After the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE, the first kind of Jewish worship in Palestine shifted from delivering sacrifices in Jerusalem to non-sacrificial different types of worship in neighborhood synagogue structures. whereas the literary and archaeological proof from the 1st few centuries CE makes this shift transparent, the facts is much less transparent concerning the volume of synagogue worship at present. In different phrases, the facts does not explicitly let us know even if such a lot Jews in late-antique Palestine really participated in synagogue worship. during this ebook, Chad Spigel means that it really is attainable to check the level of synagogue worship through deciding upon and interpreting the seating capacities of historical synagogue constructions. He starts off by way of filling a lacuna within the scholarly literature with the construction of a strategy that may be used to figure out the seating means of any old synagogue development. The seating potential method is then utilized to old synagogue constructions from the Roman and Byzantine classes, therefore making a catalog of seating capacities for late-antique Palestine. The seating capacities are then analyzed together with old inhabitants estimates and different demographic info on the way to larger comprehend neighborhood Jewish worship practices. through amassing and examining seating potential and demographic info for greater than fifty historical synagogue structures, the writer not just exhibits that the level of synagogue worship diverse from position to put, he additionally presents a massive source for students of late-antique Judaism.