The Dura-Europos Synagogue paintings are safe

DECORATIVE ART - IN A MUSEUM: After years of war, world’s oldest synagogue paintings seen intact in Damascus. Dispelling fears for their fate, Dura-Europos synagogue wall paintings shown to Jewish visitors including academic Jill Joshowitz and ToI editor David Horovitz at Syria’s national museum (Grace Gilson, JTA via Times of Israel).

JTA — After studying the world’s oldest synagogue paintings for nearly a decade, Jill Joshowitz had accepted that she might never be able to stand before them as they remained locked away in Syria amid its civil war.

Jewish sites and synagogues suffered lootings and bombardment over the course of the war, which followed the emigration of virtually all Syrian Jews. Could the paintings have even survived?

“I spent almost a decade of my life researching and writing about these paintings, and because they were stored in Syria, I never thought that I would really have an opportunity in my lifetime, as a Jewish scholar and researcher, to see these paintings,” said Joshowitz, a historian of Jewish visual culture based in Pittsburgh.

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For many posts on the Dura-Europos synagogue and its decorative art, see here and links.

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