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Synagogue
A synagogue, also called a shul or a temple, is a place of worship for Jews and Samaritans. It is a place for prayer (the main sanctuary and sometimes smaller chapels) where Jews attend religious services or special ceremonies such as weddings, bar and bat mitzvahs, choir performances, and children's plays. They often also have rooms for study, social halls, administrative and charitable offices, classrooms for religious and Hebrew studies, and many places to sit and congregate. They often display commemorative, historic, or modern artwork alongside items of Jewish historical significance or history about the synagogue itself.
Synagogues are buildings used for Jewish prayer, study, assembly, and reading of the Torah. The Torah (Pentateuch or Five Books of Moses) is traditionally read in its entirety over a period of a year in weekly portions during services, or in some synagogues on a triennial cycle. However, the edifice of a synagogue as such is not essential for holding Jewish worship. Halakha (Jewish law from the Mishnah – the "Oral Torah") states that communal Jewish worship can be carried out wherever a minyan, a group of at least 10 Jewish adult men, is assembled, often (but not necessarily) led by a rabbi. This minyan is the essence of Jewish communal worship, which can also be conducted alone or with fewer than ten people, but that excludes certain prayers as well as communal Torah reading. In terms of its specific ritual and liturgical functions, the synagogue does not replace the long-destroyed Temple in Jerusalem.
Any Jew or group of Jews can build a synagogue. Synagogues have been constructed by ancient Jewish leaders, wealthy patrons, and as part of a wide range of human institutions, including secular educational institutions, governments, and hotels. They have been built by the entire Jewish community living in a particular village or region, or by sub-groups of Jewish people organized by occupation, tradition/background (e.g., the Sephardic, Yemenite, Romaniote or Persian Jews of a town), style of religious observance (e.g., Orthodox or Reform synagogues), or by the followers of a particular rabbi, such as the shtiebelekh (Yiddish: שטיבעלעך, romanized: shtibelekh, singular שטיבל shtibl) of Hasidic Judaism.
The Hebrew term is bet knesset (בית כנסת) or "house of assembly". The Koine Greek-derived word synagogue (συναγωγή) also means "assembly" and is commonly used in English, with its earliest mention in the 1st century Theodotos inscription in Jerusalem. Ashkenazi Jews have traditionally used the Yiddish term shul (from the Greek schola, which is also the source of the English "school") in everyday speech, and many continue to do so in English.
Sephardi Jews and Romaniote Jews generally use the term kal (from the Hebrew qahal "community"). Spanish and Portuguese Jews call the synagogue an esnoga and Portuguese Jews may call it a sinagoga. Persian Jews and some Karaite Jews also use the term kenesa, which is derived from Aramaic, and some Mizrahi Jews use kenis or qnis, the Arabic word for a synagogue, or ṣla, the Arabic word for prayer.
In the First Temple period, Jewish communal worship revolved around the Temple in Jerusalem, serving as a central focal point and significant symbol for the entire Jewish nation. As such, it was the destination for Jews making pilgrimages during the three major annual festivals commanded by the Torah: Passover, Shavuot and Sukkot. There is no evidence of non-sacrificial worship during this period. There are several known cases of Jewish communities in Egypt with their own temples, such as the Temple at Elephantine established by refugees from the Kingdom of Judah during the Twenty-seventh Dynasty of Egypt, and a few centuries later, the Temple of Onias in the Heliopolite Nome.
The first synagogues emerged in the Jewish diaspora, probably after the Babylonian Exile of Judaea in 586 BCE, several centuries before their introduction to the Land of Israel. Evidence points to their existence as early as the Hellenistic period, notably in Alexandria, Ptolemaic Egypt, the world's foremost Greek-speaking city at the time. There, the first proseukhái (Koine Greek: προσευχαί, lit. 'places of prayer'; singular προσευχή proseukhē) were built to provide a place for communal prayer and reading and studying the Torah. Alexandrian Jews also made a Koine Greek translation of the Torah, the Septuagint.[citation needed] The earliest archaeological evidence for the existence of synagogues is stone dedication inscriptions from the third century BCE prove that proseukhái existed by that date. Philo and Josephus mention lavishly adorned synagogues in Alexandria and in Antioch, respectively.
More than a dozen Second Temple period synagogues in use by Jews and Samaritans have been identified by archaeologists in Israel and other countries of the Hellenistic world. Following the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai, who is often credited with reformulating Judaism for the post-Temple era, advocated for the establishment of individual houses of worship since the Temple was no longer accessible.
