Were Women and Men Segregated in Ancient Synagogues?

...Nor does anyone suppose that there is a separate room that could have served the women...

...The parallels in Lamentations Rabbah 1:45 (on Lamentations 1:16) and 4:22 (on Lamentations 4:19), however, have the terms reversed: "Do An aerial view of Capernaum, with the partially restored third- or fourth-century synagogue at the upper end of the cleared ground...

...This arrangement serves two purposes...

...The ancient synagogue at Masada clearly had no gallery or separate room that might have been used for separate seating...

...Therefore, "it was ordained that the women should sit without and the men within, but there was still frivolity...

...Does it not seem strange that in all this, there is not some more explicit reference to the separation of the sexes in ancient synagogues...

...And, perhaps most importantly, they deal with an observance involving wine and dancing, a time when it might be thought especially important to separate the sexes...

...Ancient Jewish literature attests to no general regulation or custom segregating the sexes during synagogue worship...

...In the Talmud, there is a passage (Sukkah -51b) that tells us that once a year, on the night following the first day of the Feast of Tabernacles, there was a Water Drawing celebration at which a separation of sexes was prescribed as a result of earlier "frivolity...

...And ancient Jewish literature yields no hint of a strict separation of the sexes in the synagogue...

...Jewish philosopher...

...But would ancient synagogues adopt as their everyday structure this arrangement of women sitting in a gallery that only happened once a year in the Temple...

...The plan of these synagogues as revealed in the extant remains leaves no room for—and the excavators have not even suggested—the existence of a gallery...

...So Krauss looked for, and therefore found, the remains of what he called women's galleries in ancient Galilean synagogues...

...During their stay on Masada, the Jewish revolutionaries remodeled the building, adding benches along the walls and a small storage area where some fragments of scripture have been found...

...In an illustrated lecture on an ancient Galilean synagogue delivered on December 16, 1911, in Berlin, the great Judaica scholar Samuel Krauss told his audience: "Now that we are inside the synagogue, let us first of all—as politeness demands—look to the rows of the seats of our dear wives, on the supposition that something will be found which could be viewed as the remains of a Weibersckul [women's synagogue] in the synagogue ruins...

...the modesty becoming to the female sex is preserved, while the women sitting within earshot can easily follow what is said since there is nothing to obstruct the voice of the speaker...

...We can hardly extrapolate this to a fixed custom in synagogues centuries after the Temple was destroyed...

...Often, the evidence for a particular synagogue may be only a donor's inscription, a plaque with a menorah on it, or a post to hold a marble chancel (lattice) screen...

...Prominent scholars like Leopold Loew, Ismar Elbogen, Richard Krautheimer, Asher Hiram and Shmuel Safrai have questioned either the existence of a gallery or the existence of a separate women's section...

...My own intensive re-examination of all this material, both archaeological and literary, has convinced me that what was once a scholarly consensus is insupportable...

...The hall was originally built by Herod the Great between 36 and 30 B.C.E...

...Moreover, a gallery in an ancient synagogue did not necessarily mean separation of the sexes...

...This could not have been the case since women walking through the men's section would have violated the strict separation...

...Indeed, Philo's detailed description gives the impression that he is describing a rare custom rather than one so widespread that describing it is unnecessary...

...The remaining cases fall into three categories: those buildings that clearly had no gallery...

...That appears to have been the case with women's galleries in ancient synagogues...

...In this large outer court the sexes mingled together freely, and the men had to pass through this area in order to enter the Forecourt of Israel...

...Many ancient Diaspora synagogues are building complexes, with several rooms abutting the main prayer hall...

...The few smaller columns could have been part of a Torah shrine that surely existed at one time inside the building...

...No one has ever suggested that ancient Jewish literature attests to a general regulation that the sexes be separated in synagogue worship...

...Goodenough wrote that Juliana "could presumably not have attended services in this sancta synagoga...

...Scholars, unfortunately, are not immune to finding what they want to find...

...Benches lined the walls of the prayer hall and columns supported the roof...

