The Sardis Synagogue is a synagogue located in Manisa Province, Turkey, the biggest one known from antiquity.[1]Sardis was under numerous foreign rulers until its incorporation into the Roman Republic in 133 BCE. The city served then as the administrative center of the Roman province of Lydia. Sardis was reconstructed after the catastrophic 17 CE earthquake, and it enjoyed a long period of prosperity under Roman rule.
Sardis is believed to have gained its Jewish community in the 3rd century BCE, as that was when the Seleucid king Antiochus III (223–187 BCE) encouraged Jews from various countries, including Babylonia, to move to Sardis. The historian Josephus wrote of a decree from Lucius Antonius, a Roman proquaestor of 50–49 BCE: "Lucius Antonius...to [the Sardian people], sends greetings. Those Jews, who are fellow citizens of Rome, came to me, and showed that they had an assembly of their own, according to their ancestral laws. [They had this assembly] from the beginning, as also a place of their own, wherein they determined their suits and controversies with one another. Therefore, upon their petition to me, so that these might be lawful for them, I ordered that their privileges be preserved, and they be permitted to do accordingly."1 (Ant., XIV:10, 17). "A place of their own" is generally taken as a reference to the synagogue at Sardis. Josephus noted that Caius Norbanus Flaccus, a Roman proconsul at the end of the 1st century BCE, upheld the rights of the Jews of Sardis to practice their religion, including the right to donate to the Temple in Jerusalem. (Ant., XVI:6,6).[2]
Archaeological expeditions
The first extensive scientific expeditions in the area took place between 1910 and 1914. Director of the Ottoman Imperial Museum (currently known as Istanbul Archeology Museums) Osman Hamdi Bey invited Prof. Howard Crosby Butler of Princeton University to carry out the expedition. They executed the last season in 1922, and Prof. Butler unveiled Temple of Artemis and Necropolis of Sardis. After these discoveries Prof. Butler died unexpectedly and excavations stopped for that period.[3]
Later on, in 1958, Archeology Professor George M. A. Hanfmann of Harvard University and Dean of the Architecture School at Cornell University, Prof. Henry Detweiler started a new series of expeditions. In collaboration with the General Directorate of Cultural Heritage and Museums affiliated to Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the Turkish Republic, the annual archeological expeditions to Sardis continues to this day. This series of expeditions that has been going over six decades is called "the Archeological Exploration of Sardis". Every year a group of 50 to 80 including scholars, professionals and students competent in archeology, art history, archeology, anthropology and many other disciplines from all around the world travel to Sardis to participate in the explorations.[3]
In 1962,[4] these excavations unearthed perhaps the most impressive synagogue in the western diaspora yet discovered from antiquity, yielding over eighty Greek and seven Hebrew inscriptions as well as numerous mosaic floors. (For evidence in the east, see Dura Europos in Syria.) The discovery of the Sardis synagogue has reversed previous assumptions about Judaism in the later Roman empire. Along with the discovery of the godfearers/theosebeis inscription from Aphrodisias, it provides indisputable evidence for the continued vitality of Jewish communities in Asia Minor, their integration into general Roman imperial civic life, and their size and importance at a time when many scholars previously assumed that Christianity had eclipsed Judaism.
Architectural Structure of the Sardis Synagogue
The synagogue's plan resembles early Christian basilicas. However, thanks to the abundant Hebrew and Greek inscriptions and menorah representations that were found, it was successfully identified as a synagogue.[5]
The entryway was through a colonnaded forecourt in the east. It was roofed on the sides with an open center. In its original state, the forecourt was covered with painted plaster and decorated with marble. These decorations were added afterward, possibly during the 5th century CE. At the center of the forecourt, there was a fountain for congregants to wash their hands before the prayer.
Following the forecourt there was an assembly hall, large enough to hold nearly one thousand people. This hall is also decorated with marble. However, these decorations seem to have been placed on the walls earlier than the ones in the forecourt, during the early 4th century CE. Additionally, they have inscriptions in Greek including the donors' names on them. During the excavations, two shrines lying lateral to the center were discovered.[6]
Manisa (Magnesia), Jewish community
A model of the Sardis synagogue
A Romaniote Jewish community existed there since the Byzantine Empire, praying in the Etz Ha-Hayim Synagogue. After 1492, Jews expelled from Spain settled there, joining approximately one hundred Romaniote families. These newcomers founded two synagogues: Lorca and Toledo. At the end of the 19th century, the Alliance Israélite Universelle inaugurated two schools, one for boys in 1891 and one for girls in 1896. At the beginning of the 20th century, the Jewish community numbered about 2,000 out of a total population of some 40,000. Greece conquered Manisa in 1919, and when they retreated in 1922, a large conflagration destroyed much of the town including many Jewish institutions. Most of the Jews left their community and emigrated to France, South America, the United States, and Mandatory Palestine. Today, there are no Jews in Manisa. There were three Jewish cemeteries in Manisa.
