{Photos to accompany this post are on the Resplendent Daughter Ministries Facebook page.}
To continue our journey through the land of the Great King, we headed for the mountainside city of Chorazin. This is the same Chorazin that Yeshua cursed in Matthew 11:20, along with Bethsaida. Today, we walked among the ruins of that 1st century community of Jews in which Yeshua did so many of His miracles, yet the people did not repent of their sins. Chorazin is a beautiful port city on the Sea of Galilee (Kinneret). Our first stop was Chorazin’s ancient synagogue, which was first excavated in 1905 to 1907 by a German and then in the 1920s and in 1939 by the Department of Antiquities of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
The front of synagogue is facing south, because Jerusalem is south of Chorazin, toward the throne of God.
Jeremiah 17:12 reflects this centuries-old practice.
A glorious throne, exalted from the beginning, is the place of our sanctuary.
The steps leading up to the front of the synagogue are uneven and staggered so that people will slow down and concentrate. A similar phenomenon can be observed at the ruins of the Temple in Jerusalem. Synagogues of the Temple era mimicked in design the Temple in Jerusalem. For example, the Jerusalem Temple had many pilasters, ornate columns. Some were in the Corinthian style. Others were in the Ionic style. (And, there’s one more architectural style, but I can’t remember that one.) Most of the Temple’s pilasters which we have excavated have been in the Ionic style, and the ones at the synagogue at Chorazin were the same style.
Back to the point about the way the front face of the building was facing….The synagogue at Gamla, where we visited earlier in the week does not have a front facade that faces toward Jerusalem, and this has been a topic of speculation and debate for centuries!
The synagogue at Capernaum is almost identical to the synagogue at Chorazin. Today, however, the Catholic Church has built an ultra-1960’s style church over the Capernaum ruins, ostensibly to preserve them. And, Capernaum is a huge tourist attraction, whereas Chorazin is not-so-much that.
One of our rabbis on our trip showed to us the Teva Seat (what you might call the synagogue’s pulpit). He remarked that the three purposes of gathering together at synagogue have been and continue to be:
***To gather/fellowship
***To pray
***To study the Oral and the Written Torah (the latter of which is the Old Testament)
For Jews who practice in the Reform tradition, the emphasis more on the first. For those in the Conservative and Orthodox traditions, the emphasis is on the latter two.
I also noted a winepress at the ruins, but our tour guides did not stop there to make remarks. Basically, this was an entire community with all the features you would think of a Jewish community to have, including the ruins of many homes.
For example, there was a House of Mikvot, a house containing the community’s ritual baths. The mikveh is a place of ritual immersion, in Judaism. Regular immersion into a mikveh is needed for ritual purity. I used “is”, because Torah-observant Jews as well as Torah-observant followers of Messiah Yeshua ritually immerse. If you are a Christian, this concept will be very foreign to you. So, let me endeavor to give you an example:
Both men and women had to immerse at various times, but one is when a woman would immerse at the end of her body’s monthly reproductive cycle. Again, this was for the purposes of ritual purity, as commanded in the book of Leviticus. Women were prohibited from engaging in sexual relations, until they had observed the laws of ritual purity.
As you can see, the community’s mikveh was important as a synagogue.
Mikva’ot today are like spas!
Next we went to stand in the ruins of the town square, where one of our rabbis explained one of the important activities that would take place three times a year, as the community prepared for at least the men to make the journey to Jerusalem, for the purpose of attending the three required festivals (Passover, Shavuot, Succot). These three are called the “regellim”. The Hebrew word for “feet” is “regellim”.
Every Jewish male from the age of two was required to attend these three festivals. They would walk to Jerusalem, hence “regellim”. There were 24 districts in ancient Israel. In addition to the males, whole communities would go to Jerusalem for the 3 regellim. There, they would camp out, unless they had relatives there who owned a home where they could hang out for the duration.
“Come and let us go up to the House of the Lord”.
Here was the order of procession, after the community had gathered in the town square: a a priest (kohen) would be in front, playing a flute
Community offering (the livestock) would follow.
Next would come the other kohanim (priests).
Behind the priests would be the male and female singers of the choir.
They would sing the “psalms of ascent” antiphonally (call and response).
Tractate Bikkurim, ch 3 of the Mishnah talks about this order of procession, if you would like to read more about it. A similar procession takes place in Jerusalem weddings today!
We left Chorazin and journeyed on to the mountaintop city of Tsfat. Honestly, I had never heard of this city. Tsfat is a city at a higher elevation than Jerusalem, a city built on very steep grades as well. It’s not like a mesa city, where there is a flat mountaintop the city is built on. This has led to a persistent belief that the city is therefore “closer to God”, in more ways than one. Such as…..Tsfat is a very conservative city, inhabited by mostly Orthodox Jews. For hundreds of years Tsfat has been the center of Jewish mysticism, otherwise known as Kabbalah. Kabbalah began in Genesis 1:1, with the reference to the Divine Mystery - - Father, Son, Spirit.
We had to dress more conservatively on the tour today, so as not to offend the residents by our style of clothing. Women had to have on skirts or dresses that fell below the knee and had to have their shoulders and upper arms covered.
2/3 of the Tsfat Jews are from America, Jews who have made aliyah. (Making aliyah is an expression that means immigrating to Israel. The phrase comes from the Hebrew verb “alah”, which means “to ascend” or “to go up”. Properties in Tsfat are 1/3 of the price of properties in Tel Aviv, for instance. And, Jerusalem is even more expensive, and even higher cost of living.
