Teach Jewish History K–5 Lesson
Teacher’s Guide

Where Did the Synagogue Come From?

The Temple and the First Synagogues · For Grades 3–5
A boy reads from an open Torah scroll with a pointer, flanked by men in prayer shawls
A boy reads from the Torah at his bar mitzvah, the same act at the heart of a synagogue in any century. Courtesy of Teach Jewish History.
Grade band
Grades 3–5
Lesson length
Around 40 minutes
Format
Story with a board list, then a picture-and-chart comparison and a human timeline
Materials
Handout A (one copy, cut into its nine cards before class, plus one per student for the follow-up) · Handout B (one per student, plus one copy cut into its five word cards) · Words to Know card (one per student) · board or chart paper · scissors, glue sticks, crayons
Prerequisites
None
Standards
NY 3.4 · NCSS Theme 2 (Time, Continuity, and Change) · C3 D2.His.1.3-5, D2.His.2.3-5, D2.His.3.3-5 · Common Core RI.3–5.1, SL.3–5.1, L.3–5.4
Public school
Taught as culture and history, the way a class studies any community. Describe, don’t instruct. No one is asked to take part in a practice.

What this lesson teaches

Students learn that the synagogue is an institution with a historical origin. It came into being at a particular moment in history because of a particular need, and that is why it looks and functions the way it does. By the end of the lesson, students will be able to answer the question “Where did the synagogue come from?” in their own words.

Why this lesson, for the teacher. The facts are the Temple, the exile, and the synagogue. Together they tell one story. Twice the central building of a people was destroyed, and twice the people found a way to keep going, by carrying their gathering with them and building a home around it wherever they landed. That is the idea a child should leave with, in a child’s words: when the building was gone, the people carried home with them. Let them reach it themselves from the timeline. The close hands them the sentence. It is also why this lesson sits in the early grades. A student who learns at nine that Jewish families rebuilt a home out of a meeting, twice, meets the harder history of the upper grades knowing a people who know how to continue, not only a people that suffered.

Core understandings

  1. The Temple in Jerusalem was the central religious building of the ancient Jewish people, but it no longer stands today.
  2. The synagogue developed historically as a “house of meeting” that could exist anywhere Jewish families settled.
  3. Most synagogues contain the same core elements (Ark, Torah scroll, Bimah, Ner Tamid, Mezuzah), wherever in the world they stand.
  4. Because a synagogue could meet anywhere, it helped Jewish communities keep their traditions across many regions for more than two thousand years.

Vocabulary to introduce

Temple · Jerusalem · Exile · BCE and CE · Synagogue · Torah · Ark · Bimah · Ner Tamid · Mezuzah

The Words to Know card defines all ten. Use it before the lesson, or as a reference during it.

Before class: cut one copy of Handout A into its nine event cards (the letters are scrambled on purpose, and the answer key is in Step 9), and cut one copy of Handout B into its five word cards. Clear a board or a sheet of chart paper for the list you will write in Step 1. That list stays up for the whole lesson. The close depends on it.

Suggested lesson flow

Ten steps, about 40 minutes. The first six tell the story. The last four put the children on their feet.

The Hook

The building is gone

Time: 3 minutes
Say: “Close your eyes. Tomorrow morning you walk to school and the building is gone. Not closed. Gone. Open your eyes. Where does our class meet tomorrow?” Take three or four answers: the library, the park, someone’s living room.
Then ask: “What do we need to bring with us so we are still a class?” Write the list on the board as the children call it out. Expect: a teacher, books, each other, somewhere to sit, a way to tell the time. Leave the list up. It stays on the board for the whole lesson.
Then say: “Hold that list. About two and a half thousand years ago, this exact problem happened to a whole people.”
Grade band: Grade 3, you write the list. Grades 4 and 5, a student scribe writes it while you run the answers.
The First Temple

Jewish tradition tells of King Solomon’s Temple (about 950 BCE)

