The Synagogue

Dear friends shalom,

If these 40 Irish tourists were huddled together  in Ireland the way they were huddled together here in Capernaum's ruined synagogue they would be trying to keep warm, but here they  huddled together to keep out of the blazing sun that mercilessly struck every square inch of the white limestone structure that 1600 years ago had been Capernaum's synagogue.

The destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in the year 70 CE and the Roman occupation of the only place where it was permitted in Judaism for a temple to be built and animal sacrifices to be offered, Mt. Moriah, meant that the Jews would have to replace sacrifice with another method of making supplication to God.

Already, after the Babylonian destruction of the first temple in 586 BCE Ezra the scribe in Babylon  instituted prayer as a replacement of animal sacrifices and the synagogue as the meeting place of the congregation instead of the temple on Mt. Moriah.

The synagogue took over the 3 main functions of the temple; I've already mentioned two of these, namely sacrifices in the form of prayer and the meeting place of the congregation of Israel. This latter was an assembly of the nation, which took place three times a year in the temple, Passover, Pentecost and Tabernacles and at times when charity for the poor was collected.

The third function, perhaps the most important was the study of the word of God, the Torah, which in the temple was kept in the Ark of the Covenant, which in turn was kept in the holy of holies, where only the high priest was permitted to enter once a year on the Day of Atonement.

Naturall y there are three daily prayers to represent the three annual national meeting times, mentioned above and of course the nation of temple times is now represented by the quorum of prayer, known as the "Minyan". This consists of 10 men over the age of 13. Women aren't counted in the "Minyan" . (I have explained the reason for this in my no newsletter no

Today synagogues are built to face Jerusalem, so that a worshipper faces Jerusalem and the temple and  will turn his mind to the temple and so make the Jewish hope for the rebuilding of the temple part of his prayers.

Although its customary to allocate a special chair in the synagogue for the rabbi, this is done out of respect for the rabbi's learnedness and isn't a sign that he is on a higher hierarchical level than other members of the community, as was the case with the priests in the temple. The function of the priest as a higher level religious functionary was disbanded after the destruction of the temple.

Most people, however who are descended from the priesthood, however, can trace their heritage back and are given a symbolic status in the Synagogue worship service. This takes the form of calling a person descended from the priests be the first person to stand beside the reader as he reads the weekly portion of the Torah (The five books of Moses, see the article on the study of Torah in the synagogue).

Usually Jews with the family name of Cohen or Levy are descended from priestly or Levitical families. (See my article on the tribes of Israel)

Wishing you a great No News day

Yours truly

Leon Gork

Come for a walk with Leon

Jerusalemwalks.com

Tel: 0523801867