NEWS

President Sergio Mattarella Visits Israel

By Daniel Reichel

“Nothing can question the strong relationship between Italy and Israel,” said the President of Italy, Sergio Mattarella, in Jerusalem, where his four-day visit to Israel started on Sunday. The first place Mattarella visited, accompanied by the President of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities, Noemi Di Segni, was Yad Vashem.
In his four days Mattarella spent two in Jerusalem where he gave a lecture for the opening of the academic year at the Hebrew University. He also paid homage at the grave of Shimon Peres, visited the Italian Jewish Community of Jerusalem and met the Israeli President, Reuven Rivlin. On Tuesday he will meet the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and visit a few places in the West Bank.
On Wednesday Mattarella will be at the Eretz Israel Museum in Tel Aviv. There the Minister of Heritage and Cultural Activities and Tourism, Dario Franceschini, will present the great project of the National Museum of Italian Judaism and the Shoah (MEIS), now under construction in Ferrara, to the Israeli public.   

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culture

Major Exhibit of Restored Jewish Books
and Artifacts Commemorates 50 Years
after the Flood in Florence

By Pagine Ebraiche staff
 
“E le acque si calmarono” (“And the waters calmed”), a major exhibition dedicated to the Jewish heritage struck by the fury of the River Arno in 1966, is one of the most relevant events among those scheduled in these weeks in Florence to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the “Great Flood". The exhibit features hundreds of books, printed volumes and artefacts, marking their extraordinary, symbolic return to the city. 
The volumes included in the exhibition, which opened last Thursday, were salvaged and restored thanks to the Foundation for Jewish Cultural Heritage in Italy, along with Florence’s public library, the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale. Now restored, they will allow visitors to explore centuries of the history of the Florentine Jewish community, its’ contributions to the city’s cultural and economic progress and the many notable figures who made a difference.

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events

At Festivals and in the Press, Comics
Meet the Jewish Culture

By Pagine Ebraiche Staff

The great Israeli cartoonist Asaf Hanuka and Italian writer Roberto Saviano are working together on a graphic novel about the Italian author's story, which will be published in 2017. The news, after the anticipation by Pagine Ebraiche, has found a new confirmation by Giovanni Russo, head of Lucca Comics festival and by the director of the editorial staff of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities (UCEI) Guido Vitale. It has been one of the subjects of the presentation of the special section called Comics&Jews, that Pagine Ebraiche dedicates to the relationship between comics and Jewish culture and is edited by Ada Treves every year. Now in its seventh edition, the special section was presented in the first day of the event, and as a further sign of the collaboration between UCEI's newsroom and the two largest Italian festivals dedicated to comics, to present Comics&Jews was not only the head of the comics section of the festival in Lucca but also Emilio Varrà, responsible for Bilbolbul, the other large event dedicated to comics to be held in Bologna in late November.
Apart from a now well-established tradition, and mutual respect among professionals in the sector, the collaboration also recognizes the ability of Pagine Ebraiche to identify beforehand and present to the public authors that a few hours after the presentation have won the most coveted awards, the Grand Guinigi.

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news

After Condemnation of UNESCO Vote,
Renzi, Di Segni in 'Positive' Phonecall

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bechol lashon - Français

Les livres juifs sauvés
vont être exposés

JTA*

Une exposition majeure qui ouvrira ses portes cette semaine permet de découvrir des centaines d’objets appartenant au patrimoine culturel juif qui avaient été endommagés par les inondations dévastatrices de 1966 à Florence et qui ont été restaurés pour retrouver leur état originel.
L’exposition, “Et quand l’eau s’est retirée”, ouvrira jeudi à la Bibliothèque Nationale Centrale de Florence.
Elle permettra de découvrir des livres juifs rares, des documents, des archives et des objets judaïques, certains d’entre eux datant de plusieurs siècles, qui avaient été endommagés lorsque le fleuve Arno était sorti de son lit les 3 et 4 novembre 1966.

*The Times of Israel Français 23.10.2016.


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pilpul

Confirmation Bias

By Susanna Calimani*

If you stay on the surface of social interaction and do not get to know people too well, confirmation bias filters the information you do not want to admit or know, it reassures you that your colleagues think what you were expecting, and they are exactly the kind of persons you wanted to meet and have around you. Confirmation bias makes your life so much better. But there are two essential rules.
The first is that you should not talk too much with the same person, or ask too many questions or personal details, or -even more risky- try to share opinions about politics and real life. You need to stay on the surface.


*Susanna Calimani is a wandering economist currently based in Frankfurt.

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VENICE AND THE GHETTO

New Display Reveals the Artistic Richness
of Jewish Life

By Natalie Chetboun

It’s the gold that catches the eye, the gilded wood carved to resemble vases filled with flowers, the Baroque handwork shimmering against a wall painted sky blue. Polished wooden benches, once heavy with worshippers, sit empty below closed windows. An iron and brass railing inscribed with Hebrew letters leads to the women’s gallery, quiet behind patterned screens. 
This is the Vittorio Veneto Synagogue, built during the 18th century in a small town in northeast Italy, where a small Jewish community congregated for over two hundred years. Similar in style to synagogues in the Venice Ghetto, it was transferred to Israel in 1965 and reconstructed in its entirety by The Israel Museum, Jerusalem. Now it is the centerpiece of a new display, Venetian Splendor: Marking 500 Years of the Venice Ghetto.

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IT HAPPENED TOMORROW

Islamophobie

Guido Vitale

(…) Les propos du candidat républicain, Donald Trump, promettant dans un premier temps d'interdire l'accès du territoire américain aux musulmans, puis finalement, dans un second temps, aux ressortissants de pays où sévit le terrorisme islamiste, a libéré une parole anti-musulmans et provoqué une vague d'islamophobie comme le pays n'en avait jamais connu. (…) (Sally Howell - Le Monde, 30 octobre 2016)



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italics

"The Bridge" Book Awards at the Italian Embassy
in Washington DC

By Kayla Pantano*

On Wednesday evening, the Italian Institute of Culture (IIC) in New York honored accomplished authors, Nadia Terranova, Gli Anni al Contrario, and Marco Belpoliti, Primo Levi di Fronte e di Profilo, for their literary contributions as the Italian winners of the book award called “The Bridge.



*This article was published in IItaly.org on October 27, 2016.

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