Off the beaten path in Ostia

By Barbara Sofer
Aug. 7, 2003

Visitors to the archeological remains of the ancient port town of Ostia, near Rome, purchase a map of the site. On the map key, the last two numbers, 67 and 68, correspond to a synagogue and a large private home.

A shift in the Tiber left Ostia of little interest after the fourth century. Consequently, it is well-preserved. As we walk along the millennia-old stone-paved paths, it is easy to visualize the port with its sophisticated bath complexes, busy marketplaces, pagan temples, taverns, bakeries, schools and lavish homes.

The talmudic report of Judah's praise for Roman ingenuity, "how becoming are the deeds of these people: they built markets, they built bridges, they build bathhouses," comes to mind. As does Shimon Bar Yochai's response, the words that caused him so much trouble: "Whatever they did they did for themselves ."
A synagogue, the oldest in Western Europe, has drawn us here. The stone passageways suddenly yield to a field of thistles - the sort of detour that sends my husband and me back to the map wondering if we have taken a wrong turn. Then the thought strikes us: Ancient synagogue builders wouldn't have wanted to be close to the idol-worship of downtown Ostia.

Likewise, the Romans might have wanted distance from the Jews with their unique concept of God. Of course the synagogue is off the beaten path.

And once we've made that leap into the mind-set of our brethren of 2,000 years past, everything changes. Our steps pick up, and there - sure enough - near the highway to the Rome airport stands a synagogue. Here is the mosaic with the symbols of Solomon; there is the baking stone for matzot, the mikve, the women's section. We find the curved Tabernacle for the ark with symbols of a seven-branched menora, a shofar, a lulav and etrog carved into the ark's stone wall. The Ostian Jews liked to renovate the original first-century building.

THEN, AS suddenly as our joy in finding the building still standing, the lachrymose history of our people descends on us. Standing in the late afternoon sunshine, we recall the events that sent Jews in huge numbers into the Roman empire.

"From amongst the youths above 17 years of age, the tallest and handsomest were selected for the Roman triumphs, whilst others were sent to labor in the mines for the rest of their lives, or were relegated to the Roman provinces to take their part in the fights of the arena. Youths under the age of 16 and most of the female captives were sold into slavery at an incredibly low price, for the market was glutted. How many scenes of horror must have been witnessed and enacted by those unfortunate ones." So writes Heinrich Graetz in his History of the Jews.

"They had, it is true, one ray of comfort left: possibly they might be carried to some Roman town where a Judean community existed; their own people would assuredly give any sum to purchase their freedom, and would then treat them with brotherly sympathy."

We imagine the relief of the meeting of Jew and fellow Jew, here in the port city, the slave unloaded as chattel after the destruction of the Temple (and later, after Bar Kochba's failed revolt) meeting a free man in Rome. The ancient synagogues of Rome - the historians say there once were a dozen - were built by freed men and women. The community swelled as Jews stepped forward to rescue their own.

Which brings us to Number 68 on the Ostia map, the Grand Horea, a huge house owned by Epagatus and Epafroditus, two wealthy "freedmen," at least one from Asia. The house is divided into many small rooms. The guidebook gives little to go on, but in our fantasy we dub them the "Friedmans of Ostia" successful in trade, perhaps owners of the nearby bakery. We imagine all those rooms filling with their brethren redeemed from bondage.

Unlike the synagogue, the house is in town. Why else would it be numbered out of sequence, immediately after the synagogue, if it is not the home of ba'alei batim, burghers who provided funds for the synagogue pillars? Why would the decorations on the house be only of animals, and no human images?

Back home I would phone Dr. Tal Ilan, modern Jerusalem being a place where people know the darndest things, and learn that Epagatus and Epafroditus were indeed Greek names used by Jews in those times, and that ours was not a bad theory at all.

Like the esteemed historian Graetz, I could be accused of sentimentalism, of reading history with an attitude. But I am thinking this Shabbat Nachamu - the Shabbat of our comforting - how the Jews who experienced the horror of the destruction, enslavement, and banishment must have felt on finding lodgings, freedom, and a minyan in foreign fields.

In our musing on the nine days of Av, we keep coming up with the same reason for our calamitous history, particularly the destructions of the two Temples: a dearth of human compassion.

In Ostia, the Jews didn't forget Zion, neither figuratively nor literally. The synagogue faces southeast, directly toward Jerusalem.

The sun lowers. Time for the minha prayer that corresponds to the afternoon sacrifice in the now-gone Temple. We are alone in the ancient synagogue. No fantasized tour bus of Israelis materializes to make up a minyan.

The words of the Aleinu prayer resonate in this ancient city: "....to remove detestable idolatry from the earth, and false gods will be utterly cut off, to perfect the universe through the Almighty's sovereignty ."

In 1893, Graetz wrote: "Under the ruins of Jerusalem and her Temple lay buried the last remnant of Judean independence . Once more did Zion sit weeping amongst the ruins, weeping over her sons fallen in battle, over her daughters sold into slavery or abandoned to the savage soldiery of Rome; but she was more desolate now than in the days of her first captivity, for hushed was the voice of the prophet, who once foretold the end of her widowhood and her mourning."

We glance back at Ostia. The mighty empire has been consigned to history.

The memory of our suffering isn't erased, but we are here, living in the present, reciting the words of our ancestors. We have returned to independence. We are here, as we say in Aleinu, to strive for tikkun olam, the perfection of the universe through the Almighty's sovereignty.

If that is not our goal, we have missed the message. We can take comfort in our survival if we are fully engaged in our eternal mission in this universe.