When Did Going to Synagogue for Shabbat Begin?
- Reuben Berger
- 3 hours ago
- 2 min read
A. There was no synagogue in the Torah.
During the Exodus, the wilderness journey, and well into the period of the Judges and early monarchy, Jews did not gather weekly in a synagogue.
There were no synagogues yet.
The holy gathering place was the Mishkan (Tabernacle), and later the Temple — but it was not a weekly meeting hall. It was for:
sacrifices
pilgrimage festivals (3 times a year)
national moments
priestly functions
The Torah’s Shabbat command is home-based.
B. Synagogues emerged during the Babylonian Exile (6th century BCE)
When the First Temple was destroyed and the Jews were taken to Babylon, they could no longer:
offer sacrifices
visit the Temple
gather at festivals
practice national ritual as before
So they created local meeting houses for:
prayer
reading Torah
teaching
community gatherings
This is the birth of the synagogue.
It was not commanded by God.
It was an adaptive, man-made response to trauma and displacement.
C. After the Second Temple was destroyed (70 CE), synagogues became central
With no Temple at all, Judaism reorganized itself around:
Rabbis instead of priests
Synagogues instead of the Temple
Prayer instead of offerings
Halachah instead of the sacrificial system
But again — this was post-biblical, not from the Torah itself.
D. Weekly synagogue attendance for Shabbat became customary later
By the later rabbinic era, the idea of communal prayers three times a day and Shabbat services became standard practice.
This is centuries after the original command:
“Let no one go out of his dwelling on the seventh day.”(Exodus 16:29)
That is the original, divine instruction — not a synagogue visit.
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