Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...After studying the world’s oldest synagogue paintings for nearly a decade, Jill Joshowitz had accepted that she might never be able to stand before them as they remained locked away in Syria amid its civil war. Obviously there was this horrific civil war, and so I really didn’t know what to expect,” she added. While his group had visited the National Museum in Damascus at the time, they had not seen the Dura Europos paintings, which are the earliest and largest known collection of synagogue paintings in the world. The paintings were later moved to the National Museum in Damascus and are housed in a replica of the ancient synagogue where they were created. After hearing about his February trip, Joshowitz — who received a doctorate in Judaic studies from New York University in 2023 after studying biblical art of the eastern Mediterranean — reached out to Lopatin.