272 CHAPTER NINEsynagogue decoration itself, that the ritual of the synagogue, in this case the
communal mourning on the Ninth of Av, mirrors heavenly ritual, but it also
strives, like theqerovahof Yannai, to read the iconographic motif in light of
Israel’s historical mythology .Our mourning echoes and continues the mourn-
ing of Israel in its destruction, and is in turn echoed by the mourning of the
heavenly host, now, like us, reduced to ineffectuality—Gemini appears di-
vided, Cancer wishes to fall to earth, and Pisces averts his eyes .But when we
end our neglect of God’s law, he will avenge us, and once again cause his
light, that is, the signs of the zodiac, to shine upon us.^85
These poems, and the many others like them, cannot be understood in any
simple way as the key to the interpretation of the synagogue decoration .They
are occasional pieces, perhaps performed once and forgotten, and thus are
elements in the kaleidoscopic, constantly shifting reception of the art .Images
that at this moment figure Israel’s catastrophic decline and glorious future
restoration may, at another moment, figure something else entirely .Taken
cumulatively, thepiyyutimare in some tension with the synagogue decoration.
Though some of thepiyyutim, like those just discussed, retain the idea that
earthly ritual mirrors cosmic ritual, they relentlessly incorporate the decora-
tion into a rabbinic-style reading of Pentateuchal narrative and prophetic ora-
cle as prefiguring the great cycle of Israel’s past glory, present punishment as
recompense for its sins, and future messianic restoration .In this way, they
constitute an attempt to subvert any notion of the synagogue service as an
adequate substitution for the temple cult or as a reflection of some cosmic
worship of God .Those who witness the performance of the synagogue service,
Yannai claims, will one day witness the restoration of Israel’s glory .Although
Israel must continue to proclaim God as its source of light, it now gropes in
darkness, and, the anonymous poet claimed, its heavenly intercessors, the
zodiacal constellations, are now rendered powerless by Israel’s sins .To engage
in a perhaps rather vulgar generalization, thepayyetanimstrove to read the
synagogue art against the grain, as commemorating not Israel’s place in the
cosmos but its place in history.
In sum, the late antique remains from Palestine—the wide diffusion of the
synagogue, the emergence of a Jewish iconographic language used not only
to decorate synagogues (and graves) but also to mark all sorts of small objects,
the evidence from archaeology for an increasingly Torah-centered, numinous
ritual, and finally the first expressions in the fifth and sixth centuries of anxiety
about the use of representation and the contemporaneous emergence of the
piyyut—all indicate that the period was characterized by a process of judaiza-
(^85) This sounds almost like a conscious attempt to stake out a compromise position in the
rabbinic debate, ascribed to R .Yohanan and R .Hanina b .Hama, about whether Israel’s fate is
ruled by the signs of the zodiac; B .Shabbat 156a.