17 April 2023:

Grave of rabbi Isaac Luria (the Ari, Ha-Ari ha-Qadosh), 16th century, Safed. Photo: Ariel Palmon, from Wikimedia Commons.

A new database of Jewish funerary inscriptions has joined the PEACE portal: Funerary Inscriptions from Safed Cemetery. The 895 inscriptions and related data have been carefully collected and recorded by Mr. Haim Sidor from Safed (Tzefat), Israel, and are the result of a lifetime long work. The Safed tombstones span a broad range, from the 15th century to the 20th century. In the future we plan to add also images of the tombstones, where available. More information about the Safed cemetery can be read in an article by Yosef Stepansky, here.

6 May 2022:

Epitaph of Lady Floria, Paris, 1364. Currently in the collection of the Musée d’art et d’histoire du Judaïsme.

Starting in May-June 2022 two new databases will join the PEACE portal, both directed by Dr. Sonia Fellous (CNRS/Sorbonne). The first among these is a database of Jewish medieval inscriptions from France, containing 332 epitaphs. These inscriptions are in Hebrew and bear dates according to the Jewish calendar. The database relies on the volume by Gérard Nahon, Inscriptions hébraïques et juives de France médiévale (Les Belles Lettres, 1986), supplemented by epigraphic analyses by Dr. Fellous, especially of the epitaphs from Paris and Strasbourg.

Dr. Sonia Fellous also contributes a second database of ca. 60 Jewish epitaphs from Tunisia, primarily from the cities of Borgel, Nabeul, Sousse and Sfax, dating to the 19th century. These epitaphs are mostly written in Judaeo-Arabic (Arabic written with the Hebrew alphabet), but also contain Hebrew phrases and abbreviations. They testify to the rich and complex cultural embedding of Tunisian Jews in the surrounding Islamic culture.