...Finally, it was ordained that the women should sit above and the men below...

...The archaeological evidence that ancient synagogues had galleries (for whatever purpose) simply does not hold up...

...For example, in the earlier (late second-early third century C.E...

...Safrai also referred to a number of texts showing that women did attend synagogue in ancient times...

...I do not mean to suggest that I have brought down the earlier scholarly consensus single-handedly, like Samson destroyed the Philistine temple at Gaza...

...to those below (i.e., the women) as you have done to those above...

...Therefore it can hardly be taken as an example of the separation of the sexes...

...True, arguments from silence are always dangerous and must be used with caution...

...The group Philo is describing is a sect that followed such unusual customs as celibacy and the pursuit of the purely contemplative life...

...The designation "Women's Forecourt" does not mean "reserved for women," but rather indicates that women could not pass beyond this outer court...

...Instead, reliance has been placed on inferences from texts dealing with other subjects...

...The current excavators have concluded that the evidence is too meager to assume the existence of a gallery...

...According to an inscription in the mosaic, it was donated by a woman named Juliana...

...But there is so much evidence for Jewish life during the Roman period (first century B.C.E.-4th century C.E...

...For example, according to the Mishnah and the first-century Jewish historian Josephus, the Second Temple included a Women's Forecourt (ezrat nashim in Hebrew...

...Other talmudic passages have even greater difficulties.1 The final bit of literary evidence I will examine here shows how far scholars will reach to find evidence for a separation of the sexes in ancient synagogues...

...gynaikonilis in Greek), which contrasted with the Forecourt of Israel...

...At first glance, this seems to be a clear case of a gallery, although the identification as a women's gallery has no basis in the monumental remains...

...The challenge presented to earlier scholarship by me and the other people I have named has gone almost completely unanswered...

...The passage from the Mishnah and the related passage from the Talmud deal with the Temple, not with the synagogue...

...In another ancient Diaspora synagogue, Hammam Lif (Naro) in Tunisia, a marvelous mosaic floor was found in the main prayer hall...

...to about 750 C.E...

...Unfortunately, little has survived at Meiron, but elsewhere remains of smaller columns have been used in reconstructing a narthex (or portico), a Torah niche, a synagogue forecourt and the Torah ark itself...

...But it provides no basis for generalizing this example to cover all or even most first-century Jews...

...Jewish philosopher and exegete who wrote in Greek, Philo...

...The wall between the two chambers rises up from the ground to three or four cubits built in the form of a breast work, while the space above up to the roof is left open...

...These steps could have led to a gallery...

...After he had killed the men, Trajan offered the women mercy if they would surrender, to which the women answered, "Do to those above (ilaye) as you have done to those below (araye)" This seems to be a clear case of the separation of the sexes...

...I believe it was a medieval introduction under the influence of Islam...

...BERNADFTTE J. B ROOT EN Scholars are not immune to finding what they want to find...

...The evidence for this, however, is insufficient...

...The issues of whether women may serve as rabbis and cantors, read from the Torah and count in a minyan have raised anew the rather arcane question of whether women and men were segregated in ancient synagogues...

...The evidence cited to support this conclusion was both archaeological and literary, the latter including principally rabbinic texts but also, to a lesser extent, the first century G.E...

...But archaeologists disagree as to whether the two-story roof covered only the nave or extended over the side aisles to form a second-story gallery overtooking the nave...

...The facade of the building is well preserved, but the rest of the structure is not...

...In ancient Diaspora synagogues, the question is somewhat different...

...So in these cases we simply have no evidence that bears on the existence of a women's gallery...

...In other words, the crowning example of a synagogue gallery is no longer felt to be one by the present excavators of the site...

...As a later scholar, Erwin Goodenough of Yale, pointed out, however, the well-worn threshold between Room 7 and Room 2 makes this unthinkable, for this well-worn threshold means that the women would have had to enter and exit through the men's section...

...In light of the ambiguity of the terminology and the lack of agreement in the sources, this passage and its parallels cannot be taken as evidence either for a gallery in the Alexandrian Diplostoon or for a separation of the sexes in ancient synagogues generally...

