Development Site - Changes here will not affect the live (production) site.

A Medieval Jewish Cemetery Discovered in Rome

March 30 2017

In Italy, archaeologists recently unearthed 38 tombs that seem to have been part of a larger Jewish necropolis. Sarah Bond writes:

The so-called Campus Iudeorum [“field of the Jews”] has long been known from literary sources; however, the recent excavations . . . in Rome’s hip Trastevere district provide material evidence for its existence. The graves date to the city’s late-medieval period, circa 1300-1600.

Most of the bodies were male, inhumed in wooden coffins nailed shut, although two women were also found. These women were wearing golden rings. An inscription in Hebrew was also recovered. . . .

The history of Rome’s Jewish population stretches back to classical antiquity. . . . Rather than above-ground cemeteries, the Jews of Rome often [used] a number of underground catacombs that lie further outside the city. . . . In 1602, the Italian catacomb explorer Antonio Bosio first discovered what he called a “Jewish catacomb” along the via Portuense, though [some] historians . . . have recently called into question the extent to which these burial areas were exclusively reserved for the Jewish population. Jewish tombs (often denoted with Jewish symbols such as a menorah, an ark, or a ram’s horn) appear on a number of burial spaces throughout Rome’s extensive catacomb system. Jews were often buried in close proximity to Christian and pagan burial spots as well.

Read more at Forbes

More about: Archaeology, History & Ideas, Italian Jewry, Jewish cemeteries, Jewish history

The Summary: 10/7/20

Two extraordinary events demonstrate something important about Israel’s most fervent adversaries. One was a speech given at something called The People’s Forum (funded generously by Goldman Sachs), which stated, “When the state of Israel is finally destroyed and erased from history, that will be the single most important blow we can give to destroying capitalism and imperialism.”

The suggestion that this tiny state is the linchpin of a global, centuries-old phenomenon like capitalism goes well beyond anything resembling rational criticism. Even if Israel were guilty of genocide, apartheid, and oppression—which of course it is not—it would not follow that its destruction would help end capitalism or imperialism.

The other was an anti-Israel protest that took place in front of New York City’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, deemed “complicit” in Israel’s evils. At organizers’ urging, participants shouted their slogans at kids in the cancer ward, who were watching from the windows. Given Hamas’s indifference toward the lives of Gazan children, such callousness toward non-Palestinian children from Hamas’s Western allies shouldn’t be surprising. The protest—like the abovementioned speech—deliberately conveyed the message that Israel is the ultimate evil and its destruction the ultimate good, cancer patients be damned.

The fact that Israel’s adversaries are almost comically perverse does not mean that they can be dismissed. If its allies fail to understand the obsessive and irrational hatred that it faces, they cannot effectively help it defend itself.

Read more at Mosaic