Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1930-08-17


tractor named Marlanos and his son,
HANNA, were given the job of laying
A u an ornamental floor In the synagogue
OF q village in Northern Palestine. It
wasn't very large town or very distinguished
one its very name is now forgotten, and
neither Roman nor Jewish history contains any
reference to the place.
It was just another of the innumerabe Main
street towns of the world, whose inhabitants
carried on their several businesses assembled
piously ON the Sabbath, and in due time were
gathered to their fathers, all without raising
enough dust or shedding enough blood TO earn
a few penStrokes parchment
Like the small-town folk of today, the peo-
pie of this forgotten village were a really re-
ligioHs lot and they wanted their meeting house
to be a place they could really be proud Of;
place moreover that would instruct their chill
d4en through their eyes as the Torah reader
instructed them through their ears.
So Marianos and his son. HANNA, were COM
missioned to cover the floor of the synagogue
with pictures in stone-mosaics. we call them
now. They did their workmanlike best, ana
were so well satisfied with what they had
wrought that they put in an inscription telling
who tiley were and that they finished the job
in the reign of the Emperor JustinIs.
--t,is os7e6 signature, written in bits OF color
ed stones, turns out to be one OF the most I'M
portant things about their whole artistic effort.
For this synagogue which they thus decorated
whose date we can be at all certain
Ruins of other and more pretentious syna-
gogues have been found, but of their time only
an approximate notion has ever been gained.
And synagogues in Palestine are obviously as
important, in rebuilding picture OF the life
of former times, as are churches mosques
or classic temples, ali OF which are the sub
jects of increasingly active research.
RUT, however much applause Marianos and
HANNA may have had from their neigh
bofs for their artistic efforts on the floor of the
synagogue the Immortality they sought for
their names was relatively short-Eved For at
some time during the troubled period of war
and confusion that marked the later centuries
OF antiquity the village was abandoned or
destroyed, and the synagogue died with It, The
roof and walls fell in, and the debris Of GEN.
turtles piled deep over the tesselated floor.
Greek and Saracen Crusader and Turk, fought
each other to the death, or made treaties and
traded; all through the Middle Ages and mod
ern tines life ebbed and flowed through the
Plain of Esdraelon where the town had once
stood and the forgotten stones of its houses
lay as dumb and unheeding as dead mems
bones.
Then came the thunders of the World War,
like the trumpet of resurrection. The land,
long prone beneath the hand OF the Turk,
stirred and shook itself Under new regime,
a people who had possessed it ages before sent
back some of its scattered sons and daughters
to till the land that their fathers had known.
Under the banner of the Zionist movement
Jewish colonies sprang up in many parts of
the old kingdom of David and Solomon.
One of these agricultural colonies settled on
almost the exact site of the long forgotten vii
lage In the Plain of Esdraelon. Its founders,
ynlIng men and women from Galica, Germany
and Crezhosovakia, called their town Beth
Alpha
There were old stubs of walls sticking out of
the soil here and there; but ruins common
in an old land like Palestine and the new
cOlonists were too busy wrestling with the pres
ent and providing for the future to dig much
into the past The problem of water was with
them as 1t had been with their ancestors in
the wilderness, and they undertook to meet II
by the construction of an irrigation ditch
That trench brought them into direct con-
tact with the past, whether they would or no.
wherever you go little beneath the surface of
the ground in Palestine you are very likely to
come face to face very suddenly with antiquity.
The diggers uncovered a strip of the mosaic
floor which Marianos and his son had laid with
careful fingers IA centuries ago. Some of the
stones were arranged to form Hebrew letters;
the diggers nad without intending It, made
find OF major Importance, had dug up for
gotten chapter from the past Of their people.
They made haste to notify the Hebrew Uni
verSity at Jerusalem, and Dr. l. Sukeniks
archeologist, came cut TO- Investigate. He ar