The officers and directors of the International Catacomb Society are pleased to announce the Shohet Scholars of 2019-2020:

Lily Vuong, Central Washington University: “The Apocryphal Mary in Text, Pictorial Art, and Iconography"

This project examines the ways in which Marian Apocryphal material culture (mosaics, sculptures, ivory carvings, book covers, illuminated manuscripts, physical space of churches, etc.) were used to reinforce early Christian devotion, faith, and piety. At the same time, it also aims to explore the reciprocal relationship between text and art, and how early Christian identities shaped by Marian apocryphal literature intersected with the identities of those who valued Marian material culture as a necessary component to their religious lives.

Kevin McGinnis, Stonehill College: “Does a Priestly People Have Priests?
Early Christian Leadership in its Polytheistic Context"

The research funded by this grant will contribute greatly to an analysis of how Christians came to represent their ecclesiastical leaders as priests from the third to sixth centuries C.E. The standard narrative of how the priesthood developed starts with the period of the Jesus movement and proceeds rather uncritically from there. This narrative has largely determined how early Christian art has been interpreted. This project will counter that narrative, in part through a comparison of Christian and Roman depictions of religious leaders. The ultimate goal is to show how, when, and why Christians appropriated the title ‘priest’.

Joan Breton Connolly, New York University“: Yeronisos – Meletis Necropolis Project, Peyia-Paphos District, Cyprus

This project calls for systematic excavation, documentation, preservation, and publication of a newly discovered rock-cut tomb at the Meletis Necropolis, southwestern Cyprus. Preliminary investigation suggests a family tomb established in the second century BCE under Ptolemaic Egyptian influence, continuing in use through Late Roman times. The tomb preserves a prime example of monumental funerary culture in Hellenistic Cyprus, Ptolemaic influence in the Paphian countryside, and the evolution of Alexandrian funerary display strategies into Roman times. Investigation of this unique sepulcher provides a vital first step in writing a comprehensive social and cultural history of Hellenistic/Roman rock-cut tombs in Cyprus and across the Mediterranean.

More than Just Mosaics: The Ancient Synagogue at Huqoq in Israel's Galilee

Saturday, 13 April 2019, 4:30 p.m. (reception to follow)

Fordham University - Lincoln Center Campus
School of Law Building
Room 7-119 (Hill Conference Room)
150 West 62nd Street, New York, NY 10023 (map)

Since 2011, Professor Jodi Magness has been directing excavations in the ancient village of Huqoq in Israel's Galilee. The excavations have brought to light the remains of a monumental Late Roman (fifth century) synagogue building paved with stunning and unique mosaics, including biblical scenes and the first non-biblical story ever discovered decorating an ancient synagogue. In this slide-illustrated lecture, Professor Magness describes these exciting finds, including the discoveries made in last summer's season.

The Huqoq Project was awarded a Shohet Scholars grant from the International Catacomb Society in 2016, and Prof. Magness now serves on the Society's advisory board. For more information about Prof. Magness' work in progress at Huqoq, please visit:

http://jodimagness.org/cv.php

The ICS NYC Lecture is co-sponsored by the Department of Theology and the Program in Jewish Studies at Fordham University.

The International Catacomb Society strives to increase knowledge about the interconnections between Judaism, Christianity, and the surrounding ancient world by issuing grants, sponsoring lectures, and disseminating information and publications.

The attached brochure (in pdf) gives the essential information (a bird’s-eye view) of the work that the society does and the goals we would like to set for the future. We have a stellar team of professional board members and advisory board members that is truly international with colleagues from the US, Germany, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, and the UK: https://www.catacombsociety.org/who-we-are/.

We are looking for additional resources to grow our program of annual research grants for scholars. The last 18 years of research projects are listed in the brochure and on our website. A gift in any amount will help with the worthy projects that we are sure to receive in 2019. Should you wish to fund one or more of these projects, the ICS is happy to arrange for one of the grants to be entitled in your name or in honor of another individual.

With many thanks and all best wishes for 2019.

International Catacomb Society Directors (2019)

John Ambrose, SkillSoft, Nashua, NH
Max Bernheimer, Christie’s, New York, NY
Jennifer Berry, Boston Public Schools, Boston, MA
Matthew Berry, MD, Los Angeles, CA
John Bodel, Brown University, Providence, RI
Joan Branham, Providence College, Providence, RI
Jessica Dello Russo, International Catacomb Society, Boston, MA
Nicola Denzy Lewis, Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, CA
Annewies van den Hoek , Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
Robin M. Jensen, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN
Philip Olander, Medford, MA
Arthur Urbano, Providence College, Providence, RI
Alfred Wolsky, Esq., Arlington, MA
Pamela Worstell, Esq., Wayland, MA

The next Estelle Shohet Brettman Memorial Lecture will be held on Sunday, December 2nd, 2018 in the Remis Auditorium in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. This year's lecturer will be Bert Smith, Lincoln Professor of Classical Archaeology and Art at Oxford University.

