Samuel Koltov

Entrance to the Metro in Tel Aviv on a random April's day.

Studying Byzantine Palestine it is curious to consider how much influence the rabbis of the time actually had among the local Jews (which also goes for Jews outside Palestine). After all, the formative rabbinical texts, the two versions of the Talmud (Bavli and Yerushalmi) and other rabbinical literature didn't exist at this point.

Of course, there's the Mishnah and Tosefta, but were they universally accepted and acknowledged by late antiquity Jewry? We take almost for granted that this would be the case today, since those are central for the dominant denomination of Judaism today.

However, if we look at the synagogues of the time, at least those who survived, we often see that they didn't follow the restrictions and directions of the rabbis. Whether they were built facing the wrong direction, used prohibited iconography, allowed or didn't allow for certain rituals, either prohibited or required by the rabbis.

It's a really interesting period, not only because of the beforementioned, but also to see how the relationship between Jews and Christians evolved after Christianity came to power, and how that affected both contemporary Jewry and Judaism, as well as the development of Rabbinic Judaism.