"Fragment to Fragment": Building Jewish Communities in the Late Roman Aegean (2nd-6th centuries CE)

Conceived of by some as an experience of pain and loss, by others as a locus of creativity and endurance, diaspora looms large in Jewish historical memory. Through examination of case studies in the late Roman diaspora (ca. 2nd-6th centuries CE) in Greece, the Aegean, and western Turkey, my dissertation explores the role of material culture in the construction of Jewish identity outside of Palestine. I examine how material entanglements—especially in the construction and financing of synagogue buildings—bound communities together through ties of mutual support and reciprocity. I argue that these objects and spaces did more than simply reflect the religious and cultural life of diaspora communities. They were the medium through which these communities negotiated their identities and also participated in that negotiation in their own right. By collectively financing synagogue construction and renovation, honoring donors with inscriptions, assembling materials, and leaving physical imprints on synagogues from daily activity, diasporic communities became entangled with objects and spaces. That which is made demands to be maintained: marble and metal must be polished, repairs made, and the requests of inscriptions honored. The force of these demands, the regime of care that they impose, is imbricated with the creation, maintenance, and transformation of identity. The large and diverse corpus of textual, epigraphic, and archaeological evidence for Jewish communities in the late Roman Aegean makes the region an ideal laboratory for analyzing the relationship between material entanglements and community identity in diaspora.