...Lexicographers Jacob Levy and Marcus Jastrow, for example, take them to mean "inferior" (i.e., women) and "superior" (i.e., men...

...The crowning example of a women's gallery in an ancient synagogue is at Capernaum, where the synagogue is dated to the third or fourth century C.E...

...Presumably Juliana worshipped in an isolated side-room: "This room might have been used for a guest hostel, but seems to me more likely, from its total isolation, to have been designed for the women...

...exostra in Greek], so that the women looked on from above and the men from below, in order that they should not mix...

...No one would think of using this sect as proof that celibacy or the contemplative life was widespread in ancient Judaism...

...More importantly, the current excavators of the synagogue, Virgilio Corbo, Stanislao Lofireda and Augusto Spijkerman, believe that the stairway did not lead into the prayer hall...

...MOMENT author Bernadette Brooten says the smaller columns could have had other functions than to support a gallery—for example, as part of a Torah ark...

...Finally, these passages reflect shifting or, to use the scholarly term, unstable, customs...

...Until recently, scholars generally believed thai women and men occupied separate sections in ancient synagogues—with the women often consigned to a second-story galleiy overlooking the main prayer hall, as in many Orthodox synagogues today...

...True, this is an example of a first century separation of the sexes...

...3' 1 For example the Jerusalem Talmud, Sukkah 55D.14-23, describes the famous Diplostoon, a synagogue in Alexandria, Egypt, that was destroyed by the Emperor Trajan...

...In short, the position I present here appears to have carried the day...

...Instead, in their view, the basalt steps were part of a separate basalt storeroom and led to a second-floor storage area...

...The majority of later Judaica scholars and archaeologists followed Krauss in both method and result...

...The current excavators disagree with this theory, however, believing instead that the stairs led to a storage area...

...and those buildings that may possibly have had a gallery...

...Capernaum clearly fits the category of buildings that may have had a gallery, for here there was a staircase, the first steps of which have survived outside the back of the building...

...Moreover, it is not even clear that araye and ilaye are spatial terms at all...

...He describes the sanctuary of a religious sect known as Therapeutae and Therapeutrides: "[The] common sanctuary in which they meet every seventh day is a double enclosure, one portion set apart for the use of the men, the other for the women...

...according to Meyers, the two sizes of columns found at the site are evidence that the synagogue did have a gallery...

...The fact that scholars have had to strain so in order to find such highly tenuous evidence for a separation of the sexes in ancient synagogues itself suggests that there was no such separation...

...synagogue at the famous site of Dura Europos in what is today Syria, the excavator Carl Kraeling suggested that Room 7 served the women while Room 2, the larger room, served as the prayer hall for men...

...In fact, these scholars assumed the existence of women's galleries in ancient synagogues, not because of ancient evidence, but because of the strict separation of the sexes in contemporary Orthodox synagogues, in which women worshippers sit up in a gallery or behind a lattice screen, behind a curtain or in a separate room...

...Instead of assuming the existence of galleries where there were none, scholars have suggested a separate room set aside for women...

...The criterion for the assignment of women to the side room is its total isolation, and this in a synagogue in which the main piece of ornamentation, the mosaic floor, was donated by a woman...

...including not only the Mishnah and Talmud but the entire corpus of rabbinic literature, to say nothing of classical texts and Dead Sea Scroll literature...

...those buildings for which a gallery has been suggested, but for which evidence is insufficient...

...The assignment of one of these rooms to women, however, is entirely arbitrary...

...but as with all daughters in Israel, her hope was in the maintenance of Jewish worship and life...

...however, it was used as a synagogue by the last Jewish occupiers of Masada—a band of Zealots who held out there for three years after the Romans destroyed Jerusalem in 70 C.E...

...I think not...

...Here we have the precise model that scholars have assumed for ancient synagogues...

...As for the steps, they are built of the indigenous black basalt so common in the area, not of the fine imported white limestone of the main synagogue structure...

