synagogue was discovered near the city gate at Gamla, a site in the Golan northeast of the Sea of Galilee. This city was destroyed by the Roman army in 67 CE and was never rebuilt.
Masada – a synagogue was discovered on the western side of Masada, just south of the palace complex at the northern end of the site. One of the unique finds at this synagogue was a group of 14 scrolls, which included biblical, sectarian, and apocryphal documents.
Herodium – a synagogue from the 1st century was discovered in Herod's palace fortress at Herodium.
Magdala – also known as the Migdal Synagogue, this synagogue was discovered in 2009. One of the unique features of this synagogue, which is located on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee, is an intricately carved stone block that was found in the center of the main room.
Modi'in – Discovered between Modi'in and Latrun is the oldest synagogue within modern Israel that has been found to date, built during the second century BCE. It includes three rooms and a nearby mikve.
Talmudic period

Following the destruction of the Temple, the synagogue became the focal point of Jewish worship and communal life. Lester L. Grabbe writes: "The rise of the synagogue was a fortuitous but vital development which paved the way for a post-temple Judaism which became necessary after 70 Synagogues were not planned as a substitute for the temple but they were a useful vehicle to make the transition." Over time, prayers, rituals, and customs once performed in the Temple were adapted for synagogue use. Traditional forms of synagogal worship, including sermons and the reading of scripture, were preserved, while new forms of worship, such as piyyut and organized prayer, developed. Rabbinic instruction, however, maintained that certain practices should remain exclusive to the Temple. The Mishnah directed prayers toward Jerusalem, and most synagogues face the Temple site rather than mirroring its orientation, establishing them as extensions of its sanctity, not replicas.
During Late antiquity, literary sources attest to the existence of a large number of synagogues across the Roman-Byzantine and Sasanian Empires. Archaeological evidence indicates the presence of synagogues in at least thirteen places across the diaspora, spanning from Dura-Europos in Syria to Elche in Hispania. An especially sizable and monumental synagogue dating from this period is the Sardis Synagogue. Additionally, many inscriptions pertaining to synagogues and their officials have been discovered.
In the Land of Israel, late antiquity witnessed a significant increase in synagogue construction, in Galilee and Golan in the north and the southern hills of Judea, in the south. Each synagogue was constructed according to the means and religious customs of the local community. Notable examples include Capernaum, Bar'am, Beth Alpha, Maoz Haim, Meroth and Nabratein in the north, and Eshtemoa, Susya, Anim, and Maon in the south.

Middle Ages

Rabbi and philosopher Maimonides described the various customs in his day with respect to local synagogues:

Samaritan synagogues

Name and history

The Samaritan house of worship is also called a synagogue. During the third and second centuries BCE, the Hellenistic period, the Greek word used in the Diaspora by Samaritans and Jews was the same, proseukhē, plural προσευχαί prosukhái); a third or fourth century inscription uses a similar term, εὑκτήριον euktērion.
The oldest Samaritan synagogue discovered so far is from Delos in the Aegean Islands, with an inscription dated between 250 and 175 BCE, while most Samaritan synagogues excavated in the wider Land of Israel and ancient Samaria in particular, were built in the fourth to seventh centuries at the very end of the Roman Empire and throughout the Byzantine period.