Aphrodisias is one of the best-preserved Greek-Roman sites in modern Turkey. The city was famous for its cult of Aphrodite and its marble sculptors. Recent work has uncovered an urban park with a 170-meter-long pool at its center. Its excavation has revealed the pool’s long life, from the 1st to the 6th century AD, as well as astonishing remains of high-quality statue monuments. Dr. Smith has directed the excavation and research of the site since 1991.

Date: Sunday, December 2nd, 2018 from Time: 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm

Location: Harry and Mildred Remis Auditorium (Auditorium 161), Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

This is a free lecture but tickets are limited. ICS members are requested to please RSVP directly to Stacey Leonard by Friday, November 30th via email sleonard@mfa.org or phone 617-369-3259.  The general public may reserve online at: https://www.mfa.org/programs/lectures-and-courses/aphrodisias-a-greek-city-in-roman-asia

The Annual Directors' Meeting of the International Catacomb Society was held on Saturday, 15 September 2018, in a meeting hall generously provided by colleagues at Hellenic College/Holy Cross Seminary in Brookline, MA. 

In addition to strategic planning for 2019 and various committee reports (scholarships, finance, website, and archives), elections were held for the society's executive officers and directors for 2018-2021. As a result, the current list of ICS directors reveals two major changes: a new president of ICS, Prof. Annewies van den Hoek, and new director, Jessica Dello Russo, who fills the vacancy left by ICS founding director Florence Z. Wolsky (1923-2018).

Annewies van den Hoek (President) taught Greek and Latin literature at Harvard Divinity School from 1989 until her retirement in 2016 and is now a Research Associate at the Harvard Semitic Museum. She is the author of several monographs, including Clement of Alexandria and Philo (1988), and a critical edition of Clement's Stromateis IV (2001), with another textual commentary in progress on Philo's De Cherubim. In addition to her textual studies, she researches and publishes extensively on ancient art and archaeology. With her husband John Herrmann she organized an exhibition of African Red slip pottery that was shown at Harvard Divinity School and traveled to Austin and New Haven with a catalog entitled: Light From the Age of Augustine. Late Antique Ceramics From North Africa, 2nd edition, University of Texas at Austin and Harvard University, 2003. She co-authored with John Herrmann a book entitled: Pottery, Pavements, and Paradise (2013). Dr. van den Hoek also cooperates in research projects on ancient marbles from North Africa and other areas of the Mediterranean, with grants from the Kress Foundation and American Institute for Maghrib Studies (AIMS). A close colleague of ICS founding director and chairman, Cornelius C. Vermeule, Dr. van den Hoek became involved in the ICS in the 1990's, and has long been one of the most active and influential members of its board.

Jessica Dello Russo (Director) first heard about ICS as a Harvard undergraduate and, not long after college graduation, rang the doorbell of its Beacon Street headquarters to see what was inside. Welcomed by then-society director Amy K. Hirschfeld and archivist Victoria Crammer, she offered on the spot to check up on the Jewish catacomb situation, as she was about to return to Rome, where she had been interning for the Associated Press. Her inquiries sparked a curiosity to learn more about Rome's ancient Jewish sites, and thanks to partial funding from ICS for tuition and travel, Dello Russo completed doctoral work at the Vatican's Pontifical Institute of Christian Archaeology with research on tomb typologies employed by Jews in Ancient Rome, the preliminary results of which she reported to ICS in the series "Roma Subterranea Judaica". She has been Executive Director of ICS since 2015, and continues to study and publish on the tombs of Jews and others in Italy during Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages. She says, "It is a tremendous honor to take Florence's place on the ICS board - I confess that, as a child, I was rather afraid of her - especially when she thought my grubby little hands were closing in on some priceless MFA antique - to someone very young, she could seem most severe, but, later, getting to know her better at the ICS, and working to prepare in its final form the book she helped to write on the catacombs of Rome, it was impossible not to admire Florence's vocation to Classical scholarship and deep loyalty to the society she helped found."

