- The permanent destruction of the Jerusalem temple in 70 CE meant that synagogues inevitably became the places at which God now set his feet.
- Prof. Oppenheimer:
From these modest beginnings synagogues, after the destruction of the Temple in 70 C.E. , developed as the single most important institution in Jewish life, a position they have held ever since. As the institution grew, its importance was expressed through an everincreasing attribution o f sanctity. Th e earliest evidence for this appears in the writings of the Sages o f the Mishnah, the Tannaim. After the destruction o f the Temple the Tannaitic Sages took it upon themselves to reformulate Judaism for an age in which the Temple could no longer be the focal point of religious experience. Whil e waiting for the messianic reconstruction o f the Temple , the Sages reconstructed religious practice to emphasize the elements o f Judaism that had survived the destruction. At the center o f this development stood the Holy Scriptures. Whil e the Temple was gone and the Jewish hold on the Land of Israel was increasingly tenuous, the Torah and its study were left intact by the great national tragedy. Th e place where Scripture had been studied and community wrought for generations before 70 C.E. , the synagogue, became the institutional focal point for the Rabbinic reconstruction of Judaism.
In this text the source of sanctity differs from that seen in Megillah 3:1. Synagogues are I holy because they share in the sanctity o f the Temple. This tradition suggests that a synagogue that has been destroyed through no fault o f its community is still to be treated as holy—expressed graphically in prohibition against using a synagogue ruin as a shortcut. In Mishnah Berakhot 9:5 the use of the Temple Mount for this purpose is also forbidden. Both destroyed religious centers are to be treated, according to the Mishnah, with residual sanctity. Through creative exegesis o f Leviticus 26:31 some of the sanctity of the Jerusalem Temple is ascribed to synagogues. The period after the destruction o f the Temple saw an explosion in the types of religious activities carried out in synagogues. Th e most important were liturgical. For the first time, prayer became an important feature of synagogue life. Th e Mishnah ascribes the beginning o f this development to the single most influential Sage of the years immediately after 70 C.E. , Rabbi Johanan son of Zakkai.
Other examples of ‘Icmpl c rites the Sages introduced to synagogues are shofar blowing, 1 ^ the priestly blessing, 1 4 prayer offered at the same times as it had been in the Temple, 1 1 and the recitation of blessings at the reading of the Torah. All became synagogue functions under the influence o f the Tannaiti c Sages. Prayer modeled on ‘Icmpl c liturgy was an essential factor in the sanctification of the synagogue from the late first to the early third century C.L . This phenomenon is well expressed in a tradition that appears in a late Tannaiti c collection, the Mekhiltci of Rahhi hhmael. Just as the ‘Icmpl c is a place where the Divine can be found, God is present when a quorum assembles for prayer in the synagogue. Th e synagogue become s a place where, through prayer, the believer can come into communion with the Divine. Th e Mekhiltci is the first text to describe the synagogue as something more than a tcmplelikc study hall. It has become a place of theophany through prayer. For the early Rabbinic Sages, synagogues were the institutional focal point for the reconstruction of Judaism. In their hands the meeting house in which Scripture was studied before 70 C.L . became an institution infused with Temple qualities. It became the sacred place of the time when the ‘Icmplc did not exist. During the first centuries of the Commo n Era the basic contours of this institution were drawn. Synagogues became places in which the Divine could be encountered through communal acts of’Ibrah study and prayer.
