Simcha Jacobovici was born on April 4, 1953, in Petah Tikva, Israel, to a Jewish family. His parents were Holocaust survivors from Iași, Romania, who emigrated to Israel in 1941 aboard the MVStruma.[3] In 1962, the family relocated to Canada.[4]
As an early advocate of airlifting Ethiopian Jews to Israel, Jacobovici wrote three op-ed piece on the subject for New York Times[18][19][20][21] and made his first documentary, Falasha: Exile of the Black Jews (1983).[22]The Economist credited Jacobovici's documentary as one of the factors leading to the 1984–85 Israeli airlift of Ethiopian Jews to Israel.[23]
Enslaved has been broadcast in 150 countries garnering record ratings and outstanding reviews.[33]Enslaved was nominated for two NAACP Image Awards,[34] including Best Director and Series and won 3 Canadian Screen Awards.[35] It won a "Buzzie" for Best Historical Series at the World Congress of Science and Factual Producers.[36]Enslaved was also honored for Outstanding Achievement by the Impact Doc Awards[37] and was named Best Documentary at the International Filmmaker Festival in London.[38] As part of their anti-racism campaign, Enslaved has been screened in the United Nations[39] and the European Parliament.[40]Paris Match has called Enslaved "One small step for man…One giant leap for civil rights!"[41]
Several of Jacobovici's films have sparked controversies. The 1994 film, The Plague Monkeys resulted in the closure of a level 4 lab in Toronto, Canada. James, Brother of Jesus highlighted an ossuary in the private collection of an Israeli antiquities collector, Oded Golan. Golan was accused of forging part of the inscription on a 2,000-year-old bone box/ossuary. Jacobovici and Hershel Shanks (founding editor of Biblical Archaeology Review), stood by their story. In 2012, after 7 years in an Israeli court, Golan was exonerated.[44]
Jacobovici's most controversial claim is the identification of a tomb in Jerusalem as that of Jesus of Nazareth and his family in the Talpiot Tomb.[45][46] In 2008, a conference made up of renowned scholars took place in Jerusalem to discuss the thesis of Jacobovici’s film. By the end, a minority of scholars backed the thesis, another minority rejected it and the majority argued that the subject has to be studied further. The proceedings of the conference were published by James H. Charlesworth under the name The Tomb of Jesus and His Family? Exploring Ancient Jewish Tombs Near Jerusalem’s Walls (2013).[47][48]
Over the past decades, Jacobovici has engaged in what he calls "Investigative Archaeology".[49]
In 2012, Jacobovici investigated a Second Temple-era burial cave in Armon Hanatziv with a camera mounted on a robotic arm. Along with James Tabor, he claimed that the 2,000-year-old cave may be the burial site of disciples of Jesus. Such identification has been rejected by many scholars and supported by some.[50][51]
Jacobovici hosted three seasons of The Naked ArchaeologistonVisionTV in Canada[52][53] and The History Channel in the United States. In 2013, the series began to be broadcast on the Israel Broadcast Authority (IBA) Channel 1. The series can be streamed on Amazon and YouTube.[54][55] A reboot is scheduled for 2024.[citation needed]
Jacobovici, Simcha; Kingsley, Sean (October 2022). Enslaved: The Sunken History of the Transatlantic Slave Trade. New York: Pegasus. ISBN9781639362387.
Jacobovici, Simcha; Wilson, Barrie (November 2014). The Lost Gospel: Decoding the Ancient Text that Reveals Jesus' Marriage to Mary the Magdalene. New York: Pegasus. ISBN978-1605986104.
Jacobovici, Simcha; Pellegrino, Charles (March 2007). The Jesus Family Tomb: The Discovery, the Investigation, and the Evidence That Could Change History. New York: HarperCollins. ISBN978-0-06-125299-0.
Jacobovici is also the co-author of two e-books; "Michelangelo's Angels and Demons"[67] and "The James Revelation",[68] published by Zoomerbooks, as a companion to his television series "Biblical Conspiracies".