The ICS will not remain Wolsky-less: Florence's son, and ICS president emeritus, Alfred Wolsky, will remain on the board. Collectively, mother and son have given over half a century of dedicated service to ICS.

The International Catacomb Society is a registered 501(c)(3) corporation, founded in 1980 with a registered office in Boston, Massachusetts. The Board of Directors manages the properties and affairs of this non-profit corporation, as stated in the ICS By-Laws (link).

Photo: President of the ICS, Dr. Annewies van den Hoek, and President Emeritus, Alfred Wolsky, Esq.

For what has become an annual ICS tradition to mark the Jewish New Year and High Holiday season, and in preparation for a big meeting of its board this coming week, the society reflects upon not only the past year of activity, but also a more remote period of its history, going back forty years to the time of its foundation. To understand the big question at the time it was first raised: Why an International Catacomb Society?, click here (link). 

This is also a good time to reach out to ICS members to ask how they themselves would answer that question. What led you to join the ICS, and what have you found useful or not about the services it has been able to provide? What do you think should be improved, included, and introduced to allow the ICS to live more fully its founding mission? What would you do if you could, really, with the resources at ICS's disposal? Good responses (like, within the realm of possibility, not wacky or offensive) will be treated with confidentiality and communicated (anonymously, if so desired) to the powers-that-be, the ICS directors, at the annual board meeting this coming week, so get in touch (at info(at)catacombsociety.org) by next Friday, September 14, 2018. 

Let's make this new in the New Year! A good, sweet year to all!

On 13 January 1980, right at the time the International Catacomb Society was being formed "to raise funds to preserve the Jewish catacombs of Italy", society co-founder Estelle Shohet Brettman discussed her new exhibition on funerary art in the catacombs, "Judaism and Christianity in the Catacombs of Rome", with journalists Sonya Hamlin and Frank Avruch of the Sunday Open House television program. This was one of three televised appearances by Brettman in 1979-1980 "because of interest generated by the exhibit" (she also was interviewed by Carol Yelverton for a Channel 68 cultural segment on 26 December 1979 and by Carol Collins for the TV series "Show of Faith" on 8 February 1980). The International Catacomb Society has digitized the Sunday Open House segment, which can be viewed at this link, along with footage for the "Show of Faith" program that records the original installation of Brettman's catacombs exhibit at the Boston Public Library between December 1979 and February 1980 (link). 

Brettman's exhibit, renamed "Vaults of Memory: Jewish and Christian Imagery in the Catacombs of Rome," would travel to many different venues in the USA and abroad though the late-1990's (link). In 2003, the show was digitized as a virtual exhibit, complete with a catalogue in pdf originally published by Brettman in 1985 (these images, and thousands of others from Brettman's slide library, also can be viewed in DAPICS). Nearly twenty years after its launch, "Vaults" continued to draw crowds and educate an English-speaking public about the cemeteries used by Jews, Christians, and polytheists in late antique Rome and other parts of the Mediterranean. The main thrust of Brettman's research was, as she put it, on "how symbolism used over 3000 years ago was tied in with that used in Christian, Greco-Roman, and Jewish burials in the Roman empire". Her outlook was ecumenical and dedicated to raising public awareness about the underground burial sites so that there would be better efforts to study and preserve them as "important links" to different societies' shared concerns and beliefs. As a longtime museum educator, Brettman also lectured extensively about ancient art, and at the time of her death in 1991 was completing a monograph on the catacombs, now edited and published in part in open source format on the ICS website (link).

Thanks to this extraordinary legacy, the International Catacomb Society remains on the forefront in developing learning resources and education networks for making ancient cultures more accessible and relevant to our own lives. To expand upon this mission and increase funding for its public programming and scholarships, the society depends on the vital support of individuals like Estelle Brettman, who became a true "star", not only in name ("Estelle"), as a shining example of generosity so many years after her death. 

As the society has honored and perpetuated Estelle's memory since 1991, it welcomes the involvement of others who desire to establish and endow a legacy project or projects in keeping with its focus on public scholarship. Through the Society's Patrons and Partners program, eligible ICS sponsors can obtain naming rights to a scholarship, lecture series, or other project, including but not limited to those ICS currently supports. ICS offers a specialized network of professionals and students on five continents, powerful outreach, and expert staff in program development. Please do not hesitate to reach out to ICS at info@catacombsociety.org to discuss your ideas about future collaboration, and new ways to look at the old, as Brettman did in a wonderfully creative and independent way that started as a search for answers, led to her life's work, and, ultimately, gave birth to a legacy. This is the ICS.

