What can a silver Hanukkah lamp and a bronze medal reveal about Jewish women’s power, defiance, and survival? In this class, we’ll explore two extraordinary objects from the MFA’s Judaica collection as historical texts: an 18th-century German lamp depicting Judith triumphantly holding the head of Holofernes, and a 16th-century Italian medal featuring Dona Gracia Nasi the Younger, an 18-year-old crypto-Jew during the Inquisition. With curator Simona Di Nepi as our guide, we’ll uncover the layered histories, identities, and acts of resistance embedded in these striking works of art.

Simona Di Nepi is the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Curator of Judaica at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where she is responsible for building and displaying the Judaica collection, and for curating Intentional Beauty: Jewish Ritual Art from the Collection, the museum’s first Judaica gallery. Originally from Rome, before moving to the United States Simona studied and worked in London and Tel Aviv for 25 years. She filled curatorial roles—in both decorative arts and Old Masters—at the Victoria and Albert Museum, The National Gallery, and the Royal Academy of Arts in London, where she cared for permanent collections and curated exhibitions. In Israel, she worked as curator at 'Anu: The Museum of the Jewish People’ and as Lecturer in Italian Renaissance art at Reichman University, Herzelyia.

Simona curated the exhibitions and wrote the accompanying publications for Reunions: Bringing Early Italians Paintings Back Together (The National Gallery, London, 2005), and Dreyfus: The Story of a French-Jewish Family (Anu: the Museum of the Jewish People, Tel Aviv, 2014). She is also the author of the National Gallery’s collection catalogue From Duccio to Leonardo: Renaissance Painting 1250-1500. In Judaica, Simona wrote the essays ‘Itinerant Sephardic Judaica: from Dutch Ports to the Harbours of Europe and the Americas’, ‘Jewish Things at the Museum of Fine Arts: a History’, ‘The Servi Shaddai: the Family History of an amulet at the MFA Boston’, and ‘Treasures from storage: Two Rediscovered Italian Jewish Textiles.’ Simona is currently guiding Boston University students in the development of Real and Imagined: Rembrandt and the Jews of the 17th-Century Dutch Republic, an in-focus MFA exibition (Dec. 2025-Dec 2026).