RESEARCH PROJECTS
OF THE
HEBREW HISTORY FEDERATION LTD.
The Pottery Industries of Kfar Hananiah and Shikhin.
This project is presently active. The HHF is collaborating with Bar Ilan University in furthering the research.
Professor David Adan-Bayewitz, an advisory board member of the HHF, directed the excavations of a sizable pottery-making industry at two distinctly Judaic sites in Israel, Kfar Hananiah and Shikhin. They were dated to the turn of the Common Era. David was instrumental in the discovery of these sites, hitherto known only from mention in the Mishnah. Huge kilns were uncovered, evidencing that the pottery produced by these Judaic potters was being distributed far and wide. Thus, pottery heretofore labeled "Roman," in museums should instead be identified as Judaic pottery, Roman period.
Typical pottery shards were collected from as far afield as the Golan heights and the Negev, and submitted to the Berkeley Laboratory for neutron activation analyses at their cyclotron. Several series of analyses proved that, in fact, the pottery produced by the Jews of those two villages were widely distributed.
The project was so successful that a new five-year study has been approved, and another series of tests ordered. The funding of this project was supplied by Bar-Ilan University and is being transmitted to Berkeley Laboratories by the HHF.
The Glassmakers of the Università d’Altare
The origin of a community of glassmakers in Piedmont, Italy was researched by Samuel Kurinsky, Executive Director of the HHF. Mr. Kurinsky documented the fact that the glassmakers had been brought from Eretz Israel in the 12th century by the Crusader, the Marquise de Montferrato, and installed on a mountain top of his fief.
The artisans of this community were more important to glassmaking history than was Venice [Fact Paper 25]. They were largely instrumental in spreading the art throughout Europe.
The Altarese glassmakers have been Christians since the end of the 15th\ century, and have lost all memory of their origin. As a consequence of Mr. Kurinsky’s studies, he was appointed by the community as chairman and keynote speaker at an International Conference of Glass Studies held in Altare on the 500th anniversary of the glassmaking community’s acceptance of church domination.
In addition, Mr. Kurinsky uncovered documents in the archives of nearby Genoa, in which a group of Jewish glassmakers was invited back to Genoa a century after Jews had been expelled from the Republic. They were given the exclusive rights to"Produce glass and glassware for the Republic of Genoa and all of its dominions for a period of 25 years"!
Mr. Kurinsky’s third book, Creativity and the Jews, documents this history. It was translated into Italian and was published as a serial in the quarterly journal of the Italian Institute of Glass Studies. It is expected to be available in English in the near future.
The Lost Synagogues of Aquileia
During the Roman period, a community of thousands of Jews existed in Aquileia, a city on the Adriatic shore sixty kilometers east of Venice. Its existence has not even been recorded in the Encyclopedia Judaica. HHF research has ascertained that a magnificent mosaic floor, now housed in a special building designated as the "Paleo-Christian Museum," was actually the floor of a synagogue. Evidence of two other such mosaic floors in the area, one underlying the Aquileian Basilica and Belltower, and another under a Christian church in the area, has been documented, albeit the Judaic identity of these mosaic floors is disputed.
Aquileia was second only to Rome for imports from the East. Indications are that the Judaic population of that bustling port city could be counted in the thousands. The city was among the first places where Jews suffered Christian persecution, and where the records of Jewish presence were obliterated. A significant portion of Judaic history lies hidden in the ruins of aquileia, awaiting further investigation.
The Pinkasim of the Holy Community of Casale Montferrato.
The investigation of the origin of the glassmakers of Altare led to Casale Montferrato, from which city the Marquises Montferrato ruled their fief. A magnificent synagogue and its adjoining buildings in the heart of the city suffered destruction during the Nazi occupation of the town. The synagogue was reconstructed, and is now an Italian national monument. But the adjoining building were left in ruins until the synagogue’s geniza was found virtually intact beneath the rubble.
A geniza is a storeroom where the books and records of a synagogue is kept. Thousands of books and documents survived the Nazi desecration of the site. Among them were the journals of the community, thirty three giant tomes, registering the affairs of the community from 1565 tp 1933. The history of the community as well as much of the history of the region is revealed in these registers. The first three pinkasim were written in a cryptic form of Hebrew/Rashi. The HHF funded the transcription of these revelatory records, and they are now available to scholars at Hebrew University in Israel. Publication of the transcription of the three pinkasim awaits further funding.
