JUDAIZATION 253ways, covered with embroidered cloths^28 and flanked by metal or stonemen-
orot.^29 For city dwellers, such a concentration of visual stimulation was not
unfamiliar; bathhouses and other public buildings, and some private houses,
were similarly colorful .The fifth-century Sepphorite could see in his city not
only his rather magnificent little synagogue but also the “Nile Festival” mosaic
in a public building (whose function is unknown); and perhaps the probably
fourth-century Orphic mosaic in a nearby private house was still visible.^30
Villagers, though, lived surrounded by nature, a delicate and tenuous green
a few months of the year, but otherwise severe brown and gray .There may
have been a few large houses in the village, but most dwellings were small
(dwarfed by the synagogue) and undecorated.^31 To enter the synagogue was
to leave the world of the village and enter a place alive with color and filled
with evocations, first of all, of Jewishness, and of a general numinous sanctity,
but also (and we should not minimize this element) of wealth and urbanity.
Even in an urban setting, such as Sepphoris, the synagogue interior featured
a remarkable and distinctive assemblage of visual stimuli .The art of the syna-
gogue would never have seemed routine to its viewers: it was always the object
of careful scrutiny.
Apparently the Galilean-type, and some other, synagogues had relatively
simple interiors but grand gabled fac ̧ades .In some cases these were decorated
with friezes of the standard Jewish symbols, while elsewhere the decoration
consisted of such less obviously Jewish symbols as eagles, wreaths, vines, ani-
mals, or mythological creatures.^32 The monumental doorway was thus a kind
proscenium arch, which framed the “otherness” of the interior space and,
where the lintels were decorated, gave the congregant some notion of the
character of this otherness—its “Jewishness” or its general sacrality, for eagles,
wreaths, and so on, were standard features of the decorated facades of southern
Syrian temples .Such synagogues (which one entered facing the back of the
(^28) See Hachlili,Ancient Jewish Art, pp .191–92.
(^29) See Levine,Ancient Synagogue, pp .333–36 .Suchmenorothave been found primarily in
Judaea, but also at Hammat Tiberias and at Merot, in Upper Galilee.
(^30) For these mosaics, seeHadashot Arkheologiyot99 (1993): 12–4; 106 (1996) 31–39, with
color photographs inside the front cover.
(^31) As far as the report indicates, there is no trace of either wall painting or figurative mosaic in
the big house excavated at Meiron: see Meyers, Strange, and Meyers,Excavations at Ancient
Meiron, pp .50–72.
(^32) On the monumental doorways of the Galilean-type synagogues and their implications, see
Levine, “From Community Center,” 41–45 .Eagles, wreaths, and so on, marked the place as
sacred, though not necessarily as Jewish .This fact, in Levine’s view, explains B .Shabbat 72b, a
story of a man who mistook a temple for a synagogue .Jewish symbols were not commonly carved
on the facades of Galilean synagogues, but were elsewhere; it now seems unlikely that the zodiacs
once thought to have been carved on the fac ̧ades of seven Galilean and Golanite synagogues (see
Levine, “From Community Center,” 64–65) are what they originally seemed (I thank Lee Levine
for this observation).