By -

Seeing is believing

Sukkah 51

In its list of superlatives (the greatest party, greatest building, etc) our Gemara includes
the Great Synagogue in Alexandria: “if you have not seen the diploston of Alexandria in
Egypt, you have not seen the honor/glory of Israel.” We then have a fabulous, hyperbolic
description of a synagogue that could hold over one million inhabitants and that had to
use flags in order to signal to the crowds when to say amen. My favorite detail in the
story is how the people sat according to their professions, so that when a poor stranger
arrived, he would go directly to his profession’s section and get help and job tips.

What was the community of Alexandria that it had such an amazing edifice? Alexandria
was one of the major cities of the ancient world and today it is still the second largest city
in Egypt. Situated on the Meditteranean:

Map: Esoteric Quest website

it was ideally located for trade. One of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world, the
Pharos Lighthouse, guided the ships into port.

Roman coins depicting the lighthouse, Wikipedia

Alexandria was founded by its namesake, Alexander the Great, in 331 BCE, and was
a center of Hellenistic culture from the start. The other famous edifice in the city was
the library. Our sources refer to the Targum Shivim, the Septuagint, a translation of
Torah into Greek commissioned by King Ptolemy II from the Jews, presumably for the
library. Jewish sources view this first translation as a tragedy but it can also be seen in the
larger context of a Hellenistic quest for knowledge. The library was destroyed in the first
century CE.

O. Von Corven's depiction of the library, from beautiful libraries.com
A lot harder to reshelve books when they are papyrus scrolls.

But what about the Jewish community? Jews returned to Egypt after the destruction of
the First Temple and when Alexandria was established, they became one of the most
prominent groups in the city. Sources tell us that two out of five of the city quarters had a
Jewish majority, and of course we hear about the famous synagogue. Jewish Alexandria’s
most famous resident, Philo, is a perfect example of the synthesis of Jewish learning and
Hellenistic philosophy that the community was famous for.

But like in many Diaspora communities, here too the Jews were charged with dual
loyalties and sometimes denied the full rights of citizens. A bloody battle in the first
century BCE about granting Jews citizenship rights was the first blow, later in the Trajan
Revolt of the second century CE the Great Synagogue was destroyed. Beauty, glory and
honor, as the Gemara describes, but ultimately ephemeral.

To learn about another interesting citizen of Alexandria, read this post: http://israeldaf.blogspot.co.il/2013/12/nicanor-who-made-gates.html

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

By -
Image
Queen for a Day  Nazir 19   Our mishnah is one of the places where we hear about the intriguing figure of Queen Helene or Heleni HaMalka. Here she is described as taking a Nazirite vow while still in the Diaspora, and then having to redo part (or all) of it when she arrives in the land of Israel. Who is Helene, where is she from and what can archaeology tell us about her? We hear about Helene and her sons Monbaz and Izates in a number of places. Josephus, who was almost her contemporary (she probably died when he was a child, in the mid first century CE), writes about the family’s conversion to Judaism. Helene and her husband Monbaz were the rulers of a country called Adiabene or חדייב in Hebrew. It is located on the northern end of the Tigris River, near ancient Nineveh and the Assyrian kingdom. Today it is in northern Iraq, in Kurdistan:   http://womenofhistory.blogspot.co.il/2014/07/queen-helena-of-adiabene.html Adiabene’s location was on a major trade route a
Read more
By -
Image
The Writing on the Wall Shabbat 149 The Gemara here discusses the Mishnah about not reading from a written guest list or menu on Shabbat. Is the concern that you might come to erase something from the list, or that it might lead you to reading material that is inappropiate for Shabbat? In this context, the Gemara discusses a case where the list is written on a wall, and how high the wall is, i.e., whether it will be difficult to erase. Those of us who regularly write out Shabbat menus and guest lists may find this Gemara somewhat strange to say the least. In what civilized home would you write your lists directly on the wall? In this situation, it is helpful to compare our case to one of the few places in the ancient world where the walls and everything on them survived completely intact: Pompeii . The volcanic eruption that buried Pompeii in the year 79 CE preserved the city and all its contents, including those people unlucky enough to not escape in time. As such, Pompeii
Read more
By -
Image
What’s Cookin’? Shabbat 38 What did our ancestors’ kitchens look like? What are all these terms thrown around in Shabbat and in Menachot: tanur תנור , kirah כירה , kupach קופח , furni פורני ? Are they at all parallel to the baking and cooling appliances we use today? To answer that question I looked at three sources: Zeev and Shmuel Safrai’s Mishnat Eretz Yisrael, Shmuel Avitzur’s encyclopedia of traditional tools אדם ועמלו , and Dr. Rafi Frankel’s comprehensive article on baking in Talmudic time (Catedra 2011, link at bottom of the post). Safrai tells us that unless you were very wealthy, no one in ancient times had a kitchen as we think of it. Not only was most of the preparing, baking and cooking done outside in the communal courtyard (everyone knows what is or isn’t in your pots!) but there rarely were surfaces to work on. The women would squat or sit on the floor and the baking and cooking “appliances” were on the floor too. Safrai gives a short description of a ta
Read more