For the First Time in 63 Years, the Lights of Hanukkah Shone at the Yeshiva Marini in Livorno

For nearly twenty years, from the post-WWII period until the reopening of a new Temple in Piazza Benamozegh in 1962, the Yeshiva Marini served as the synagogue of the Jewish Community of Livorno, in Tuscany. Once the headquarters of charitable organization, it then became a school for teachers and students expelled from schools in 1938 after Italy adopted racist, anti-Jewish laws. Later, the community gathered there to celebrate Shabbat and religious and social occasions.
Although the oratory is now a museum, it has never stopped functioning as a synagogue. To underscore this, the city’s Chief Rabbi, Umberto Piperno, brought the celebration of Hanukkah back inside the Yeshiva Marini.

This had not happened in 63 years. In its own way, it was a historic event, even though the yeshiva has continued to be the focal point for other rituals over time. One such ritual is Tashlich. It is performed on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. This holiday begins the “Days of Repentance,” which conclude with the Yom Kippur fast, or the Day of Atonement. Tashlich consists of reciting special prayers and symbolically casting one’s sins into flowing water. In Livorno, the rite is carried out around the ancient well of the oratory.

Translated by Matilde Bortolussi and revised by Alessia Tivan, students at the Advanced School for Interpreters and Translators of the University of Trieste, trainees in the newsroom of the Union of the Italian Jewish Communities – Pagine Ebraiche