ABSTRACT
This concentration round the synagogue may be noted in the social as well as in the material life of the middle ages. The synagogue tended, with ever-increasing rapidity, to absorb and to develop the social life of the community, both when Jews enjoyed free intercourse with their neighbours of other faiths, and when this intercourse was restricted to the narrowest possible bounds. It was the political emancipation, which the close of the eighteenth century witnessed, that first loosened the hold of the synagogue on Jewish life. Emancipation so changed the complexion of that life that the Jewish middle ages cannot be considered to have
ended until the French Revolution was well in sight. But throughout the middle ages proper the synagogue held undisputed sway in all the concerns of Jews. Nor was this absorption a new phenomenon. Already in Judea the Temple had assumed some social funCtions. The tendency first reveals itself amid the enthusiasm of the Maccabean revival, when the Jews felt drawn to the house of prayer for social as well as for religious communion. The Temple itself became the scene of some festal gatherings which were only in a secondary sense religious in character 1. Political meetings were held within its precincts 2. Its courts resounded on occasion with cries for the redress of grievances 3. King and Rabbi alike addressed the assembled Israelites under the Colonnade, which was joined to the Temple by a bridge·.
