NEWS In Pisa, A Garden to Remember Rabbi Toaff

pisa toaffBy Pagine Ebraiche staff
 
The city of Pisa has dedicated a public walk and a section of a garden to the memory of Rabbi Elio Toaff two years after he passed away.
 
Rabbi Toaff, historic chief rabbi of Rome, where he served for many decades, was born in Livorno in 1915 but studied in Pisa at the university and graduated in 1939 after the anti-Jewish Laws had already been promulgated. From Pisa he later joined the Resistance movement in the partisan Garibaldi Brigade. The city always remained important for him.
 
“We owed something to the figure of Rabbi Elio Toaff, we very much wanted to dedicate a place to him,” commented the deputy mayor Paolo Ghezzi, who promoted the initiative. “The public walk that we are inaugurating is meaningful as a place for reflection; a place where people can come and think.”
 
“Rabbi, intellectual, and man of dialogue, Toaff was the most important Jewish figure in Italy in the twentieth century,” said the president of the Jewish Community of Pisa Maurizio Gabbrielli.  
 
Attending the ceremony were among others, the mayor of the city Marco Filippeschi and the four children of rabbi Toaff, Miriam, Daniel, Gadi and Ariel.
 
The public walk is located in the historic Scotto Garden.