Elephants are not native to Israel or its surroundings, so it is not surprising that the Hebrew Bible does not mention them. However, a recently excavated archaeological site at Huqoq in the Galilee, 12.5 kilometers northwest of Tiberias, includes a magnificent 5th-century finely detailed mosaic synagogue floor that clearly displays a scene with an elephant. How can the presence of figural synagogue art be reconciled with the second commandment forbidding graven images?
Huqoq is the site of a an extensive project (2011-2023) involving multiple academic centers under the leadership of Jodi Magness, a professor at the University of North Carolina. The mosaics survived because they were protected by a 14th-century synagogue built on top.
The mosaics depict a wide range of biblical scenes, such as Samson carrying the gate of Gaza on his shoulders; a panel depicting the spies sent by Moses to explore Canaan, carrying a pole with a cluster of grapes; and Jonah swallowed by three successive fish. Non-biblical depictions include a complete Helios-zodiac cycle, as well as the scene with an elephant in armor. Magness suggests it might represent the legendary meeting between Alexander the Great and the Jewish high priest, or perhaps a representation of the military alliance between the Seleucid Greek Empire and the Hasmonaean high priest, John Hyrcanus.
It was Edward Robinson, a prominent American biblical archaeologist of the 1800s, who first drew attention to synagogue ruins in the Holy Land. In the book Biblical Researches in Palestine (1856), written with Eli Smith, Robinson describes two synagogues at Bar’am (Kafr Bir’im), a site in northern Galilee near the Lebanese border: “The size, the elaborate sculptured ornament, and the splendour of these edifices do not belong to a scattered and down-trodden people ... All these circumstances would seem to mark a condition of prosperity and wealth and influence among the Jews of the Galilee in that age, of which neither their own historians, nor any other, have given us any account.” We know from Rabbi Shmuel bar Shimshon and Rabbi Yehiel of Paris, two prominent Talmudists who immigrated to the Holy Land in 1210 CE, that both Bar’am synagogues were still in use in the 13th century.
Robinson’s observation highlights an 1,800-year gap in the Jewish historical record: from Flavius Josephus in the 1st century CE to the modern Jewish histories of Heinrich Graetz and Simon Dubnow of the 19th and 20th centuries, respectively. There were a few exceptions: Benjamin of Tudela wrote about Jewish communities he visited in the 12th century; Ishtori Haparchi described the geography of the Holy Land; and Solomon Ibn Verga wrote about the trials of the Jews of Spain and Portugal.
By the end of the 20th century, however, the remains of 100 synagogues, built after the destruction of the Temple, had been identified in the Holy Land (see Levine, Judaism & Hellenism in Antiquity, 1998). While a majority are in the Galilee, they are evident throughout the land. It was the discovery of ornate mosaic floors portraying figurative artwork not usually associated with synagogues that was the big surprise.
The first one found was at Na’aran, outside Jericho, exposed in 1918 by the explosion of a Turkish artillery shell during World War I. Then came the Beit Alpha synagogue, accidentally discovered in 1928 during the digging of drainage ditches for Kibbutz Beit Alfa. Both synagogues date to the 6th century CE.
The Beit Alpha mosaic is the better preserved. The elaborate floor depicts the the binding of Isaac, as well as a large wheel consisting of a central figure of the Greco-Roman sun god Helios, surrounded by a circle of the 12 zodiac signs. This synagogue continued to function after the Arab conquest of 637 but was destroyed in 749 by an earthquake, which leveled many of the towns in the region.
The Na’aran and Beit Alpha synagogues were the first of a number of Roman-era synagogues found in the Holy Land containing mosaic floors with elaborate mosaic biblical scenes, as well as representations of the zodiac. There were others, such as the Hammat Tiberias, Huseifa, and the Sepphoris (Tzippori) synagogues. However, probably the most spectacular is the one recently excavated at Huqoq.
How did Jews flourish, have pagan iconography in Roman-ruled post-Temple Israel?
Two questions arise. First, how can these discoveries be reconciled with the widespread view that the post-Temple remnant of Jews in the Holy Land was insignificant and subject to oppression by the Romans? In fact, Magness makes the same point that Robinson noted 170 years ago, when he described the synagogues at Bar’am. The Huqoq synagogue was built when the Roman Empire was under Christian rule, a period that scholars believed was oppressive to Jews, during which Jewish settlements were declining. Yet clearly, this village was flourishing and prospering, a point that applies to several other synagogue sites found in the Galilee and elsewhere in the Holy Land.
Second, how can the presence of figural art and pagan iconography found in synagogues be reconciled with the second commandment forbidding graven images? In the book mentioned earlier, Levine makes the point that, with the unique exception of Jerusalem, the cities of the Roman world would have been replete with statues and other examples of figurative art. Clearly, the Jewish attitude toward figural art during the late Roman period was ambiguous.
Rabban Gamliel was the first head of the Sanhedrin after the destruction of the Temple. For Gamliel, figurative art was acceptable, as long as it was not used for idolatrous purposes. Levine wonders how that would operate in the case of a fast day, when it was customary for the rabbis to prostrate themselves on the synagogue floor – in this case, a floor containing pagan symbols.
What about Jewish life in the Diaspora during the same period? In 1932, just a few years after the discovery of the Beit Alpha synagogue floor, the incredible artwork in the Dura-Europos synagogue was uncovered. Dura-Europos was a garrison town on the Euphrates River. The synagogue, completed in 244, included numerous biblical scenes (originally there were about 100; 70 survived) painted on its walls. The scenes included such biblical events as the binding of Isaac and Moses leading the Israelites out of Egypt. Fortunately, the paintings were relocated to the National Museum of Damascus before the synagogue was destroyed during the recent civil war.
While the Dura-Europos synagogue is a stunning example of figural synagogue art, it does not include portrayals of the zodiac or the pagan god Helios as seen in the synagogue mosaics uncovered at Huqoq and elsewhere in the Holy Land.
However, there was another period, a later one, when figural synagogue art flourished – the period of the wooden synagogues of Eastern Europe. Wood was a common feature of synagogue architecture during the 16th and 17th centuries in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Some such as the Wolpa Synagogue, located in what is today western Belarus, were monumental in size. Moreover, the walls and ceilings were often decorated with elaborate paintings and carvings. Today, virtually none of this chapter of Jewish history remains. More than 200 wooden synagogues were burned during the Nazi occupation of Poland.
Fortunately, photographs of one of the synagogues, the one with perhaps the most elaborate artwork, have survived. This was the Gwoździec Synagogue, located in a town in what is today Ukraine. A reconstruction of the synagogue, built and decorated by a team of 300 experts and volunteers over a number of years, is now exhibited in the POLIN Museum of the history of Polish Jews in Warsaw.
The artwork in this synagogue, particularly the ceiling, is stunning. (Google Gwoździec Synagogue to see what I mean.) It includes verses from the Jewish liturgy, abundant animal imagery, including an elephant, as well as the 12 signs of the zodiac!
What does this brief survey of figural synagogue art tell us? Foremost, and especially important today in the context of widespread efforts to detach the Jewish story from its indigenous connection to the Land of Israel, is the fact that the Jewish people continued to inhabit and prosper in the Holy Land for hundreds of years after the destruction of the Temple, even in the midst of a Christianized Roman Empire. In addition, there is the realization that Judaism has survived over the centuries because of its ability to balance Jewish particularism with the pressures of external cultures and religions.■
Jacob Sivak, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, is a retired professor, University of Waterloo.