Time: 4 minutes
Key vocabulary to introduce here: Temple · Jerusalem · Temple Mount
Say: “Jewish tradition tells that about three thousand years ago, a king named Solomon built a very large stone building in Jerusalem. We call it the First Temple. The Temple was not a synagogue. It worked differently: only priests served inside it, and three times a year, at three big festivals, families traveled from all over the land to bring offerings to it. It stood on a hill in Jerusalem called the Temple Mount, which is still there today.”
Destruction and Exile

The Temple is destroyed (586 BCE)

Time: 4 minutes
Key vocabulary: Exile · Babylon
Say: “About 370 years later, a powerful empire called Babylon came and attacked Jerusalem. The Babylonians knocked down the walls, burned the city, and destroyed the Temple. Many Jewish families were taken away from their homes and brought to live in Babylon. This is what we call the Exile. Imagine: you are far away from your home, you cannot go back, and the place you used to gather for prayer is gone. What would you do?”
Listen for: Students often suggest “find a new place to meet” or “meet at home.” That is exactly the answer the next step gives.
A New Idea

The first synagogues, a portable house of meeting

Time: 4 minutes
Key vocabulary: Synagogue · Beit knesset
Say: “No one knows the exact year, and no one wrote down who thought of it first. But many historians think the idea began with the Jewish families in Babylon. They started gathering in small groups, in houses, in any space they could find, to pray, to read their sacred writings, and to teach their children. Other historians think it began later. In Hebrew a synagogue is called beit knesset, which means ‘house of meeting.’ In Greek, which became the everyday language of many Jewish communities, the same idea got the name synagogue, which also means ‘a gathering.’”
Then: Walk to the board and point at the list from Step 1. Say: “Look at the board. You just invented the synagogue.”
Emphasize: The synagogue starts as an idea: people can gather anywhere. The building grows around the idea later.
The Second Temple

The Temple is rebuilt (516 BCE), and the idea keeps spreading

Time: 2 minutes
Say: “About fifty years later, a new king, Cyrus of Persia, let Jewish families go home to Jerusalem. They rebuilt the Temple and finished it in 516 BCE, seventy years after the first one fell. This is called the Second Temple. But the idea of meeting close to home did not disappear. The oldest proof of a synagogue that anyone has found so far is a stone inscription from Egypt, from the 200s BCE. By the time of the Romans, Jewish towns in the land of Israel and far beyond it had synagogues, while the Temple still stood in Jerusalem.”
A Turning Point

70 CE, the Temple is destroyed for the last time

Time: 3 minutes
Say: “Almost 600 years later, the Roman Empire, the same Romans who built the Colosseum, attacked Jerusalem and destroyed the Second Temple in the year 70 CE. The Temple has not been rebuilt since. This was a turning point. With no Temple, the synagogue became the most important Jewish building. It has been ever since, for almost two thousand years.”
Connecting question: “So if there is no Temple anymore, where do Jewish people pray today?” (Answer: in synagogues.)
Optional aside: If students have heard of the Western Wall: “The Western Wall is part of a wall built around the Temple Mount about 2,000 years ago, in the time of the Second Temple. The Temple is gone, but that wall still stands.”
Around the World

Five synagogues, five places, five centuries

Time: 3 minutes
Say: “Synagogues stand all over the world.” Name a few: the ruins of Dura-Europos in Syria (about 244 CE, with wall paintings now in a museum), the Altneuschul in Prague (about 1270, still in use today), El Tránsito in Toledo (1357, now a museum). In the United States there are the Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island (the oldest synagogue building still standing in the country) and the Eldridge Street Synagogue in New York (1887, now a museum that welcomes visitors).
Pictures: If you can project, show one photo each of Prague, Newport, and New York. Each synagogue’s own website has them, and the Eldridge Street video listed below shows the building inside and out. If you cannot, do not worry: those three come back as cards in Step 9, so the names land twice.
Local connection: Mention if there is a historic synagogue in your area, your state, or a nearby city. A local field trip is an excellent follow-up to this lesson.
Inside the Building