...The Women's Forecourt, however, was not reserved for women...

...Some scholars believe a gallery existed here because a staircase was found outside the building...

...It comes from Philo of Alexandria, the first century C.E...

...They deal with a particular observance, not observance generally...

...Further evidence for a gallery consists of several Doric columns of a diameter slightly less (10 centimeters) than the prayer hall columns, as well as several fragments of what could have been the architrave of the upper row of columns in the gallery...

...Safrai of Hebrew University, in an especially influential article published in 1963 in the Hebrew journal Tarbiz, analyzed the literary evidence and found it insufficient to support the conclusion that women and men were separated in ancient synagogues...

...that is, they looked for women's galleries and they found them...

...And it is at Capernaum where we have the strongest case for a gallery...

...This is a totally different model from the one presupposed by those archaeologists who reconstruct a women's gallery with a separate entrance...

...The archaeological remains are also considerable, including buildings and an impressive body of synagogue inscriptions...

...That appears to have been the case with women's galleries in ancient synagogues...

...On this latter point Meyers agrees: "I don't believe the gallery was used as a women's section," according to Meyers...

...My own work has been the most recent and, perhaps, the most comprehensive...

...Moreover, in the later mid third-century synagogue built on the same site at Dura Europos, there was no separate room adjoining the prayer hall at all...

...No trace of a staircase has been found by archaeologists...

...The reconstruction supposes that this column could not have belonged with the others and must be the sole remaining piece of an upper gallery...

...to a passage in the Mishnah (Middot 2:5) in which we are told that the Women's Forecourt in the Temple was surrounded "with a gallery [Ketzotzl'ra in Hebrew...

...The evidence for a gallery is the base of one corner column that has a diameter slightly less than that of the other columns (47 centimeters compared to 60-69 centimeters...

...Let us now turn to the literary evidence allegedly supporting the conclusion that men and women were separated in ancient synagogues...

...Architectural pieces Meyers associates with a gallery were found...

...vidence of more than 200 ancient syn-lagogues has been found in Israel and the Diaspora, dating from about 150 B.C.E...

...This passage in the Talmud is connected A perspective cutaway drawing of the Meiron synagogue, prepared under the direction of Duke University archaeologist Eric Meyers, who excavated the site, suggests that there was a gallery in this third- or fourth-century synagogue in the Galilee...

...Whether its original use was as a synagogue is debatable...

...I concede that I have not proved that there was no separation of the sexes in ancient synagogues, but, as most scholars will now recognize, the evidence—whether archaeological or literary—that has been adduced in the past to support the view that gender segregation prevailed in ancient synagogues fails to make the case...

...An example of buildings for which a gallery has been suggested but for wh.ich evidence is insufficient is the ancient synagogue at Meiron in the Galilee, a third or fourth century structure, where a gallery has been posited in a reconstruction by archaeologists Eric Meyers, Carol Meyers and James Strange...

...The primary difficulty with this reconstruction is the lack of a staircase by which to reach the hypothetical gallery...

...It may well be that the desire to preserve celibacy among the members of this group gave rise to the custom of separating the sexes...

...Whether the Galilean synagogue at Chor«in had a gallery ii a much debated question, and the evidence is inconclusive- The archaeological remains suggest that the central nave of the synagogue stood two stories high...

...Why should one view their separation of the sexes during worship in a different way...

...and Byzantine period (4th century-7th century C.E...

...In fewer than a hundred instances do we have remains of the building itself, and even then it is sometimes pitifully little...

...The gallery was probably used as extra seating: there is no epigraphic, literary or archaeological evidence to support the claim that women and men sat separately in ancient synagogues...

...But there are problems even with calling the Capernaum upperstructure a gallery...

...Buildings that clearly had no gallery include such famous synagogues as the one at Masada, excavated by the late archaeologist Yigael Yadin, the synagogue at Herodion, and the more recently discovered synagogue at Gamla in the Golan Heights...

...The smaller column at Meiron need not have been used to support the roof of a gallery...