THE SYNAGOGUE: ORIGINS AND DIFFUSION 233synagogue is holier than the privately owned.^56 The Talmudim and the com-
mentators were thus probably right to read this law in conjunction with M.
Ta’anit 2:1: the town square is holy because the Torah scroll is brought there
during droughts for the ceremony of supplication (see above).
CommunalOwnershipThe Mishnah acknowledges that synagogues may be either communally or
privately owned, but it has no theory of what communal ownership entails.^57
It quotes R. Meir’s disapproval of the sale ofa public synagogue to an individ-
ual (even, we must assume, if the individual intends to use it as a synagogue)
but seems to reject this view by reductio ad absurdum. The Palestinian Tal-
mud,however,introducestwocontradictoryapproachestocommunalowner-
ship, both of which it seems to accept:
Rabbi Shmuel bar Nahman said in the name of Rabbi Jonathan: “That which
[theMishnah]says(thatis,thatitispossibletosellasynagogue)appliesonlytoa
privatelyownedsynagogue;butitisforbiddentosellapubliclyownedsynagogue
because it is possible to argue that someone from the end of the earth owns a
shareofit.”Buthavewenotlearned(intheTosefta):“IthappenedthatR.Elazar
b.R.ZadokpurchasedthesynagogueoftheAlexandriansanddidwhathewished
withit”?Rather,theAlexandrians(apparentlynotalocalcommunitybutalimited
corporation of Alexandrian immigrants elsewhere) had built the synagogue with
their own funds (and so counted for legal purposes as a private individual).This opinion, which explicitly contradicts the Mishnah, is based on an oddly
primitive conception of communal ownership: it views the community as a
setofindividualsor, rather,apartnership, notacorporationwitha constantly
shifting membership consisting of whoever is living in a town at a particular
time, a conception that would allow the community toact.^58 Since, in this
view, the heirs of the builders of the synagogue are still its owners and they
have presumably scattered undetectably to the winds, any sale necessarily
lacks their approval and so is invalid. The inadequacy of this view, not only
(^56) Presumably on the principle ofberov ’am hadrat melekh(the glory of the king is in the
multitude of the people, or the more the merrier), as the commentators observe.
(^57) See Baer, “Origins,” pp. 6–8.
(^58) Contrast the cunning reworking of the same material in B. Megillah 26a: “Rabbi Shmuel
bar Nahmani said in the name of Rabbi Jonathan, ‘The teaching of the Mishnah [that a syna-
gogue may be sold] refers only to the synagogues of villages; but the the synagogues of cities may
not be soldbecause people come to themfrom all over, andso they belong to thegeneral public
(and not just the Jews of the city).’ ” Baer, “Origins,” p. 67 (= 8) observes that rabbinic halakhah
never abandoned its conception of the community as a partnership rather than a corporation,
while simultaneously assuming, describing, or even prescribing corporate-style behavior on the
part of the community.