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Friday, March 27, 2020

Stones with a name: the gravestone collection online

New section on the website of the Museum of Jewish History about the tombstone collection

Hebrew inscriptions are a visible element of a world now disappeared, populated with people that are no longer there and of whom only the names remain. They speak of crowded communities, moments of prayer in synagogues, often poorly located on a map, and an eternal resting place full of memories of stones, which continue to preserve that memory, despite the calamities experienced and the stubbornness of these people.

Jordi Casanovas, a well-remembered expert on Hebrew inscriptions, believed that stones are a catalytic element of memory and, although lacking in explicitness, they actually tell us many things. As the prophet Habakkuk (7th century BC) said: "For the stone shall cry out of the wall, and the beam out of the timber shall answer it."

The Museum of Jewish History, through its permanent collection and now also through this online resource, adds value to those stones with name. They form the most important Judaic monumental assets in the city of Girona, and one of the most prominent in Catalonia. With them, it recovers the stories of the lives of the women and men who once stepped on the streets of the city's Jewish quarter.

The complete collection is made up of 29 tombstones or fragments with Hebrew inscriptions as epitaphs. Not all tombstones are presented in this resource, as we have focused our research on those bearing a name: this is the thread that has allowed us to get to some details of the lives of the people to whom the tombstones were dedicated.