Imperialism and Jewish Society, 200 B.C.E. to 640 C.E. - Seth Schwartz

JUDAIZATION 261

the contemporaneous rise of thepiyyutand the appearance of collections of
ma’asim, handbooks for Jewish judges trying cases according to rabbinic law.^51
Jewish aniconism may have been part of a widespread tendency but, like its
Christian and Muslim counterparts, it had its own dynamics .We ought to
recall here a point made earlier: for the rabbis, the sanctity of the synagogue
was marked not architecturally and iconographically but by the presence of
the Torah scroll; regardless of the details of their attitude toward figural decora-
tion, they seem to have been entirely apathetic toward the idea, which pre-
vailed among Palestinian Jews in the fourth and fifth centuries, that the sanc-
tity of the place could be meaningfully conveyed through its structure .It is
plausible to attribute to rabbinic influence, or at least to the same complex of
factors that favored the growth of rabbinic influence, the fact thatsomeother
Jews began to question this idea in the course of the sixth century.

En Geddi

The mosaic pavement of the sixth-century synagogue of En Geddi is the locus
classicus for the Jewish anxiety about representation.^52 The nave is paved with
a geometric carpet design that has at its center a kind of square emblema,
in which is inscribed an octagon; in the octagon is inscribed a circle .The
arrangement is not unlike that of the zodiac circle that appears in the corres-
ponding location in other synagogues .But here, instead of personifications of
the seasons, the angles of the square feature pairs of peacocks pecking at
grapes.^53 Within the circle are four birds, two of them with peculiarly elon-
gated and curved necks .In front of the apse, instead of an ark flanked by
menorot, there is still another bird .Yet the quadripartite scheme discussed
above is preserved in the En Geddi synagogue, but in a startlingly different
form .It has been moved from the nave to the aisle, and its order has been
altered .Most remarkably of all, it is not pictorial, but verbal, an inscription:

(Panel 1, closest to the ark but directed away from it) Adam Seth Enosh Mehalla-

lel Jared / Enoch Methuselah Lamech Noah Shem Ham and Japheth

(Panel 2, in Hebrew) Aries Taurus Gemini Cancer Leo Virgo / Libra Scorpio

Sagittarius Capricorn and [sic] Aquarius Pisces / Nisan Iyar Sivan Tammuz Av

Illul [sic]/ Tishri Marheshvan Kisliv [sic] Tevit [sic] Shevat/ and Adar Abraham

Isaac and Jacob .Peace / Hananiah Mishail [sic] and Azariah .Peace on Israel

(^51) For a survey, see Brody,Geonim of Babylonia, pp .109–13.
(^52) According to Z .Ilan,Ancient Synagogues, p .321, the village, including the synagogue, was
destroyed soon after 540; cf .D .Barag, “En-Geddi: The Synagogue,” inNEAEHL.
(^53) For similar design from the much earlier (early third century?) “House of Orpheus” at Volu-
bilis, in North Africa, see C .Kondoleon,Domestic and Divine: Roman Mosaics in the House of
Dionysos(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995), pp .248–49.