SACRED SPACE IN THE MISHNAH: FROM TEMPLE TO SYNAGOGUE AND ... CITY

This new postscript traces my intellectual and educational path through -This Holy Place- to my later work, including my -The Menorah-, accountiing for my debt and reticence regarding Mircea Eliade and the "Chicago School." "Though Fine has already made a name for himself, This Holy Place establishes his reputation as a leading scholar in synagogue Studies." -- Pieter W. van der Horst, University of Utrecht "...an important contribution to the entire nature of late antique civilization, not just to Jewish studies." –- Peter Brown, Princeton University Marshaling a wide variety of literary and archaeological sources dating to the Greco-Roman period, This Holy Place demonstrates how the synagogue came to be seen as sacred, rather than simply as houses of study. This volume argues that the biblical scrolls read, studied, and stored within its walls were the most important source of synagogue sanctity in the minds of the ancients, for the Scriptures offered the physical manifestation of the Divine within local congregations. This Holy Place describes in detail the long and creative process by which holiness became ascribed to synagogues. It reaches back to the earliest history of the synagogue, over two thousand years ago, to explore the ideological development of the synagogue as well as important trends in the history of Judaism during the Greco-Roman period. Transcending the specific genres of literature as well as geographic boundaries within the Roman and Persian empires, the author investigates numerous literary sources and dedicatory inscriptions in Aramaic, Hebrew, Greek and Latin from the Land of Israel and the Diaspora. This Holy Place brings together art and architecture from throughout the Mediterranean world with authors like Philo of Alexandria, Josephus, John Chrysostom and Yannai the synagogue poet as he traces the religious history of the ancient synagogue. Insights drawn from Rabbinic literature, Patristic literature, and Roman law read together with archaeological discoveries, support the conclusion that during late antiquity there existed a single but multi-faceted Judaism rather than the separate Judaisms some have posited."

The Art Bulletin, 1992

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Zeitschrift Fur Religions-und Geistesgeschichte, 2006

The place of cities in eschatological speculations and the prominence of urban topographies in sacred texts mark their religious importance as settings for and symbols of the community. It may be said, furthermore, that the distance between their role as places of everyday life and their symbolic status is at the heart of the religious process of mediation between the earthly and heavenly realms. For the purpose of illuminating the part of cities in this process I will examine, in what follows, two very different Jewish urban settlements and their theological understandings. In positioning one against the other, the late antique town of Sepphoris and the 19 th century settlement of Me'ah She'arim in Jerusalem, I will stress the significant religious questions emerging in Judaism with the advent of the modern era. The implications of European modernity (in which architecture played a central role) for Judaism have hardly been studied in regard to the paradigm of city. 1 Hence, while fusing, in the Gadamerian sense, two historical horizons around the topic of city, I will try to show, in the course of this discussion, how cities are themselves settings for engaging with different horizons.

The Basilica in Roman Palestine: Adoption and Adaption Processes, in Light of Comparanda in Italy and North Africa, eds. Antonio Dell’Acqua and Orit Peleg-Barkat, 2021

The Jewish Quarterly Review, 2012

Städte im lateinischen Westen und im griechischen Osten zwischen Spätantike und Früher Neuzeit. Topographie – Recht – Religion, Mihailo Popović, Martin Scheutz, Herwig Weigl and Elisabeth Gruber (eds) (Veröffentlichungen des Instituts für österreichische Geschichtsforschung 66), 2015

Synagogues in the Hellenistic and Roman Periods: Archaeological Finds, New Methods, New Theories in co-operation with Hermut Löhr, 2020

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in the Journal of Architecture and Urbanism, Issue 3, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.3846/20297955.2017.1355279 This paper considers the definition and meaning of an eruv 1 as " territoriality without sovereignty " in Jewish tradition (Fonrobert 2005). It begins by exploring the origin and development of the term eruv itself, as well as its applications in different urban settings. It distinguishes between, on the one hand, the " enclosure " of the eruv that is made up of various natural and artificial structures that define its perimeter and, on the other hand, the " ritual community " created by the symbolic collection of bread that is known as eruvei chatzeirot. It suggests that much of the controversy, including legal issues of separation of church and state, as well as emotional issues such as the charge of " ghetto-ization, " surrounding urban eruvin (plural of eruv) may be connected to the identification of the area demarcated by an eruv as a " territoriality. " It argues that the enclosure of an eruv is not in itself religious in nature but rather makes up a completely arbitrary and generic " space, " and that it is only through and on account of the eruvei chatzeirot that this space becomes meaningful as a purely symbolic " place " one day a week (on the Sabbath). In the course of this analysis, it considers the one " weekday " on which an eruv may be significant – the Jewish holiday of Purim – and how on that day it may be a tool by which the area defined as part of a given city may be extended. The Biblical and Talmudic Origins of Eruv The study of the eruv in the ritual life of cities reveals a complex and little understood aspect of Jewish tradition that has a particular bearing on the way urban spaces in contemporary cities are used and occupied. In describing the laws of the Jewish Sabbath, Scripture (Exodus 16:29) forbids a person situated in a public domain (reshut ha-rabbim) to carry or convey objects any further than four cubits (Babylonian Talmud, Eruvin 48a). The Biblical context is the manna that sustained the Israelites in the desert. The verses explain that manna would not fall on the Sabbath so that the Israelites not have to collect, carry, and transport it that day. R. Samson Raphael Hirsch posits that the explicit Biblical ban on the inappropriate transportation of an object (most of the laws of the Sabbath are not explicit in the Bible but were transmitted orally) was necessary so as to underline that transporting an object is no less a creative activity than the other 38 forms of activity proscribed on the Sabbath (Hirsch 2005: 284-287). 2 As the public domain in the desert was an open expanse, one of the criteria of a reshut ha-rabbim is that it not be enclosed, which is defined as being surrounded three or more walls.

JQR, 2016

Cultural Analysis, 2012

On these pages the author writes about a profound transformation of the cultural memory in the FSU which resulted in deep changes of cultural identities of all ex-Soviet – ethnic and religious groups. This transformation led to a change of perceptions about sacred and profane spaces and their connections with the urban landscape. E. Nosenko-Stein stresses out that contemporary Russian Jewry is a highly heterogeneous community and its perception of traditional Jewish sacred places including synagogues have lost their function. Moreover, non-Jewish sacred places, like Christian churches had paradoxically become Jewish sacred places in some cases. According to the author the so called Jewish renaissance in post-Soviet Russia has led to a revived interest in Judaism and Jewish traditions. Therefore, Jewish communal centers, philanthropic and youth organizations, centers for economic support, leisure time activities and places for Jewish sentiments and memories function as Jewish sacred places. This inversion of sacred and profane spaces typical of post-modern culture, is visible especially in small urban centers, where there are no synagogues and the role of secular or semi-secular Jewish organizations is growing.