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Synagogue
A synagogue, also called a shul or a temple, is a place of worship for Jews and Samaritans. It is a place for prayer (the main sanctuary and sometimes smaller chapels) where Jews attend religious services or special ceremonies such as weddings, bar and bat mitzvahs, choir performances, and children's plays. They often also have rooms for study, social halls, administrative and charitable offices, classrooms for religious and Hebrew studies, and many places to sit and congregate. They often display commemorative, historic, or modern artwork alongside items of Jewish historical significance or history about the synagogue itself.
Synagogues are buildings used for Jewish prayer, study, assembly, and reading of the Torah. The Torah (Pentateuch or Five Books of Moses) is traditionally read in its entirety over a period of a year in weekly portions during services, or in some synagogues on a triennial cycle. However, the edifice of a synagogue as such is not essential for holding Jewish worship. Halakha (Jewish law from the Mishnah – the "Oral Torah") states that communal Jewish worship can be carried out wherever a minyan, a group of at least 10 Jewish adult men, is assembled, often (but not necessarily) led by a rabbi. This minyan is the essence of Jewish communal worship, which can also be conducted alone or with fewer than ten people, but that excludes certain prayers as well as communal Torah reading. In terms of its specific ritual and liturgical functions, the synagogue does not replace the long-destroyed Temple in Jerusalem.
Any Jew or group of Jews can build a synagogue. Synagogues have been constructed by ancient Jewish leaders, wealthy patrons, and as part of a wide range of human institutions, including secular educational institutions, governments, and hotels. They have been built by the entire Jewish community living in a particular village or region, or by sub-groups of Jewish people organized by occupation, tradition/background (e.g., the Sephardic, Yemenite, Romaniote or Persian Jews of a town), style of religious observance (e.g., Orthodox or Reform synagogues), or by the followers of a particular rabbi, such as the shtiebelekh (Yiddish: שטיבעלעך, romanized: shtibelekh, singular שטיבל shtibl) of Hasidic Judaism.
The Hebrew term is bet knesset (בית כנסת) or "house of assembly". The Koine Greek-derived word synagogue (συναγωγή) also means "assembly" and is commonly used in English, with its earliest mention in the 1st century Theodotos inscription in Jerusalem. Ashkenazi Jews have traditionally used the Yiddish term shul (from the Greek schola, which is also the source of the English "school") in everyday speech, and many continue to do so in English.
Sephardi Jews and Romaniote Jews generally use the term kal (from the Hebrew qahal "community"). Spanish and Portuguese Jews call the synagogue an esnoga and Portuguese Jews may call it a sinagoga. Persian Jews and some Karaite Jews also use the term kenesa, which is derived from Aramaic, and some Mizrahi Jews use kenis or qnis, the Arabic word for a synagogue, or ṣla, the Arabic word for prayer.
In the First Temple period, Jewish communal worship revolved around the Temple in Jerusalem, serving as a central focal point and significant symbol for the entire Jewish nation. As such, it was the destination for Jews making pilgrimages during the three major annual festivals commanded by the Torah: Passover, Shavuot and Sukkot. There is no evidence of non-sacrificial worship during this period. There are several known cases of Jewish communities in Egypt with their own temples, such as the Temple at Elephantine established by refugees from the Kingdom of Judah during the Twenty-seventh Dynasty of Egypt, and a few centuries later, the Temple of Onias in the Heliopolite Nome.
The first synagogues emerged in the Jewish diaspora, probably after the Babylonian Exile of Judaea in 586 BCE, several centuries before their introduction to the Land of Israel. Evidence points to their existence as early as the Hellenistic period, notably in Alexandria, Ptolemaic Egypt, the world's foremost Greek-speaking city at the time. There, the first proseukhái (Koine Greek: προσευχαί, lit. 'places of prayer'; singular προσευχή proseukhē) were built to provide a place for communal prayer and reading and studying the Torah. Alexandrian Jews also made a Koine Greek translation of the Torah, the Septuagint.[citation needed] The earliest archaeological evidence for the existence of synagogues is stone dedication inscriptions from the third century BCE prove that proseukhái existed by that date. Philo and Josephus mention lavishly adorned synagogues in Alexandria and in Antioch, respectively.
More than a dozen Second Temple period synagogues in use by Jews and Samaritans have been identified by archaeologists in Israel and other countries of the Hellenistic world. Following the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai, who is often credited with reformulating Judaism for the post-Temple era, advocated for the establishment of individual houses of worship since the Temple was no longer accessible.