Was There an Ancient Synagogue on the Isle of Delos?

The Greek island of Delos is known as the mythical birthplace of Apollo and the location of an ancient oracle. Over 100 years ago, a French archaeologist discovered a structure there built in the 2nd century BCE, and concluded from inscriptions that it was a synagogue. But the case is far from closed, as Brian Schaefer writes:

The inscriptions found on or near [the structure] are not biblical prayers scrawled in Hebrew or Aramaic. That would be too easy. Rather, they reference names that [archaeologists] identified as Jewish (Agathokles and Lysimachos) and contain the word proseuche, which can refer specifically to a Jewish house of prayer—or can be applied more generally as a kind of offering.

If anything, additional inscriptions uncovered in 1979 actually offer explicit evidence of a Samaritan presence. Two of them honor benefactors of the community and begin: “The Israelites on Delos who make first-fruit offerings to Holy Argarizein”—which is a reference to Mount Gerizim, [the center of Samaritan worship].

[Yet the historian Lidia] Matassa is unconvinced that this answers the synagogue question one way or another. She points out that there is no way to know whether the dedications were made by a permanent community or by a passing traveler.

The physical structure of the space offers few clues, since it largely echoes the architecture and design of neighboring buildings. It is, however, found on the eastern shore and has a clear eastern orientation, which is characteristic of many synagogues.

Read more at Haaretz

More about: Ancient Greece, ancient Judaism, Archaeology, History & Ideas, Samaritans, Synagogues

It’s Time for Haredi Jews to Become Part of Israel’s Story

Unless the Supreme Court grants an extension from a recent ruling, on Monday the Israeli government will be required to withhold state funds from all yeshivas whose students don’t enlist in the IDF. The issue of draft exemptions for Haredim was already becoming more contentious than ever last year; it grew even more urgent after the beginning of the war, as the army for the first time in decades found itself suffering from a manpower crunch. Yehoshua Pfeffer, a haredi rabbi and writer, argues that haredi opposition to army service has become entirely disconnected from its original rationale:

The old imperative of “those outside of full-time Torah study must go to the army” was all but forgotten. . . . The fact that we do not enlist, all of us, regardless of how deeply we might be immersed in the sea of Torah, brings the wrath of Israeli society upon us, gives a bad name to all of haredi society, and desecrates the Name of Heaven. It might still bring harsh decrees upon the yeshiva world. It is time for us to engage in damage limitation.

In Pfeffer’s analysis, today’s haredi leaders, by declaring that they will fight the draft tooth and nail, are violating the explicit teachings of the very rabbis who created and supported the exemptions. He finds the current attempts by haredi publications to justify the status quo not only unconvincing but insincere. At the heart of the matter, according to Pfeffer, is a lack of haredi identification with Israel as a whole, a lack of feeling that the Israeli story is also the haredi story:

Today, it is high time we changed our tune. The new response to the demand for enlistment needs to state, first and foremost to ourselves, that this is our story. On the one hand, it is crucial to maintain and even strengthen our isolation from secular values and culture. . . . On the other hand, this cultural isolationism must not create alienation from our shared story with our fellow brethren living in the Holy Land. Participation in the army is one crucial element of this belonging.

Read more at Tzarich Iyun

More about: Haredim, IDF, Israeli society