page_title: Susya
section_title: Ancient synagogue
hierarchical_section_title: Susya / History / Ancient synagogue
caption_attribution_description: Susya. Inside Synagogoes
context_page_description: Susya is the site of an ancient Jewish village in the southern Judaean Mountains of the West Bank, a Palestinian settlement established perhaps as early as the 1830s and a religious communal Israeli settlement under the jurisdiction of Har Hebron Regional Council established in 1983.
  The archaeological site bears remains both of a 5th–8th century CE synagogue and of a mosque that replaced it. The Palestinians on the site, at Khirbet Susya, are said to exemplify a unique southern Hebron cave-dwelling culture present in the area since the early 19th century whose transhumant practices involved seasonal dwellings in the area's caves and ruins of Susya. The toponym also refers to a Jewish community of religious Zionists who settled on land a mile from the archaeological ruins in 1986.
  In 1986, the site of Palestinian Susya was declared an archaeological site by Israeli Defense Ministry's Civil Administration, and the IDF subsequently expelled the Palestinian inhabitants from their dwellings. The Palestinians then moved a few hundred meters southeast of their original village.
context_section_description: Susiya is the site of an archaeologically notable ancient synagogue. The site was examined by Shmarya Guttman in 1969, who uncovered the narthex of a synagogue during a trial dig. He, together with Ze'ev Yeivin and Ehud Netzer, then conducted the Israeli excavations at Khirbet Suseya, (subsequently named by a Hebrew calque as Horvat Susya) over 1971–72, by the Palestinian village of Susiya Al-Qadime.
  The excavated synagogue in Susya dates from the 4th to the 7th century CE and was in continuous use until the 9th century CE. According to Jodi Magness, the synagogue was built in the 4th - 5th centuries and continued in use for "at least" another two centuries. It is one of four of an architecturally unique group in the Southern Judean Hills. Only six synagogues have been identified in Judea as a whole; the lower number is theorized as reflecting a shift in the Jewish population from Judah to Galilee in the 2nd and 3rd centuries. The other three of this distinctive group are those of Eshtemoa, Horvat Maon, and 'Anim. Three outstanding characteristics of the Susya-Eshtemoa group, are their width, entrances at the short eastern wall, and the absence of columns to support the roof.
  According to David Amit, the architectural design, particularly the eastern entrance and axis of prayer, which differ from the majority of Galilean synagogues, exhibits the ramifications of the earliest halakhic law conserved in southern Judea for generations after the destruction of the Temple. This was forgotten in Galilee, but in Judea there was a closer adherence to older traditions reflecting closer proximity to Jerusalem. The eastern orientation may be also related to the idea of dissuading heretics and Christians in the same area, who bowed to the east, in the belief that the Shekinah lay in that direction.
  The synagogue was built as a broadhouse, rather than along basilica lines, measuring 9 by 16 metres (27 by 48 feet) built in well-wrought ashlar construction, with triple doorway façade in an eastward orientation, and the bimah and niche at the centre of the northern wall. There was a secondary bimah in the eastern section. This synagogue is unique in Judea as it had a gallery, serving a dual-use of also reinforcing the western wall. East of the synagogue was an open courtyard surrounded on three sides by a roofed portico. The western side opened to the synagogue's narthex, and the floor of the narthex composed of coloured mosaics set in an interlaced pattern. This model was of short duration, yielding in the late Byzantine phase (6th/7th) to the basilica form, already elsewhere dominant in synagogue architecture.
  In contrast to most Galilean synagogues with their façade and Torah shrine on the same Jerusalem-oriented wall, the Judean synagogue at Susya, (as well as Esthtemoa and Maon) has the niche on the northern Jerusalem-oriented wall and entrances on the east side wall. The synagogue floor of white tesserae has three mosaic panels, the eastern one a Torah Shrine, two menorahs, one on a screen relief showing two lamps suspended from a bar between the menorah's upper branches, (possibly because the Torah shrine was flanked by lampstands, serving the dual purpose of symbolizing a connection between the synagogue and the Temple while functioning as a spotlight for the bimah and giving light for scriptural readings). This was near the reverse mirroring of the menorah pattern in the mosaics, heightened the central significance of the Torah shrine in the hall a lulav, and an etrog with columns on each side. Next to the columns is a landscape with deer and rams. The central panel composed of geometric and floral patterns. A spoke-wheel design before the central bimah, has led Gutman to believe it is the remnant of a zodiac wheel. Zodiac mosaics are important witness to the time, since they were systematically suppressed by the Church, and, their frequent construction in Palestinian synagogue floors may be an index of 'the "inculturation" of non-Jewish imagery and its resulting Judaization'. The fragmentary state of the wheel mosaic is due to 
caption: Susya synagogue
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