The most ancient was damaged after the 1878 Turko-Russian war. In 1900 a wall was built around the second cemetery that was until then an open field. The third was acquired in the 1930s. The two ancient cemeteries have since been destroyed. At the time of writing his book, Abraham ben Mordecai Galante (d. before 1589) could still read some of the oldest tombstones. The tombstone data of the new cemetery has been collected and computerized by Prof. Minna Rozen (Diaspora Studies Institute of Tel Aviv University) but has not yet been published.[8]
Sardis or Sardes was an ancient city best known as the capital of the Lydian Empire. After the fall of the Lydian Empire, it became the capital of the Persian satrapy of Lydia and later a major center of Hellenistic and Byzantine culture. Now an active archaeological site, it is located in modern day Turkey, in Manisa Province near the town of Sart.
A synagogue, also called a shul or a temple, is a place of worship for Jews and Samaritans. It has a place for prayer where Jews attend religious services or special ceremonies such as weddings, bar and bat mitzvahs, choir performances, and children's plays. They also have rooms for study, social halls, administrative and charitable offices, classrooms for religious and Hebrew studies, and many places to sit and congregate. They often display commemorative, historic, or modern artwork alongside items of Jewish historical significance or history about the synagogue itself.
The Romaniote Jews or the Romaniotes are a Greek-speaking ethnic Jewish community native to the Eastern Mediterranean. They are one of the oldest Jewish communities in existence and the oldest Jewish community in Europe. The Romaniotes have been, and remain, historically distinct from the Sephardim, some of whom settled in Ottoman Greece after the expulsion of Jews from Spain and Portugal after 1492.
Jewish history is the history of the Jews, their nation, religion, and culture, as it developed and interacted with other peoples, religions, and cultures.
The history of the Jews in Greece can be traced back to at least the fourth century BCE. The oldest and the most characteristic Jewish group that has inhabited Greece are the Romaniotes, also known as "Greek Jews." The term "Greek Jew" is predominantly used for any Jew that lives in or originates from the modern region of Greece.
The history of the Jews in Turkey covers the 2400 years that Jews have lived in what is now Turkey.
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The history of the Jews and Judaism in the Land of Israel begins in the 2nd millennium BCE, when Israelites emerged as an outgrowth of southern Canaanites. During biblical times, a postulated United Kingdom of Israel existed but then split into two Israelite kingdoms occupying the highland zone: the Kingdom of Israel (Samaria) in the north, and the Kingdom of Judah in the south. The Kingdom of Israel was conquered by the Neo-Assyrian Empire, and the Kingdom of Judah by the Neo-Babylonian Empire. Initially exiled to Babylon, upon the defeat of the Neo-Babylonian Empire by the Achaemenid Empire under Cyrus the Great, many of the Jewish exiles returned to Jerusalem, building the Second Temple.
The history of the Jews in Cyprus dates back at least to the 2nd century BCE, when a considerable number of Jews in Cyprus was first recorded. The Jews had close relationships with many of the other religious groups on the island and were seen favourably by the island's Roman rulers. During the war over the city of Ptolemais between Alexander Jannaeus and King Lathyros, many Jews remained committed to King Lathyros and were subsequently killed.
Beit She'arim necropolis is an extensive necropolis of rock-cut tombs near the remains of the ancient Jewish town of Beit She'arim. In early modern times the site was the Arab village of Sheikh Bureik; it was depopulated in the 1920s as a result of the Sursock Purchases, and identified as Beit She'arim in 1936 by historical geographer Samuel Klein.
Hellenistic Judaism was a form of Judaism in classical antiquity that combined Jewish religious tradition with elements of Hellenistic culture. Until the early Muslim conquests of the eastern Mediterranean, the main centers of Hellenistic Judaism were Alexandria in Egypt and Antioch in Turkey, the two main Greek urban settlements of the Middle East and North Africa, both founded in the end of the fourth century BCE in the wake of the conquests of Alexander the Great. Hellenistic Judaism also existed in Jerusalem during the Second Temple Period, where there was a conflict between Hellenizers and traditionalists.
The Second Temple period or post-exilic period in Jewish history denotes the approximately 600 years during which the Second Temple stood in the city of Jerusalem. It began with the return to Zion and subsequent reconstruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, and ended with the First Jewish–Roman War and the Roman siege of Jerusalem.
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