Ma'on Synagogue

הקהילה היהודית

Almost nothing is recorded about the Jews of Ma'on beyond what the building itself tells. The place was known in the Roman and Byzantine periods as Menois; a research database at the University of Warsaw describes it as the administrative centre of an imperial estate, the Saltus Constantiniaces, from the fourth century CE, with a garrison of Illyrian cavalry, and classes the synagogue as a rural basilica. The dedicatory inscription, written in Jewish Palestinian Aramaic, asks that the whole congregation be remembered for good, which shows an organised community that paid for the floor collectively, and it singles out three men, Aisu, Thomas and Judah, for their gifts. The same database notes that the name Aisu is unusual among Jews and more typical of Nabataeans, and that Thomas is commoner among Christians. A ritual bath, a cistern and water channels were found beside the building. The size of the community, its occupations and its leaders are unknown. Ma'on is one of three ancient synagogues found in the western Negev.

אדריכלות ועיצוב

The synagogue was a basilica: a hall of about 14.8 by 11.8 metres divided by two rows of four columns into a nave and two aisles. The Encyclopaedia Judaica gives its orientation as north-east; the Israel Antiquities Authority speaks of the north wall, the one towards Jerusalem, which was opened in the mid-sixth century CE to take a semicircular apse for the Torah ark. In the same rebuilding the floor was raised and marble columns were set up. The aisles and the narthex were paved with stone and ran round the nave like an ambulatory; the roof was of wooden beams and clay. The nave mosaic originally measured 7.80 by 3.70 metres. A vine springs from an amphora flanked by two peacocks and loops into medallions holding animals, birds, baskets of fruit, vessels and a birdcage; a leopard, a hare and an elephant with a saddle cloth can be recognised. Near the apse are two palm trees with doves, and a menorah on three lion-paw feet with etrogim, a shofar and a lulav, flanked by two lions. Michael Avi-Yonah attributed this floor and that of the church at nearby Shellal to one Gaza workshop.

החיים בבית הכנסת

What happened inside is known only from the floor and the small finds. The four-line Aramaic inscription, set in a frame with handles in front of the apse beside the chancel post, reads in translation: remembered for good be the whole congregation who made this mosaic, and also Aisu, Thomas and Judah, who gave three denarii. The Encyclopaedia Judaica understands the gift as one gold dinar from each man. The last line ends in seven or eight illegible signs, which the University of Warsaw database suggests may be magical characters. On the floor in front of the ark niche the excavators found coins, objects of bone and metal thought to belong to the ark and its curtain, and fragments of glass and pottery lamps. Amulets were found in the apse area, nineteen by one count and twenty by another; the Antiquities Authority suggests some belonged to women seeking good health. The chancel post beside the inscription shows that the space before the ark was marked off from the hall. No rabbi, reader or officer of the synagogue is named in any source read.

הרס

No source read for this entry says when the synagogue at Ma'on stopped being used or how the building came down. The Israel Antiquities Authority dates its last known rebuilding, with the apse and the mosaic, to the middle of the sixth century CE, and the Encyclopaedia Judaica dates the pavement to the early sixth century; the building therefore stood after that time, but neither source describes a fire, an earthquake, an attack or a deliberate dismantling, and neither names anyone responsible. The excavation report of 1960 by Shalom Levy and the later studies by Dan Barag and Steven Werlin, which may answer the question, could not be consulted. By the twentieth century the building was a buried ruin. A second, modern episode of damage is documented: in 1957 the paving of the road to Kibbutz Nir Oz cut into the site and damaged the mosaic before a salvage excavation saved the rest, and in the following decades the uncovered floor deteriorated through unsuitable conditions and lack of maintenance, until it was lifted for conservation in 2006.

גורל הקהילה

The fate of the Jews of Ma'on is unknown. The sources read describe the settlement as extensive from the fourth century CE onward and show that the congregation was able to rebuild and decorate its synagogue in the sixth century, but they say nothing about what became of the community afterwards: whether it left, dwindled or stayed on after the building went out of use is not recorded in anything consulted. No later Jewish community at the site is mentioned in these sources. The ruin is known in Arabic as Khirbet el-Ma'in, and according to the Encyclopaedia Judaica a kibbutz named Ma'on was founded near the site in 1949. The three donors named on the floor, Aisu, Thomas and Judah, are the only members of the congregation known by name.

האתר כיום

The remains lie in open country in the Eshkol region of the western Negev, near Kibbutz Nirim and Kibbutz Nir Oz. In 2006 the Israel Antiquities Authority lifted the mosaic, treated it at its conservation laboratories in the Rockefeller Museum in Jerusalem, and relaid it in its original position on a new lime-based bed. The work was a joint project of the Authority, Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael (the Jewish National Fund) and the Eshkol Regional Council, with paths, signs and an entrance from Route 232 paid for by a private donor. The site opened to the public free of charge in 2009. Photographs show the mosaic under an open-sided roof on metal posts, with the stone-paved aisle and the low curved base of the apse beside it.

שמות בולטים