ABSTRACT
One of the remarkable aspects of Rabbinic teachings concerning prayer is the paucity of laws dealing with the architecture appropriate to the house of worship.1 Maimonides devotes but two short paragrahs to the structural requirements of the synagogue and these discuss the elevation and orientation of the ark and the bema.2 Rabbi Ezekiel Landau, the great legist of the eighteenth century, points out that ‘we have no prescribed form whatsoever for the shape of synagogues,’ although he frowns on innovations which are merely imitations of current fashions.3 There is even reference in Rabbinic sources to some who dispensed with the synagogue altogether and, like Isaac (Genesis 24:63), prayed out in the open.4 Since prayer was defined as the
Source: E.L.Sukenik, The Ancient Synagogue of Beth Alpha (Jerusalem: Hebrew University, 1932)
‘service of the heart’ (b. Ta’anit 2a), the rabbis placed primary emphasis on intention and extolled the worshiper who becomes totally oblivious to his surroundings.5 In the later codes this led to restrictions on any representational art which might interfere with proper qavanah.6
