To the Editor:
In view of the many letters elicited by Michael Ledeen’s article last year on the Jewish catacombs of Italy [“The Unknown Catacombs,” September 1977], I thought your readers would be interested in what has happened since.
As Mr. Ledeen pointed out in his article, the Villa Torlonia, site of one of the oldest and most important Jewish catacombs in Italy, has recently been converted from a private estate into a public park. With this transformation it had been hoped—in spite of rumors to the contrary—that the Jewish catacombs, after being hidden for centuries from public view, would finally be made accessible to viewers. When the new park finally opened on July 19, and the first visitors reached the site, they met with disappointment. The ancient stairway leading into the catacombs had been buried—supposedly, to guard the site against vandalism—and along with it, for an indeterminate period, the dream of free access to this important Jewish archeological site. . . .
Thus, this ancient Jewish catacomb, which contains in its frescoed cubicula unique treasures of Jewish art and sepulchral architecture and in its galleries the remains of a priceless archive of inscriptions illuminating the first chapter not only of Italian but of Western Jewish history, remains a kind of imprisoned witness from the Roman era before Christianity. It testifies to a time when Jews and Judaism were fully recognized and protected by the laws of Rome and when the young church, according to Tertullian, lived and expanded “under the shadow of the most eminent and recognized Jewish religion.”
The Torlonia catacomb seems to be sharing in the tragic fate of the other Roman Jewish catacombs which were discovered during the last century only to be destroyed or lost again . . . as a result of prejudice, vandalism, land speculation, and last but not least . . . the complete failure of Jewish authorities to take the initiative in attempting to preserve these ancient monuments, recently described by Yigael Yadin as “the most important remains of the Jewish antiquity in the Diaspora.”
Optimists here believe that once the new state-church concordat currently being negotiated is ratified, the way will be cleared at last for study of the Torlonia catacomb; but pessimists say that once buried it will remain so for a long time to come. There is no question, however, that much will depend on whether decisions taken by the World Jewish Congress in its meeting of November 1977 and by the Congress of Italian Jewish Communities last June can be implemented. Both these meetings set forth guidelines aimed at constructive collaboration between the responsible Italian authorities and the Jewish world for the purpose of “safeguarding, preserving, and exploring the Jewish catacombs in Italy and making them accessible to scientific research and to the public.”
Since the study of the Jewish catacombs . . . evidently touches on problems of the ancient Jewish-Christian relationship, one may justly hope that the new attitude of the Catholic Church, expressed in various post-conciliar declarations and aiming at a new understanding of the Jews and at a deeper knowledge of Jewish history and culture (of which the catacombs are an integral part) will prevail also in the field of Christian archeology.
Only with such a new approach, free of past bias, can archeology, and Christian archeology in particular, contribute to filling in the missing pieces of the puzzle and thereby reconstructing the full picture of Jewish life within the grand mosaic of the ancient Mediterranean world.
Henryk Z. Geller
Rome, Italy
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Correction
In Ruth R. Wisse’s article, “The Anxious American Jew” [September], an error occurred in the last sentence on p. 49. The sentence should read. “Having presented the news, the Times then congratulated the group editorially for its ‘courage.’”
