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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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

The 17th International Congress of Christian Archaeology on “Frontiers – the transformation and Christianization of the Roman Empire between Center and Periphery” starts in Utrecht on Sunday, 1 July, 2018, and moves to Nijmegen for the second half of the week, ending with an excursion to the Catacombs at  Valkenburg on Saturday, 7 July…

On May 24, 2018, International Catacomb Society members and friends came together on the premises of Grogan and Company on Charles Street in Boston to honor two of the organization’s founders and longtime directors, Estelle S. Brettman and Florence Z. Wolsky. The joint commemoration was made to celebrate the deep friendship between the two…

New Lives of Ancient Arts: An evening with the International Catacomb Society Please join us on Thursday, May 24, 2018, 6:30- 9:00 pm, to celebrate Boston women who have enhanced our experience of ancient Greek, Jewish, and Roman Art. (Invitation May 24 pdf) The event will take place on Boston’s historic Beacon Hill at…

10 April 2018 For immediate release (SSGP 2018-2019) 2018-2019 Shohet Scholars Awards The officers and directors of the International Catacomb Society are pleased to announce the Shohet Scholars of 2018-2019: Michael Flexsenhar (Rhodes College, Religious Studies) Jewish Imperial Life in Ancient Rome: The Agrippesioi and Augustesioi Synagogues Flexsenhar’s project investigates the Agrippesioi and Augustesioi…