Precious symbols of our nation’s past
Succot’s arba minim are among Jewish images adorning a fourth century mosaic which, says Eli Abt, once fell victim to a shameful attack
STAFF AT Hamat Tiberias National Park in Galilee were horrified to discover, on the morning of 29 May 2012, serious damage to what remains of its fourth-century “Severus” synagogue. Apart from digging up and defacing parts of the exquisite mosaic floor, the vandals had spray-painted messages on it denouncing archeological excavations for their possible disturbance of Jewish burials.
Experts have now repaired the mosaics as best they could. However, how did a historic treasure, excavated as long as 60 years ago, fall victim to one of our seemingly endless disagreements?
The demands of archeological and anthropological work in Israel have often been at odds with our long-established duties towards the dead, and a pragmatic solution remains to be found. However, let’s agree the abuse of a heritage asset is an abomination that has no place in Jewish life.
Ancient places of prayer, whether decorated or otherwise, should remain sacrosanct. Pictorial art in the early synagogue is not an issue. The Talmud tells us (JT Avodah Zarah 3.3, 42d) that in the days of R. Abun, a sage of the 4th century when Hamat was laid, “they began putting images on mosaic floors, to which he did not object”. No dissenting view is recorded.
Of the roughly 100 ancient synagogue floors discovered so far in Israel, at least 24 display mosaics. The 2012 mutilation of those in Hamat was especially shameful. Its floors are not only among the most striking and best preserved but the earliest, possibly dating from the Roman occupation before the Byzantine era starting around 395 CE.
The Beit Alpha mosaics, which I wrote about before Rosh Hashanah ( JC September 3), are some 200 years younger. Common to both, as well as to the wonderful fifthcentury floor at Tzippori, are the Zodiac wheels in their central panels. All three moreover display a similar design nearest the niche reserved for the Sefer Torah.
What does the Hamat version of that panel show us? A Torah ark with folded curtain is flanked by a pair of seven-branched candelabra, evoking the Menorah in the Jerusalem Temple. Under each we have a shofar, the ram’s horn associated with Rosh Hashanah; the arba minim, the four plant species of this week’s Succot festival; and an incense shovel representing Temple ceremonial.
Those identical elements spanning two centuries in at least three different places are surely more than coincidental. The Menorah and shovel are undoubtedly meant to recall past glories, possibly duplicated to symbolise both Solomon’s First Temple destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, and the magnificent Herodian complex replacing it, burnt by the Romans six centuries later. But why the shofar and arba minim?
As always, our sources might provide an answer.
Isaiah (27:13) declares that, when we are redeemed, “a great shofar shall sound, and those lost in the land of Assyria and banished to the land of Egypt shall come to prostrate themselves before God on Jerusalem’s holy mountain.” Commenting on that verse, the Talmud (BT Rosh Hashanah 11b) suggests that whereas we were released from Egypt in Nisan our ultimate redemption will come in Tishri, the month of both Rosh Hashanah and this week’s Succot, “the time of our joy”, Zeman Simchateinu.
Hence all four elements appear designed to evoke both memory and expectation, none more so than the dominant Menorah. It’s a motif as ubiquitous in the early diaspora as in Israel, where it enhances numerous ancient mosaics, column capitals, clay lamps, bottles, bronze dishes, and gold amulets.
It also appears on artefacts from every part of the Roman empire — in catacombs and on sarcophagi, ceramics, gold-glass dishes, medallions, even graffiti. A second-century seal in Belgrade’s National Museum features a Menorah, as do a Plovdiv synagogue floor, a Montenegro tomb, an early gravestone in Serbia, a bronze lamp from Syria.
Ancient places of prayer whether decorated or not should remain sacrosanct
No other image has served so long as an emblem simultaneously of Jewish remembrance, hope, dignity, and identity. It lit up our aspirations almost a thousand years before the Star of David first appeared as a distinctively Jewish symbol in medieval illuminated Hebrew manuscripts.
The diggers and spray-painters of 2012 apparently cared about none of this. With Kristallnacht and Shoah memories still raw it was Jews, Heaven help us, who trashed the Menorah mosaics of Hamat. The court was told they didn’t “believe in history”.
Where, as a nation, do we stand in all this?
Our instincts to seek our roots are fundamental for us, both personally and as a people, no less than they are for the rest of humanity. However, we differ from others in that we share the unprecedented privilege of living with our miraculous return to an ancestral homeland we can call our own, a dream which a hundred generations of our forebears could only hope and pray for. Indeed, they often died for it.
What kind of people have we become, then, if we are often unable, or unwilling, to reconcile our care for their physical remains with that for their legacy, or for our deep-seated need to reclaim it?