JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Soon, when Americans head to Rome, there will be a new archaeological treasure to check out among the city’s varied offerings — underground burial chambers containing the remains of Jews from the Roman Empire. “There is a world to be discovered down there,” Claudio Procaccio, cultural director for the city’s Jewish community, told the Wall…
Cemeteries are naturally spooky places – fields littered with old gray stones marking dead bodies. But you know what’s spookier than cemeteries? Catacombs, those underground passages filled with human remains. For those of us that find such places more interesting than scary or disgusting, there was recently some good news out of Rome. As the…
Rome’s Jewish catacombs will open to the public for the first time on Sunday as part of a campaign to highlight diverse cultural sites throughout Italy. While Rome’s many Christian underground burial grounds are a tourist highlight, drawing hundreds of thousands of visitors each year, Jewish catacombs have only up to now been open only…
Odessa, as a city, reminds me of no place more than New Orleans. It’s not the geography or architecture of these two cities, it’s the similarity of character and of their place in the greater pantheon of the cities of their respective regions of the world. Like New Orleans, Odessa isn’t a capital. It isn’t…