Canadian Screen Awards, Best History Documentary Program or Series; Barbara Sears Award for Best Editorial Research; Best Photography Documentary or Factual, 2021[69]
World Congress of Science & Factual Producers Buzzie, Best History Program – Long Format, 2020[70]
Impact DOCS Award, Outstanding Achievement/Award of Excellence: Documentary Feature/Award of Excellence: Cinematography/Award of Excellence: History, Biographical, 2020[71]
Jacobovici was involved as executive producer[84] in the production of a documentary that was shown in March 2010 on the National Geographic Channel. He claimed that Atlantis had been found in Spain, and he said that evidence which was found by University of Hartford Professor Richard Freund included the unearthed emblem of Atlantis and he also said that "Tarshish is Atlantis itself".[85]
The television show The Naked Archaeologist was produced for VisionTV in Canada and History International in the US and was hosted and prepared by Jacobovici and Avri Gilad. The show ultimately reviewed biblical stories and then tried to find proof for them by exploring the Holy Land looking for archaeological evidence, making personal inferences and deductions and interviewing scholars and experts. After its original run on VisionTV, it was picked up in the U.S. by The History Channel and its sister network, History International.
The episode "A Nabatean by Any Other Name" won the Special Jury Prize at the 8th International Archaeological Film Festival in Brussels.[86]
The documentary The Lost Tomb of Jesus was co-produced and first broadcast on the Discovery Channel and Vision TV in Canada on March 4, 2007, covering the discovery of the Talpiot Tomb. It was directed by Jacobovici and produced by Felix Golubev and Ric Esther Bienstock, and James Cameron served as executive producer. It was released in conjunction with a book on the same subject, The Jesus Family Tomb, issued in late February 2007 and co-authored by Jacobovici and Charles R. Pellegrino. The documentary and book's claims have been rejected by the overwhelming majority of scholars.
Jacobovici suggests that the Exodus took place around 1500 BC, during the reign of Pharaoh Ahmose I, and that it coincided with the Minoan eruption. In the documentary, the biblical plagues of Egypt are explained as having resulted from that eruption and a related limnic eruption in the Nile Delta. While much of Jacobovici's archaeological evidence for the Exodus comes from Egypt, some comes from Mycenae on Mainland Greece, such as a gold ornament that somewhat resembles the Ark of the Covenant.
In the 2003 wide-ranging documentary, Jacobovici goes on a worldwide search for the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel and states that there are actually only nine tribes because the remnant of the tribe of Dan was confirmed[citation needed] to be the Beta Israel of Ethiopia. Travelling from western Europe to China and India, Jacobovici finds tantalizing evidence which proves that the "lost tribes" are, like the tribe of Dan, really not lost. The tribe of Dan is the only original tribe of Israel which is not included in the Book of Revelation's list of tribes that are sealed.
The 2002 documentary, directed by Jacobovici, tells the story of MV Struma, a small ship chartered to carry Jewish refugees from Axis-allied RomaniatoMandatory Palestine during World War II. Ten people were let off the ship in Istanbul, including a woman who had just had a miscarriage,[90] and one man who was the representative of the Mobil Oil Company in Romania and was helped by Mobil's representative in Turkey, Vehbi Koc.[citation needed] Koc asked the favour of the Istanbul Chief of Police, Sabri Caglayangil, who later became a Minister of the Interior. On February 23, 1942, with her engine inoperable and her refugee passengers aboard, Turkish authorities towed Struma from Istanbul Harbour through the Bosphorus back to the Black Sea,[91] where they set her adrift without food, water or fuel. Within hours, on the morning of February 24, she was torpedoed and sunk by the Shch-213, killing at least 768 men, women and children and possibly as many as 791, 785 of whom were Jews.[91]
In the 1996 documentary, Jacobovici studies the Crypto-JewsofNew Mexico and tiny populations of Jewish descendants in Spain and Portugal, known as nuevos Cristianos ("new Christians"). He explores the Jewish ancestry of the New Mexican Hispanic families now living in New Mexico and finds that many of them have always been aware of their Jewish heritage.[92]
In the 1983 documentary Falasha: Exile of the Black Jews, Jacobovici tells the story of Ethiopian Jews, also called Falasha (strangers) and properly known as Beta Israel. According to the documentary, the group was conquered by neighbouring tribes in the 17th century and suffered persecution.
^Sheban, Jeffrey (December 9, 1991). "Canadian's film on intifada criticized from both sides at Jerusalem screening". The Montreal Gazette. Montreal, Quebec.