NEWS

‘The Merchant of Venice’ to Be Staged
for First Time in Italian Jewish Ghetto

William Shakespeare’s play “The Merchant of Venice” will be staged for the first time ever in the city’s Jewish ghetto on its 500th anniversary, which coincides with the 400th anniversary of the famous playwright’s death.
Six performances will take place in the Jewish Ghetto, between July 26 and July 31, in English and other languages. On the second day of the play’s run, a mock court hearing will be held with real lawyers and a jury, led by US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The productions are organized by Compagnia de’ Colombari, an international collective of performing artists based in New York, and the Ca’Foscari University of Venice.

*This article was published in The Algemeiner on June 20, 2016.

Read more

news

France, a New President for the CRIF

By Francesca Matalon
 
Francis Kalifat was elected in May as the new president of the Conseil Représentatif des Institutions Juives de France, the highest Jewish institution in France. He was born in Oran, Algeria, in 1952, but escaped ten years later due to the civil war, looking for a better future in France with his family. He grew up between Trappes and Versailles, not far from Paris, studied Law, and has been engaged in the Jewish life of the country since his activity in youth movements. Today he is an entrepreneur, and the head of the largest Jewish Community in Europe. He is not the first Sephardi president, as many have said, but he does accept to be regarded as the first Sephardi president being from the Maghreb, where a large part of the French Jewish Community comes from.

Read more

media

Seventy Times DafDaf

Read more

bechol lashon - Français

Talmud

par Benedetto Carucci Viterbi*

"C’est cela le Talmud: niant le mesquin, il élève même ce qui est futile, même ce qui est bas... Une autre définition du Talmud ? Le meilleur remède contre l’oubli... Pour moi, le Talmud c’est autre chose aussi. C’est un chant inoubliable, celui de mon enfance". (Elie Wiesel, Célébration talmudique)







*Benedetto Carucci Viterbi est un rabbin.



Lire la suite

pilpul

Talking to Stones

By Yaakov Mascetti*

A desert is an arduous context, wherein water is not the sole thing that lacks, but also the basic necessities for the normal functioning of a social collective. Within the dryness of this context, the People of Israel are required, in the Book of Numbers, to undergo the transformation from "a chaotic mass of clueless slaves" to "people." This process is not easy, of course, and is fraught with dangers – Israel falls, over and over again, failing in critical moments of its history. The chaotic mass, though, needs to become a collective – the question is, how does one transform chaos into order.

*Yaakov Mascetti holds a Ph.D. and teaches at the Department of Comparative Literature, Bar Ilan University.

Read more

CULTURE

Florence to Remember the 1966 Flood
Which Destroyed over 90 Torah Scrolls

By Pagine Ebraiche staff

On November 4, 1966, after a long period of rain the Arno river flooded Florence causing widespread devastation. Over 100 people were killed and many monuments and art collections were destroyed.
Not being spared the Jewish community was deeply affected as well. The flood waters reached the synagogue and damaged 92 Torah scrolls and 15,000 books and documents which belonged to the Rabbinical School of Florence. The vast majority of the Torah scrolls were considered beyond repair and buried in the Jewish cemetery of the city, according to the Jewish tradition.
The Community will mark the 50th anniversary of the flood with an exhibit at the National Library of Florence with pictures and original documents. Among the organizers is the Fondazione per I Beni Culturali Ebraici in Italia (Foundation for the Jewish Cultural Heritage in Italy), and the Opera del Tempio Ebraico di Firenze, an organization pivotal to the preservation and restoration of Jewish sites in the region.

Read more

IT HAPPENED TOMORROW

A Turning Point

By Guido Vitale

"That was a turning point for many," said Lisa Spies, a veteran Republican fundraising consultant and former staffer of the Republican Jewish Coalition. "It forced people to say, I'm going to hold off right now' or to say, I just can't vote for this guy". (The Washington Post).













Read more

italics

An Italian Doctor Explains the Fake “Syndrome K”

By Caitlin Hu*

In the fall of 1943, German soldiers in Italy began rounding up Italian Jews and deporting them—10,000 people were sent to concentration camps during the nearly two-year Nazi occupation. Most never returned. But in Rome, a group of doctors saved at least 20 Jews from a similar fate, by diagnosing them with Syndrome K, a deadly, disfiguring, and contagiosissima disease.
The 450-year-old Fatebenefratelli Hospital is nestled on a tiny island in the middle of Rome’s Tiber River, just across from the Jewish Ghetto. When Nazis raided the area on Oct. 16, 1943, a handful of Jews fled to the Catholic hospital, where they were quickly given case files reading “Syndrome K.”

*This article was published in Quartz on July 8, 2019.

Read more