Altrove/Elsewhere – Ferrara

By Daniel Leisawitz*

This summer, my family and I visited the beautiful synagogue in via Mazzini. After our visit we stopped in a nearby yogurteria for lunch. When I ordered a “piadina with hummus, hold the prosciutto,” the owner looked up at me. Maybe it was the way I pronounced “hummus,” or the fact that I asked for my sandwich without the prosciutto (who in their right mind passes over the chance to eat prosciutto in Italy!?), but the owner’s curiosity was piqued.

“Where are you from?”
“The U.S.”
“Are you regular American, or something else?”
“Well, I’m Jewish.”
“Ah, I thought so. Me, too.”

So, we struck up a conversation, falling into that mode of tribal familiarity that often occurs when two Jews meet each other in an unexpected place. Davide, the owner of the yogurteria, was eager to share with me the story of his family and that of the Jewish community of Ferrara – a small but illustrious community with a fascinating history dating back to at least the thirteenth century. He generously offered to show us around the old ghetto area, and as soon as his co-worker showed up, Davide escorted my family and me out of the restaurant on a meandering tour of the ghetto, pointing out the little details and relating the anecdotes that only a long-time resident can impart.

Unlike the ex-ghetto areas of other Italian cities (Rome and Florence, for example) the architecture of Ferrara’s ghetto is well preserved. The metal gates that locked the Jews into their corner of the city from dusk till dawn have long been dismantled, but one can still see the gaps in the exterior walls once occupied by the massive hinges. Always a relatively small community, Ferrara nonetheless was home to important figures from the Renaissance – for example, the humanist philosopher Azaria de’ Rossi, and the influential business-woman and benefactress Gracia Mendes Nasi – to the modern period – most famously, the renowned writer Giorgio Bassani.

Now, with the recent establishment of the National Museum of Italian Judaism and the Shoah (MEIS – Museo Nazionale dell’Ebraismo Italiano e della Shoah), Ferrara will increasingly become a vital center of Jewish culture in Italy. Certainly, with generous and knowledgeable people like Davide, the Jewish community of Ferrara is in a great position to welcome visitors and scholars interested in exploring Jewish Italian history and culture.

*Daniel Leisawitz is a professor at Muhlenberg College (Allentown, Pennsylvania, USA). The artwork is by Abraham Cresques a 14th-century Jewish Spanish cartographer.