Hamat Gader Synagogue

La comunità ebraica

No source consulted describes a resident congregation by name or size. The Israeli Foreign Ministry's account says the synagogue was built for the many Jews who came to the baths, and the Center for Online Judaic Studies adds that Jews are said to have settled at Hamat Gader before Alexander Jannaeus conquered it, and that in the second century CE, according to the Talmud, scholars gathered there in the bathing season and were joined by Judah ha-Nasi. The mosaic inscriptions are the only direct record of the people behind the building. They are written in Jewish Palestinian Aramaic, but many of the donors bear Greek or Latin names and titles: Kyris (lord) Oples and Kyra (lady) Protone with their son-in-law Sallustius, their son the comes Pheroros and another son-in-law, Photios; Leontius and Kalinike; and a Patricus of Kefar Aqabyah. Others have Semitic names, such as Haninah son of Hananon, Rav Tanhum the Levite, Yoseh son of Dositheus of Kefar Nahum (Capernaum) and Adda son of Tanhum of Apheka. Several donors came from other towns, and the people of Arbela gave as a group; the inscriptions have been cited as evidence of visitors from elsewhere.

Architettura e design

The synagogue complex was enclosed by a wall 32.5 metres long and included paved rooms and courtyards around the prayer hall. The hall was almost square, 13.90 by 13 metres in the Israeli Foreign Ministry's account. Rows of columns divided it into a central space and aisles: the first press report, of January 1933, speaks of two rows and supposes a gallery for women, while later descriptions give three rows. In the south wall, towards Jerusalem, was a semicircular apse, which the excavators took to be the place of the Torah ark, with a raised bema in front of it. Fragments of a marble chancel screen, one carved with a menorah inside a wreath, lay in the collapse debris, and a Greek inscription from the screen was also found. Two narrow corridors led into the hall. A room to the east with a stone bench along its walls may have been used for study or by women. The mosaic floor, largely geometric, had three panels framed in guilloche along the nave. Beneath it were two older floors, one of plain white mosaic 1.4 metres down and one of opus sectile dated to the later fourth century.

La vita nella sinagoga

Worshippers faced south, towards the bema, the apse and Jerusalem, and every inscription in the floor was laid so as to be read from that direction. The panel nearest the bema was the only one with figures: two lions, with cypress trees behind them, flank a wreath that encloses the principal dedication. It asks that Oples, Protone and their family be remembered for good, says that their acts of charity are constant everywhere and that they gave five gold coins, and ends: 'May the King of the Universe bestow the blessing upon their work', followed by Amen, Amen, Selah. Two further texts in framed tablets below the lions list smaller gifts, among them one tremissis from Rav Tanhum the Levite, one denarius from an unnamed righteous woman and a gift from the townspeople, a reading that is uncertain. A fourth inscription, in the northern panel, records contributions towards the mosaic itself. The Warsaw epigraphic database assigns the inscriptions to the sixth century. The room with benches beside the hall may have been used for study. Nothing else is recorded about services, officials or customs in the synagogue.

Distruzione

No source consulted gives a date, a cause or a culprit for the end of the Hamat Gader synagogue. The Warsaw epigraphic database says only that the hall is generally placed between the fifth and seventh centuries, that this dating is uncertain, and that the chancel screen fragments were found in collapse debris. The 1933 press report of Sukenik's excavation describes the plan and the finds but not how the building ended. Better documented is the fate of the neighbouring baths. They were renovated under the Umayyad caliph Mu'awiya in 663 CE, possibly after earthquake damage, and are usually said to have remained in use until the earthquake of 749 CE destroyed them; Jodi Magness has argued that the collapse belongs instead to the earthquake of 1033. One account has the baths abandoned and buried in silt in the ninth century. Whether the synagogue fell in an earthquake, had already been abandoned, or ended in some other way is not stated in the sources consulted, so no cause is named here. The final report on the synagogue by Y. Arbel and P. Porat, published in 2024, may answer the question.

Il destino della comunità

What became of the Jews who prayed at Hamat Gader is unknown. The inscriptions, which the Warsaw epigraphic database dates to the sixth century, are the latest direct evidence of them. They show donors able to give gold coins, some of them holding titles such as comes, and linked with other places, among them Sepphoris, Capernaum, Emmaus and Arbela. No source consulted records an expulsion, a massacre or the conversion of the building to another use, and none says whether Jews still used the synagogue when the baths were restored under Umayyad rule in 663 CE. The baths themselves stayed in use into the eighth century and are said to have been abandoned in the ninth. The synagogue is not heard of again until the Palestine Department of Antiquities uncovered it on Tell Bani in 1932. The date of the last service, the fate of the congregation and the reason the building was given up all remain unknown.

Il luogo oggi

The site lies on Tell Bani inside the Hamat Gader spa and resort, which charges an entrance fee. The Kinneret College website on ancient synagogues reports that no remains are visible there at present, and the English Wikipedia article says that the excavated remains have been closed to the public since the 1980s for reasons of safety and conservation, a restoration plan having been drafted but not carried out. The mosaic floor was partly removed. The panel with the two lions and the wreathed inscription, with the donor inscriptions below it, is mounted on a wall at the entrance to the Supreme Court of Israel in Jerusalem. Sukenik's photographs of 1932 remain the main visual record of the building as excavated.

Nomi importanti