By Jenni Frazer Italy is finally to recognise the Jewish uncle of a British man as one of the Ardeantine massacre victims after years of futile campaigning by the family was brought to an end by local detective work and a scientific breakthrough. The 1944 shooting of 335 civilians, personally authorised by Hitler, was one …
by Jeremy Rosen On the Seventeenth of Tammuz, we began the period known as the Three Weeks that culminate in the fast of the Ninth of Av (this coming Wednesday night). After Yom Kippur, it is the most significant of our fasts. Jerusalem and the Temple were destroyed twice, first by the Babylonians in 586 …
By Rossella Tercatin* While most of the structure was demolished decades ago, a new water mill to produce electricity is currently being built in the exact same spot. The water mill built by the Einstein family in the village of Canneto sull’Oglio in northern Italy at the end of the 19th century will be used …
By Yaakov Schwartz* Jewish Agency head Isaac Herzog cited a “change of paradigm” during the pandemic era, in which Israel is helping struggling Jewish communities across the Diaspora – instead of the other way around – after initial disbursements from an emergency loan fund helped communities stave off collapse. Addressing a virtual briefing on Wednesday …
By JNS staff* A ground-breaking collaborative effort to create a unified listing of all Hebrew books in Italy has been announced by the Union of Jewish Communities in Italy (UCEI), the Rome National Central Library (BNCR) and the National Library of Israel (NLI) in Jerusalem. The “I-Tal-Ya Books” initiative is being made possible through the …
By Yvette Alt Miller As World War II raged across Europe and the globe, many of the millions of men and women who found themselves imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps, work camps and POW prisons were musicians, used to expressing themselves through music and song. “If you had one hundred men, you can be sure …
By Reuters Sonovia’s reusable anti-viral masks are coated in zinc oxide nanoparticles that destroy bacteria, fungi, and viruses, which it says can help stop the spread of the coronavirus. Tests in the Micro spectrum (Weipu Jishu) lab in Shanghai had demonstrated that the washable fabric used in its masks neutralized more than 90% of the …
By Cnaan Liphshiz* Italian Jews celebrated their community’s first wedding since the country’s synagogues, along with many other institutions, were shut down due to the coronavirus. Marco Del Monte, a Rome-born chef who is studying for a master’s degree in psychology, married Elinor Hanoka, a sixth-year medical student from Israel, on Sunday while wearing face …
By Jessica Steinberg* After a month of COVID-19 seclusion with his wife, four-year-old and in-laws in Zumaglia, a village of 400 in the Piedmont region of northwest Italy, Jerusalem-born musician Yuval Avital couldn’t take it anymore. He took the only computer he had with him, a simple tablet, “and I made a wordless prayer, a …
By Alex Fox* Archaeologists conducting excavations in Jerusalem’s Old City have unearthed a nearly 2,000-year-old bronze coin minted during the Bar Kokhba revolt, the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) announced in a statement earlier this month. An unsuccessful uprising that lasted from 132 to 136 A.D., Bar Kokhba found the Jewish people rebelling against the occupying …
By Cnaan Liphshiz* Synagogues and churches have reopened in northern Italy, where they had been shut down since that area went into lockdown following the first major outbreak of COVID-19 in Europe. The main synagogue of Milan reopened Monday per guidelines agreed-upon last week with government officials, Moked, the Italian-Jewish news site, reported. Synagogues also …
By JTA staff* Catholic bishops in Germany “made themselves complicit” in Nazi crimes according to a report by the German Bishops’ Conference. At a video news conference Wednesday, the president of the conference, Bishop Georg Baetzing, presented the findings of a 23-page report, “German Bishops in the World War,.” “Inasmuch as the bishops did not …
Redacción MARCA Italia recordó este martes al ciclista Gino Bartali, tres veces ganador del Giro y doble campeón del Tour de Francia entre los años 30 y 40, de cuyo fallecimiento se cumple el vigésimo aniversario. Bartali, uno de los símbolos del ciclismo italiano y protagonista de una histórica rivalidad deportiva con su compatriota Fausto …
By Jacob Judah* German researchers working in the Apostolic Archive claim to have found evidence that the Vatican was handed reports about the extent of the Holocaust in 1942, but dismissed some of the information they contained. The seven-person team from the University on Münster claimed that the Vatican had minimised information on the massacres …
By Ansa staff Italian Jews said Monday they would obey a ban on religious gatherings apart from funerals saying that “lives come first” amid the coronavirus emergency. The head of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities (UCEI), Noemi Di Segni, said “the Italians Jews and their institutional representatives will scrupulously adhere to what has been …
By Raphael Ahren* Presidents, prime ministers and other senior officials on Sunday celebrated the centenary of the San Remo Conference as a milestone of Zionist history that paved the way to the establishment of a Jewish state. In late April 1920, the UK, France, Italy, Japan and later the US (as an observer) convened in …
By Kathryn Mckinley The coronavirus can infect anyone, but recent reporting has shown your socioeconomic status can play a big role, with a combination of job security, access to health care and mobility widening the gap in infection and mortality rates between rich and poor. The wealthy work remotely and flee to resorts or pastoral …
By Giovanni Vigna* On March 16, the former secretary general of the Jewish community of Milan, Michele Sciama, became the first Italian Jew to die of COVID-19. To date, Italy has suffered the most COVID-19 related deaths and is second in the world for infections, after China. Sciama was buried in the Jewish cemetery in …
By Julie Carbonara It was a mild early summer evening and Venice’s ghetto quarter was pleasantly busy, rather than packed to the gills like the more touristy sites. It was early Friday afternoon and the ghetto was winding down when a bearded man honed in on me and my companion and said: “My friends, would …
By Cnaan Liphshiz* From his home in Italy’s wealthiest city, Rabbi Moshe Lazar can see deserted streets and squares that were bustling with life only two weeks ago. “Public life is standing still,” he said on Monday. “No one goes out unless they absolutely need to.” Lazar, 85, moved from New York to Milan 62 …