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June 1st, 2015 - Sivan 14th, 5775
A Special Group By Guido Vitale* "Children, it has long been recognized, are a special group. They do not choose their parents, let alone the broader condizione into which they are born". Joseph Stiglitz‎ - Trento, Festival dell'Economia (Trento Festival of Economics) *Guido Vitale is the editor-in-chief of Pagine Ebraiche.   Against Saviano By Daniela Gross ““If you hate Israel and the settlers, read this novel. If you love Israel and defend the settlers, read this novel. But even if you don’t care about the Middle East but love literature, read this novel.” So posted the Italian writer Roberto Saviano on his Facebook page, a couple of days ago. The book he recommended is “The Hilltop”, a novel by the Israeli writer Assaf Gavron, recently translated into Italian and published by La Giuntina. Praised by critics as a really interesting voice rising from the new generation of Israeli writers, “The Hilltop” chronicles the life and times of the inhabitants of a fictional West Bank settlement. It is a comic saga, which offers a notable view of contemporary Israeli society, but most of Saviano’s followers were not interested in taking into account its literary or social meaning.  As Elena Lowenthal highlighted on La Stampa, on Thursday, they started posting “an avalanche of outraged and delusional comments”, which shared a common virulent Anti-Semitic sentiment. “It looks like there is but a short step from the neutrality of the literature (and in the end from its own meaning) to pure prejudice, at least on the social media,” she wrote, noting how ignorant and indecently Anti-Semitic many of these comments sounded. “It is hard to imagine what could be the right therapy, in this global communication world, where everybody writes, and nobody reads”, she noted. Equally hard to accept is that this hatred speech in fact reflects part of the Italian society, in which still today someone dares to criticize cultural advice by simply commenting “Saviano Jewish.”		EVENTS The Fight against Inequality By Daniel Reichel "Inequality is the consequence of policies that have been implemented through the years, and therefore it can be fought.” This was the message sent by Joseph Stiglitz to politicians all around the world during his lecture at the Festival of Economic Sciences in Trento. The winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics explained to the Italian public that ever since he was young he has focused his attention on inequality, realizing that America is the industrialized country with the biggest gap between the rich and the poor and that the so-called American dream is just a myth. “The most unpleasant aspect of inequality,” he said “is the consequential disparity in terms of opportunities.” This disparity and social mobility are the themes of the tenth edition of the Trento Festival, which opened on Friday. There for the third year in a row, Pagine Ebraiche was distributed at the information points and at the main locations where the festival is taking place. Copies of the Italian Jewish paper ran out just a few hours after the opening.   Read more LEADERS “A Prayer for Italy, without Straining the Truth” By Rossella Tercatin Should Italian Jews incorporate a prayer for the welfare of the Italian Republic as it done in many synagogues in countries as in the United States, the United Kingdom and France? Participating in the annual convention of Italian Jewry organized by the Union of Italian Jewish Communities, the Chief Rabbi of France rav Haim Korsia passionately advocated for a movement in this direction. In the latest issue of Pagine Ebraiche, the Chief Rabbi of Rome Riccardo Di Segni offers his take on the matter.  Read more  NEWS - An Honorary Citizenship for Solidarity By Adam Smulevich The Union of Italian Jewish Communities received the honorary citizenship award of Finale Emilia. Finale Emilia was the center of the earthquake which occurred in 2012 in Northern Italy causing 27 deaths and widespread damage. The award was for the Union's contribution in terms of solidarity to the local population. First of all with the opening of a new library in the primary school “Elvira Castelfranchi,” honors the memory of a Jewish teacher forced to leave her job in 1938, one year before she retired, because of anti-Jewish laws introduced by Benito Mussolini. Read more MEDIA Pagine Ebraiche: Elections and Economics   By Rachel Silvera On June 14, the Jewish Community of Rome will go to the polls with four presidential candidates, three of them women. The June edition of Pagine Ebraiche offers a special preview with programs, goals and ideas of Ruth Dureghello (the leader of 'Per Israele' list), Maurizio Tagliacozzo (Menorah), Claudia Fellus (Binah) and Fiamma Nirenstein (Israele siamo noi).  Meanwhile, the Jewish community of Genoa already has a new president: Ariel Dello Strologo, a lawyer and well recognized public figure.   Read more Français Inspiration poétique  Francesca Matalon J’ai fini par arriver le long de la mer, sur un boulevard. Il y avait une vingtaine de bateaux en rade, avec leurs lumières, qui dansaient, auréolés d’un fameux temps havrais, pluie, vent, tempête, toute une moitié du baromètre dispersée dans l’atmosphère. Quand je suis parti de cette ville, il y a plus de vingt-cinq ans, j’étais venu, tout seul comme un homme, regarder une dernière fois la mer. Ce jour-là comme aujourd’hui, il pleuvait, ventait, tempêtait. Et je trouvais ça très poétique ; c’est étonnant que je n’aie pas écrit un poème sur-le-champ, sans doute que je n’ai pas pu ; je croyais alors que j’allais devenir poète à Paris, mais ça n’est arrivé que bien des années après (que je le croie). A cette époque, je ne doute pas qu’en me promenant ainsi sous la pluie, le long de la mer, je pensais que le poème allait venir ; c’est ce qu’on appelle la pureté de l’adolescence, l’époque où l’on est plein de mépris pour la littérature. Maintenant, après des années de littérature (pratiquée d’une façon publique) je ne me baladais pas, en ce jour de novembre pluvieux, pour y chercher un sujet de poème ou de nouvelle ou même de roman. Que j’écrive maintenant à ce propos, pourquoi pas, mais ça n’était vraiment pas dans mes intentions. S’il fallait que j’écrive à propos de tout. Je grince des dents quand des gens pensent que je fais ceci ou cela ou que je vais voir ceci ou cela, pour en faire ensuite un morceau de roman. Quelle idée de profane.  (Raymond Queneau, Le café de la France) Prayer and Self-Awareness By Yaacov Mascetti* My daughter Avigail is slowly working her way into adolescence, and as part of this process come questions, difficult questions on a wide variety of topics like interpersonal relations, social issues, and of course on religious dilemmas. As I wrote in my last post, she studies in a religious school in Jerusalem, where, to my utmost displeasure, her teachers are doing their very best to kill any trace of creativity and pleasure in her experience of religiosity – or at least that's what it looks like from where I am standing. Halacha is studied like a phone book, history is seen solely through the eyes of the Jewish people, the Mishna is studied literally without the vaguest trace of a class discussion on the possible meaning of the things studied, etc. etc. Today, Shabat Nasso, Avigail said at lunch that prayer is "boring, unbearably boring." So instead of telling her that that's not how we talk about prayer, I engaged frontally – "What is prayer Avigail?"    *Yaakov Mascetti holds a Ph.D. and teaches at the Department of Comparative Literature, Bar Ilan University. Read more
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