(Image: Estelle Shohet Bretmann meeting with close friend, Cardinal Giuseppe Caprio, to discuss Vatican logistical support for showing of "Vaults of Memory" in Rome)

The ICS learned only recently that Fabio Filippello, an ICS collaborator in the 1980's, passed away in his native Rome on 12 February 2017. Mr. Filippello was the creator of a number of photographs of catacomb paintings and Early Christian and Jewish artifacts in museums and other collections included in the ICS exhibit "Vaults of Memory - Jewish and Christian Imagery in the Catacombs of Rome".

In memory of its late president and a life-long car enthusiast, the MG Car Club Italy is organizing "I Sette Colli - La Sabina, Memorial Fabio Filippello", a 3-day tour from 5-7 October 2018. Registration forms are here and further information can be obtained from MG Car Club d’Italia Via Trasversale Marecchia, 5575 – 47822 Santarcangelo (RN) - Cell. 3283297213 Tel. 0541/1792259 E-mail segreteria@mgcarclubitalia.org.

ICS's last contact with Mr. Filippello was in Rome in 2016, when he was kind enough to share with staff originals of photographs now in DAPICS, the Digitized Archives Program of the ICS. We express sincere condolences and appreciation for his great assistance to the ICS in its formative years. 

[Photo: Fabio Filippello, Abigail Gillespie, Alberto Marcocci, and Estelle Brettman in the atrium of the Jewish Catacombs of Vigna Randanini, ca. 1980]

The International Catacomb Society is pleased to announce open source access to research on the Jewish catacombs of Rome conducted on site over many years by society founder, Estelle S. Brettman. Brettman, who died in 1991, left unfinished her lengthy monograph, "Vaults of Memory: The Roman Jewish Catacombs and Their Context in the Ancient Mediterranean World," but ICS directors Florence Z. Wolsky and Amy K. Hirschfeld continued the project after her death, and parts of the collective work have now been edited, annotated, and digitized by the ICS's current executive director, Jessica Dello Russo, who explains in a preface what seem to have been Brettman's key concerns in the study of Roman catacombs, and why her work, carried out over fifteen years with what a critic called "dramatic intensity", still matters to current scholarship on these sites. As an early supporter of Brettman put it: "the story of Mrs. Brettman and how her project came into being is in itself fascinating, aside from the substantive aspects of the material that came out of the mythic descent into the depths of the earth beneath Rome."

"Vaults of Memory" as a monograph was long a priority of the ICS, and calls for its completion have resumed in recent years, after a long hiatus. One current ICS board member even believes Estelle Brettman appeared to her in a dream, asking that her book finally be complete. The possibility of completion at first seemed remote: much of the manuscript was lost, or in fragmentary form, and that which remained existed in multiple versions, undated and marked throughout in red ink. Co-creator, Florence Wolsky, in her early 90's, still spirited but fading, was no longer in a condition to assist with the project, and the other author, Amy K. Hirschfeld, had already published revisions of the material under her own name, realizing Brettman's worst fears of "being copied in many places". Dello Russo's familiarity with the source material for Brettman's text, however, provided direction as to how to shape the work in digital form. With a great amount of current information on the catacombs already on line at www.catacombsociety.org, as well as operational research databases like DAPICS and BiblioSelect, the Brettman study could be contextualized chronologically and even conceptually, testifying to the vivid "shock of recognition" that modern Jews and Christians were experiencing in the last decades of the twentieth century as new publications of textual and archaeological evidence were challenging traditional notions of the development of these "adjacent communities" in Imperial Rome. Brettman's "visual odyssey" rode a high wave of ecumenism, but broke, too soon, against the hard barriers set up by various political and religious factions, forces with power to turn good intentions into failed results.

It has been challenging, today, to enter into the mindset of another era, as well as that of individuals with different agendas and experiences in the study of the catacombs of Rome. Like Giovanni Severano's cutting up Antonio Bosio's text of the Roma Sotterranea, the result of course will not meet the original author's expectations. Brettman herself seems to have dreaded not doing so - as a self-described "relative newcomer to the field" - comparing her "life's work" to the elephant in the closet, looming over all other aspects of her existence. Nonetheless, she strongly believed that she had a place in catacomb studies, in the words of art historian Richard Brilliant, "opening the field, so that everyone seems to be jumping in". ICS has adopted the phrase as its guide to the digital text of "Vaults", an open invitation, like that always so warmly extended by Brettman herself, to experience the "communality of religion", indeed, dramatically. Please let us know how you do.

- Jessica Dello Russo 3 July 2018