Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics reported that in 2024 emigration exceeded immigration by 18,000 people. “This has not happened since the 1980’s,” Italian-Israeli demographer and statistician Sergio Della Pergola, an emeritus professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a …
Focusing on welcome does not mean offering “a simplistic solution to serious issues such as migration,” “it’s not a utopian ‘let’s welcome them all’,” but “it is a philosophy of life: not closing ourselves off, not rejecting others outright, not …
Jews have lived in Trani, in the Apulia region, from Roman times until 1541, when they were expelled. The community life centered around the Giudecca (as the Jewish quarter was known) and its four synagogues, two of which survived the …
The Gallerie d’Italia in Turin is presenting a major retrospective of Jewish-American photographer Mitch Epstein, open to the public until March 2. Curated by Brian Wallis of CPW – the Center for Photography at Woodstock and entitled Mitch Epstein: American …
“The most significant finding emerging from the survey Italians and Holocaust Remembrance Day: The evolution of perception from 2014 to 2025 appears to be related to declining attention. Paradoxically, at a time when attention to the Jewish world is at …
Mario Falco (1884–1943) was a professor of canon law; Carlo Foà (1880–1971) was a professor of human physiology; Giuliana Fiorentino Tedeschi (1914–2010) was an assistant in the history of the Italian language. They had vastly different lives and stories, connected …
The European Association for the Preservation and Promotion of Jewish Culture and Heritage (AEPJ) is celebrating its 20th anniversary. The AEPJ has been a key promoter of the European Day of Jewish Culture and numerous initiatives dedicated to highlighting over …
“A wave of emotions swept over me when the Pope came toward me with open arms and embraced me. Two thousand years of history, pain, and suffering weighed upon my heart.” With these words, the then Chief Rabbi of Rome, …
Sami Modiano, Piero Terracina, Elisa Springer. The testimony of extermination camp survivors, broadcast on screens, opened the solemn Memorial Day ceremony at the Quirinale on January 28. Present were the highest authorities of the Italian state and, most importantly, the …
The condition of 13 extermination camps and their sub-camps between 1944 and 1945, starting with those lesser-known in the Baltic region, is the focus of the new exhibition inaugurated at the Shoah Museum Foundation in Rome. Curated by historian Marcello …
The goal was to strip away the rhetoric surrounding Liliana Segre. To move beyond the “very Italian” attempt to turn her into a symbol. And to let her speak today, offering the public a faithful portrait of her story and …
“Years later, as he approached his eighties, Niccolò Introna would feel the need to defend himself for the first time in his life. It was as if he were on trial, not them. Particularly not the two people in question, …
Ruth’s is a kosher vegetarian restaurant next to the synagogue in Florence. Its owner for over twenty years, Tomas Simcha Jelinek, is also a vegetarian. “Everyone has been here. Even the Italian steak king, Dario Cecchini. Outside his realm, he …
After centuries of confinement in the ghetto, the granting of civil rights and freedoms offered Roman Jews the opportunity to build a grand synagogue in that very area, serving as a symbol of their historic shift toward emancipation. The synagogue …
In 2017, the Archdiocese of Palermo’s decision to grant the free use of an ecclesiastical property to establish a synagogue made headlines worldwide. The New York Times captured the moment with the headline: “500 Years After Expulsion, Sicily’s Jews Reclaim …
The film producer Marina Piperno, 89, and Luigi Morando Faccini, 84, are partners both in cinema and in life. They have no children. “Our legacy is our movies, they are our past, our present, and our future,” says Marina, a …
Franco Cesana was still a child when he fell in combat to help liberate Italy from Nazi-fascism. On September 14, 1944, his young life was cut short in Picciniera di Gombola, near Modena, in the Emilia Romagna region. Six days …
After World War II, Louis Goldman became an established photographer in the USA. During the war, he was a young Jewish man hounded by the nazi-fascists. Born in Germany to Polish parents, he fled to Paris and later hid in …
An international conference, press presentations, and events in museums and cultural institutions—these are just some of the initiatives being planned to share the achievements of I-Tal-Ya Books with a wider, non-specialist audience. This ambitious cataloging project, focused on Jewish books …
More than 1,500 rare printed volumes from the Jewish community of Mantua have been cataloged as part of the international I-TAL-YA Books project, led by the Union of the Italian Jewish Communities (UCEI). Architectural photographer and visual artist Giulia Flavia …