EVENTS Two Weeks of Workshops with Pagine Ebraiche
By Francesca Matalon
The 8th edition of Redazione Aperta, the two-week journalistic workshop held annually by the newsroom of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities (UCEI), ended on Friday. This year, for the first time, the group was composed of the journalists and their special guests. They worked for one week in Trieste and for one week in Venice. In Venice, the participants had the opportunity to attend the events scheduled for the remembrance of the 500th anniversary of the establishment of a Ghetto in the city.
The participants of Redazione Aperta had the chance to meet with many personalities during their two weeks. Among those they met in Trieste, the computational linguist Andrea Bozzi, who invented a software which was used to translate the first volume of the Talmud into Italian; Francesco Bassano, a columnist of Pagine Ebraiche who talked about his experience of visiting the refugee camp of Idomeni, in Greece; and writer Alessandro Marzo Magno, who published books on various topics, from fashion to food, from finance to submarines.
While in Venice, the journalists and guests had the occasion to take part in many of the great events remembering the 500th anniversary of the Venice Ghetto. In particular, together also with UCEI President Noemi Di Segni, they visited the exhibition in Palazzo Ducale “Venezia, gli ebrei e l’Europa” (Venice, the Jews and Europe), focused on the long history of the Jewish presence in Venice, guided by its curator Donatella Calabi.
They also attended some of the open lecturers of the Shakespeare Summer School, The Shylock Project, hosted in the Fondazione Giorgio Cini. Paul Edmonson, researcher at the Shakespeare Institute of Birmingham University spoke about Christianity and the Merchant of Venice, while the president of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust Stanley Wells described the many faces of the character of Shylock.
The following day, British writer Howard Jacobson presented his latest novel, “Shylock is my name”, a re-writing of Shakespeare’s play.
“Venice and its Jewish Community represent not only a finishing point but also a new horizon for the future, being the stage for some exceptional days of work, encounters and culture,” editor-in-chief of Pagine Ebraiche Guido Vitale wrote in a column, whose title was “Thank You”. “Thank you to those who opened their doors, saying: you are at home here. Thank you to those who believed in and made it real for Redazione Aperta, after the start in Trieste, to be at the center of all this. Thank you to Italian Jewry as a whole, represented by UCEI President Noemi Di Segni. Two words, ‘thank you’, that contain all its force and all its hope.”