Jacob Pinkerfield

Biography

Jacob Pinkerfeld was born in the city of Przemysl, Galicia, Poland in 1897, the son of an architect. He joined the Hashomer Hatzair youth movement and later studied architecture at the College of Technology in Vienna, Austria. Pinkerfeld moved to the Land of Israel with Hashomer Hatzair in 1920 and lived in Zichron Ya'acov. He returned to Europe to graduate university and moved back to the Land of Israel in 1925.

According to the Artlog website, "his dream was to establish a Research Institute for Jewish Art. Together with a group of friends he founded "Ganza", the Society for Jewish Craft, which later became the Museum of Ethnography and Folklore in Tel Aviv, and acted as its Director from 1950 until his untimely death.

He worked on excavations at Tell el-Kheleifeh, which Nelson Glueck at the time had mistakenly identified as Solomon's Ezion-geber, and at the putative site of the Church of Zion on Mount Zion in Jerusalem, his findings forming the basis of Bargil Pixner's thesis of a pre-Crusader Jewish-Christian church on the site.

Shooting attack

Jacob Pinkerfeld was one of the four archaeologists killed in the Ramat Rachel shooting attack on September 23, 1956.

Published Works

• The Synagogues of Eretz YIsrael. (Hebrew) Rabbi Kook Institute (1945/1945)
• The Synagogues of Italy. (Hebrew) Bialik Institute; (1954)
• Bishvili Omanut Yehudit: Sefer Zichron (Hebrew) (1957)
• The Synagogues of North Africa. (Hebrew) Bialik Institute (1974)
• Jerusalem: Synagogues and the Karaite Community.
• List of works by Jacob Pinkerfeld in the National Library of Israel catalog