238 CHAPTER EIGHTThe holiness of places outside the temple “needs to be activated....The
Rabbispreservedtheideaofsacredspaceinamannerthatenabledthegroup
to function without a single center.”^66
The Rabbis, the Synagogue, and the Community
It is obvious that neither the synagogue nor the community were rabbinic
inventions, andunlikely that the rabbisplayed a role intheir diffusion.^67 That
theexistenceofthecommunityisscarcelyacknowledgedintheMishnahand
is only slightly more evident in the Tosefta probably conforms to the fact that
itsdiffusionwasstillveryrestrictedinthethirdcentury.Norwasthesynagogue
common. TheMishnah takes it forgranted that itcould be found onlyin the
’ir, the large town; villagers would have to come to town to participate in
public religious ceremonies, such as the reading of the scroll of Esther (M.
Megillah 1:1).
But even later, the rabbis’ embrace of these institutions was half-hearted.
They rejected the widespread conception of the local community as a “holy
congregation,” a miniature Israel, and of the synagogue as a holy place, both
well attested in inscriptions. They suspected the honesty of communal offi-
cials, though by the later third century they began themselves to serve in
such positions. Though there is little evidence for rabbinic opposition to the
synagogue as such, as the strenuous efforts of scholars to discover traces of
such opposition demonstrate, they certainly disapproved of much that went
on in specific synagogues. Some anecdotes in the Palestinian Talmud inform
us that public feasts, conducted in the synagogues, were still an important
feature of communal life (e.g., Y. Sanhedrin 3:2, 26b), yet both the Tosefta
andthePalestinianTalmudregardedthem asforbidden(T.Megillah2[3]:18;
Y. Megillah 3:3).^68 Other anecdotes report the rabbis’ disapproval of liturgical
practicestheyencounteredinsynagogues(Y.Berakhot5:3,9c).Thoughmany
passages in the Palestinian Talmud unambiguously—indeed, perhaps a bit
tooinsistently—regardthesynagogueasthemostappropriateplaceforprayer
(e.g.,Y.Berakhot5:1,8d–9a),othersremindusthatthesynagoguestherabbis
had in mind were not the standard local synagogues, but their own. How else
are we to understand the law forbidding Jews fro mHaifa, Beth Shean, and
Tivon to lead the prayers (because of what the rabbis regarded as their impre-
(^66) “Approaching Sacred Space,” 298–99.
(^67) My conclusions in this section agree in the main with Levine, “Sages and the Synagogue”;
and seeAncient Synagogue, pp. 440–70.
(^68) Cf. Naveh,On Mosaic, no. 110, supplemented by Naveh,EI20 (1989): 305, no. 2, an
inscription from a synagogue in Qasrin in the Golan commemorating the construction of a ban-
quet room.