Something you see a lot of in Tsfat is sky blue paint on the buildings, walls, windows, floors, etc. This is done, again, out of a belief that Tsfat dwells in the heavens.
As far as overlords go, the British were mostly benevolent to the Jewish people. But, after the documents were signed and the land of Israel was turned over to its 600,000 or so inhabitants, the British left abruptly, on a Friday at midnight, in 1948.
Immediately, Muslims swarmed in, and Tsfat was under siege for two weeks!
Yigal Allon led the liberation of the city. He was the first head of the united Jewish military.
British did not clearly define the borders of their former holdings in the Ancient Near East and the Middle East before they left, sadly. And, although may former English-held lands are still democracies today, there have been perhaps border disputes and wars that could have been pre-empted.
As we did at Chorazin, we visited the synagogue in Tsfat. There was one major difference, however. No Shabbat worship services are held in the Chorazin synagogue today, while the one in Tsfat is a fully-functioning center for a living, breathing community.
This synagogue was established originally by Moroccan Jews (Sephardic Jews).
Later it was destroyed twice by earthquakes and re-built.
In 1927 it was destroyed by earthquake for the 3rd time. This third time around, the best of precautions were taken to ensure that the structure will withstand the next one. Our tour guide told us today that about every 100 years Israel sustains a major earthquake. The last one was the one in 1927 that destroyed this synagogue. So, Israel is “due”. I don’t tell my loved ones this. They fear me traveling to Israel because of potential terrorism; I don’t mention to them that earthquakes are a much bigger threat!
Sephardic synagogues feature an “in the round” design, even if the room is square or rectangular. As we saw in Chorazin, the Teva Seat (the pulpit) is raised up above the worshippers. Men and women are separated in the synagogue. In this one, the women’s section was a balcony, even above the Teva.
Above the Teva and the women’s balcony was a domed ceiling, which was painted most beautifully. It was odd to see Yeshua’s Hebrew name painted into the dome of the synagogue. But, His name is Salvation, and the concept of salvation is certainly not foreign to Jews. They, of course believe that the Messiah is still to come, while those who have given their lives to Yeshua HaMashiach believe that He HAS come, and ever lives to remain our Mashiach. When I talk with Jews about “Messiah Coming”, I am talking about His return, while they have in mind an initial visit. In both cases, however, we believe that the (next) time Messiah comes to Earth, He will usher in His earthly rule and reign.
After we left the Tsfat synagogue, we had an hour or so to wander around, to shop and to get some lunch, according to our preferences. My friend, Jaye, shared her lunch with me. I had brought some pistachios and a nut/fruit snack from Georgia, but I surely did enjoy Jaye’s supplementing my snack-ish lunch.
One additional thing that was fascinating. Orthodox men and boys would walk up to the men in our group and offer to show them how to wrap tefillin and wear the phylacteries, tools that Jewish men use in their daily prayers. Most of our men already know how to do these prayer rituals, but I thought it was a curious thing. One man in our group, although I know he knew how to do it because he was born into a Jewish family, acquiesced and allowed his arm to be wrapped and his head to bear briefly the phylactery.
I remember how amazing it was, on the plane trip over this week, stirring in the wee, wee hours of the morning to see Jewish men standing in the aisle, facing toward Jerusalem, their shoulders clad with elaborate tallit (prayer shawls), wrapping their tefillin or holding their prayer books and praying.
Both, very poignant experiences.
Another very poignant experience to end the day - -
Before leaving Tsfat, we stopped by the home of one of Israel’s most prominent rabbis:
R. Avraham Greenbaum
He is very elderly, and not in the best of health. He is wheelchair-bound. One of the rabbis in our group had studied with him years ago, and two other rabbis on our trip had never met him. We stood under the cover of a porch, all 39 of us, and the rabbi came wheeling out to speak to us. I thought about how the famous rabbis of the past, while well-known in their day, did not achieve their full place in the Jewish world until after their deaths. I wondered if we were perhaps today blessed to be blessed by this sweet, caring, loving man who could one day be on the same par with a “RamBam” (very famous rabbi of the Middle Ages)….
Rabbi Greenbaum practices a branch of Judaism that grew out of the founder of the Hasidic movement. He is a musician and focuses on the joy and praise and music-making as he practices his faith. You can find his website: Azamara.org , to learn more.
Psalm 146. “I will sing to the Lord with all my strength!”
After he spoke to us and blessed us, one of our rabbis sang Ashira, a song of praise and then that same rabbi prayed over R. Greenbaum, for his health and vigor and well-being.
On to the town of Meron, where we saw the tomb of the rabbi whom some believe wrote the Jewish Zohar, a Kabbalistic book of Judaism. This rabbi’s name was Shimon Bar Yohai. At his tomb, there were many devout Jewish men and women praying. The men and the women used separate entrances. It reminded me a lot of the type of praying you would see at the Kotel (the Western Wall). We only stayed a few minutes; many of us prayed for miracles in our lives, in whatever area of life we need a miracle the most.
Then, it was back to the kibbutz (the community in which our hotel is located - - - Kibbutz Lavi). We had pretty much a shorter, less physically demanding day today, and that was a welcome respite.
Out of respect for the practicing Jews I am with on this trip, I will abstain from blogging and posting on Shabbat. I’ll catch you up on Sunday with “Days 6 and 7”. Thanks for following along on this monumental trip!
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