Art and Architecture of the Synagogue in Byzantine Palaestina

The Byzantine era was a time of the formation of the Abrahamic religions and a battleground for people’s hearts and minds. This book shows that, during the time of the Byzantine Empire, the synagogues in Palaestina developed a visual language adhering to traditional literary sources. Until now, scholars believed that Judaism was oblivious to all art forms, regarding them as mere “decoration.” This book shows that, contrary to those beliefs, Jewish art was, in fact, flourishing in this period. The visual language that emerged is a trope that utilizes literal and figurative readings to arrive at an inquisitive mixture—a probing language that facilitates learning. It is a visual language of “becoming,” of inward introspection and outward scrutiny. This new analysis goes beyond the limits of compositional rules, and requires an analytical, as well as emotive, thought process, to form a cultural interpretation that reveals the hidden language. This means that some parts of Judaism and some parts of Christianity were in agreement despite the commandment of “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image,” and operated under the assumption that paintings were not necessarily the creation of idols. Thus, we see that the modern movements of art and architecture were not the first to deal with images through themes such as abstraction and denotation. The language developed during the Byzantine period could rival the best of such visual languages.

About the Author :
Asaf Friedman, PhD, earned his Bachelor of Architecture degree from the 'Technion' at the Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel. While working as an architect in New York, he published his first book on the classification of space with I. Idalovichi. He holds a Master's degree from Pennsylvania State University and a doctorate from the University of Technology Delft, the Netherlands. He is currently a practicing architect and the Principal at Face2Form, an architectural studio, and has taught at various architectural schools.

Review :
'Beyond its important contributions to the rich literature on the iconography and architecture of ancient synagogues, this book also can be read in dialogue with more philosophical studies (those of Hans Belting, Gunther Bandmann, and Moshe Barasch, for example) that question the very nature and purpose of architectural decoration—the tension between figural representation and abstract expression. All buildings, but those for religion especially, accommodate practical purposes and give us something to think about. This book's thesis is as profound as it is simple: no decoration is mere. Sacred space is perforce visible and legible, in religious buildings architectural articulation is necessarily rhetorical. The risk of idolatry cannot be avoided if higher levels of meaning are sought, but a choice between seeing and reading seems to have been unnecessary. The conceptual problems are subtle, but clarified in this exacting and exciting study, which will be enjoyed by scholars and students of art history, Jewish studies, Mediterranean culture, and architecture.'David Leatherbarrow,Professor of Architecture, University of Pennsylvania