Beit Alpha

The ancient synagogue of Beit Alpha is located in the Beit She'an Valley, in the north-east of the country. The nearby ruins of Khirbet Beit Ilfa preserve the ancient name.

The mosaic floor of the synagogue was discovered in 1929, when members of Kibbutz Beit Alpha dug irrigation channels for their fields. Excavations were carried out the same year, exposing mosaics preserved intact for almost 1,500 years. Later excavations, in the early 1960s, exposed remains of some houses, indicating that the synagogue had stood in a Jewish village of the Byzantine period (5th-6th centuries).

The synagogue is oriented southwards, toward Jerusalem. It measures 20 x 14 m. and consists of a courtyard (atrium), a vestibule (narthex) and a prayer hall. The walls are of undressed stone, with plastered inner and outer faces.

The courtyard is reached from the street, via an opening in its western wall. It measures 10 x 7 m. and is paved with mosaics in geometric designs.

The 2.5 m.-wide vestibule has two doors in its northern wall facing the courtyard and three doorways in its southern wall providing access to the prayer hall. Its mosaic floor is also in geometric patterns.

The prayer hall measures 10 x 8 m. and is divided by two rows of stone-built pillars into a central nave and two side aisles. The pillars probably supported the arches and the gabled roof of the synagogue. Scholars assume that there was a second storey above the two aisles and the vestibule, serving as a women's gallery. Benches were built along the long walls and along the southern wall of the prayer hall. A door in the western wall led into a side room.

An apse, a rounded raised recess 2.4 m. deep, was built into the southern wall of the synagogue and served as a bema on which the Torah Arkstood, with three steps leading up to it. At a later time, another bema in the shape of a bench was added between the two southern pillars on the eastern side of the prayer hall. A one meter-deep depression lined with stones below the floor of the bema probably served as the synagogue's treasury. When opened during the excavations it contained thirty-six Byzantine bronze coins.