Five words, five places, and a comparison

Time: 8 minutes
Key vocabulary: Ark · Torah · Bimah · Ner Tamid · Mezuzah
Do: Hold up the picture on Handout B. Read the five word cards you cut from it, one at a time, with the short definition from the Words to Know card. For each word ask the class: “Which number in the picture is this, and how do you know?” Take the reasons. The Ark is the cabinet, because a scroll needs to be kept safe. The Bimah is the raised platform, because a reader needs to be seen. The Ner Tamid hangs above the Ark. The Mezuzah is the small case on the doorpost, the first object you pass on the way in.
Then compare: “Think of another big room where many people gather: a library, a courtroom, a theater, or a church or mosque you have seen from the street or on a screen. Where do the people sit? What is at the front? What is kept safe?” Draw a three-row chart on the board and fill it for the synagogue and for one building the children name. Children see it for themselves: a building for gathering is built around the gathering.
Grade band: Grade 3, you run the chart and the children supply the answers. Grades 4 and 5, pairs fill the chart on scrap paper first, then the class compares.
Public school note: This is reading a picture and comparing buildings, the same work a class does with a mosque, a cathedral, or a temple in a world-cultures unit. Nobody handles, touches, or stands in for any object.
Handout connection: Hand out Handout B as the step ends. There is no time to cut, paste, or color in this lesson, so pasting and coloring go home.
The Human Timeline

Nine cards, nine children, one line

Time: 6 minutes
Do: Give the nine event cards from Handout A to nine children. Say: “Line up across the front of the room. Oldest on the left, newest on the right. The letters will not help you. They are mixed up on purpose. Read the date.” Remind the class of the rule printed on Handout A: the bigger the BCE number, the longer ago it was.
Grade band: Grade 3, you read each date aloud and the class tells the card-holders where to move. Grades 4 and 5, the nine work it out in silence, then the class checks the line together.
Answer key (oldest to newest): D, B, F, H, E, A, I, G, C. That is: D (about 950 BCE, First Temple) · B (586 BCE, Babylonians destroy it) · F (sometime after 586 BCE, the first synagogues) · H (516 BCE, Second Temple) · E (70 CE, Romans destroy it) · A (1270, Prague) · I (1763, Newport) · G (1887, New York) · C (today).
Listen for: Someone will notice that card F has no exact year. Ask why. The answer is the one from Step 4: no one knows, and the card says so. That is what honest history looks like.
The Close

The building was gone. The list wasn’t.

Time: 3 minutes
Say: With the nine children still standing in line: “Look at the line. The Temple stood in one place. It fell twice. Now look at the rest of the line: Prague, Newport, New York, here. Synagogue buildings have been lost too. The idea never fell, because it was never in one place. A synagogue is what happens when Jewish adults, traditionally ten, agree to meet together. The building grows around the meeting, not the other way around.”
Then: Point to the list from Step 1, still on the board. “You made this list in two minutes. Jewish families made the same list after their Temple was destroyed, more than two and a half thousand years ago. The building was gone. The list wasn’t. You already know a saying for this: home is where the heart is. The house of meeting is wherever the meeting is. That is how a people keeps going after the worst has happened: they carry home with them.”
Board: When the building was gone, the people carried home with them.
If there is a minute left: “Can you think of any other tradition that travels with people, that they can take anywhere?” (Cooking, music, language, holidays: any of these is a good answer.)

Notes on teaching this well

Follow-up and pairing

This week

Next week or next class

If you have more time

Videos

Standards alignment

NY 3.4, NCSS Theme 2, and the Common Core codes are in the facts box at the top. The C3 codes, in detail:

C3 FrameworkHow this lesson meets it
D2.His.1.3-5 · put related events in time order The human timeline (Step 9) and Handout A: nine events in order, from the First Temple to today. Students see what changed and what stayed the same.
D2.His.2.3-5 · compare life in a past time with life today Families in Babylon, with no Temple, met wherever they could (Step 4). Today synagogues stand in towns all over the world (Step 7 and card C).
D2.His.3.3-5 · ask questions about groups who shaped change and continuity Students ask who first met without a Temple, and why, and why no one can name the year (the Step 4 hedge and the undated card F).

Sources and further reading

Where an event rests mainly on written tradition rather than independent evidence, the note says so.

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