WHAT WAS THE POINT OF RECONSTRUCTING AN ANCIENT SYNAGOGUE?

 

A Jewish community lived here during the Byzantine period, although the name of the village is not known. The local Bedouin called the ruins “Um el-Kanatir,” meaning the Site of the Arches, because of the arches by the pools. Hence, this site is now called in Hebrew Ein Keshatot, meaning Spring of the Arches.

 

Jews first settled in this location in about 150 CE, some 14 years after the Bar Kochba Revolt, and the synagogue was built in the 6th century. An interesting question is why a community of only 50 people, maximum 100, would go to the effort and considerable expense of building such a monumental synagogue. It would also have taken them years to complete. The very same question could be asked of other impressive synagogues in the Galilee and Golan Heights.

 

An answer may be that these Jews were attempting to recreate for themselves the magnificence of the Temple in Jerusalem. Jews were forbidden to enter Byzantine Jerusalem, even though geographically they were not that far away. Moreover, at the site of the Temple was a Christian church. These synagogues were therefore a means for the villagers to express their longing for the rebuilding of the Temple. This would also explain the symbolic decorations in the synagogue of Temple objects, particularly on the stone ark. 

 

The synagogue and the villagers’ homes were destroyed by a severe earthquake in 749 CE and this village, together with others in the Golan, were abandoned.

 

In the late 1800’s, Laurence Oliphant, a Scottish Christian Zionist who was exploring the country, suspected that there was an ancient synagogue here. He wrote that this was “the best of the discoveries that I have ever made.” Oliphant’s discovery and the comments in his diary are all the more remarkable in that all that he could see were piles of building blocks.

 

One hundred and twenty years later, in 2003, Yehoshua Dray, an expert in reconstruction technology, decided to rebuild the synagogue from these piles of blocks. He and two archeologists set up a crane, made a 3D digital scan of each of the blocks, placed a microchip in each, and used a newly devised computer program to assign all the blocks to their correct positions rather than using intuition. It took them ten years to complete the project.

  

What was the point, one might ask, of putting so much effort into reconstructing this synagogue from its original blocks? A ruin is a ruin. Put up a sign with imaginative drawings and let it be.

 

One possible answer is that Zionism is not only about creating the future, but also about recreating the past. Jews have long memories and in their new-old country they are recreating the history and beauty of what once was. One might even say that this country has been waiting patiently for centuries for Jews to do exactly this.