By Adam Kirsch* The Italian Jewish writer Giorgio Bassani lived to be 84 years old, and he spent most of his adult life in Rome, where he was a prominent editor and man of letters. But almost all of his fiction takes place in Ferrara, the small provincial city where he grew up, during the …
The police report said that “the terrified child, Emma Calò, aged 6, clung, weeping, to the clothes of the concierge…M r and Mrs Berna begged the official to desist from his intentions, but he was adamant.” Told that this heart-wrenching scene took place in Rome in 1944, most Italians could confidently guess the background: the …
By Rachel Myerson* If you haven’t been watching Jamie Oliver’s current television show, “Jamie Cooks Italy,” or at least read the accompanying cookbook, “Jamie Cooks Italy — From the Heart of the Italian Kitchen,” do so immediately. The Naked Chef has, happily, given all the healthy eating/culinary cultural appropriation stuff a rest and returned to …
By Harry D. Wall* Piedmont, the stunningly beautiful region of northern Italy, known for its truffles, wine, and hazelnuts would seem to be an unusual venue for a seminar on the Holocaust. Yet over 30 high school teachers from throughout Italy gathered in Asti, the province capital, in early September for a five-day intensive program …
By Eness Elias* My grandmother died a little more than three weeks ago. Grandmother Eness, for whom I’m named, was born in Tripoli, Libya, and lived there until age 13, when she immigrated with her family to Israel. Here she met my grandfather, Tzion Hasson, who was born and raised in Benghazi. My grandmother’s house …
By Rossella Tercatin* In the first half of the 20th century, the royal family of Italy enjoyed spending their summers in San Rossore, an idyllic estate in the Tuscan city of Pisa. King Vittorio Emanuele III, a passionate shooter, was especially fond of tranquil San Rossore’s good hunting and untouched beaches — so much so …
By Michael Curtis* Two coins in the fountain of the historical analysis of Italy’s role in the Holocaust jostle for which one will be blessed. It remains controversial. The familiar and prevalent view is a positive one of the “good”, benevolent and generous Italians, who sheltered Jews in their country from the “bad” German Nazis. …
By AP and TOI staff Police in northern Italy have recovered two paintings stolen in 2017 during a heist in which one of the accomplices dressed up as a “diplomatic rabbi.” Carabinieri art-squad police displayed the paintings — a Renoir and a Rubens — for reporters Friday in Monza, a city in the northern Lombardy …
By Rosie Whitehouse* Lia Quartapelle has fought for many years for recognition of the role that the Jewish Brigade’s 5,000 soldiers played in the liberation of the Italian peninsula in 1944. Last month, the MP for the centre-left Democratic Party announced a victory: the veterans were to be awarded the centuries-old Gold Medal for Valour …
By Rachel Rummel* Rome’s Jewish quarter isn’t perfumed by the aromas of savory pizza dough. Rather, caramelizing sugars, just-burnt nuts, raisins, and candied citrus waft along the cobblestone. Italians call this creation pizza ebraica, which means “Jewish pizza,” even though it’s a bar cookie. (Technically, the literal translation is “Hebraic pizza.”) Today, only one kosher …
By Philologos* In your preparations for Father’s Day on Sunday, June 17, you may have overlooked Bloomsday the day before. If you did, I submit that you missed the more important event. Fathers come and go. There will always, however, be only one Leopold Bloom, whose life and thoughts on June 16, 1904, along with …
By JTA* Italy’s Jewish community condemned a call by the country’s hardline interior minister to take a census of Italy’s Roma, or Gypsy, population. The Union of Italian Jewish Communities, or UCEI, said in a statement issued Tuesday that the call by Matteo Salvini to create a “registry” of Roma in Italy recalled the anti-Semitic …
By Terence Daley* A decision to name a Rome street after the founder of Italy’s major post-war neofascist party and editor of an infamous Mussolini-era racist journal will be blocked, the mayor of the capital announced Friday. On Thursday Rome city council approved a motion to have a street or square named after Giorgio Almirante, …
By Rosie Whitehouse* Menachem Krigel spent 15 months hiding in a cramped wood store in the home of a Ukrainian peasant who hid him and his mother during World War II. In the weeks after the liberation, as the frontline moved back and forth, they were separated. He has no idea what became of his …
By Ami Spiro* The layout of the Western Wall is hotly debated among different Jewish religious groups. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre is shared – mostly in harmony – among the Greek Orthodox, the Armenian Orthodox, the Catholic Church and several other Christian groups. The Cave of the Patriarchs is strictly divided between the …
By Ben Sales* Gino Bartali had already won the Tour de France once and the Giro d’Italia twice when he started taking the most dramatic bicycle rides of his life. Bartali was an Italian cyclist who grew up in a Tuscan village and whose championships in the mid-1930s were the pride of the nation — …
By Barry Davis* Things are heating up, in the best sense of the term – cycling- wise – in Jerusalem. Last week we had the inaugural GFNY “cycling marathon” in and around the city. Over 1,300 cyclists of varying levels of athletic prowess took part in the 70 km. and 130 km. heats, with some …
By Nicole Winfield* It’s an incident that has stained the Vatican for 160 years: a 6-year-old Jewish boy taken from his family by papal police and brought to Rome to be raised Catholic after church authorities learned his housekeeper had secretly had him baptized. Now the case has reared its head again, with new evidence …
By Jessica Steinberg* When the Ashdod Symphony Orchestra performs a selection of reconstructed music composed by Holocaust victims next week in Jerusalem, it will feel like the fulfillment of a mitzvah, said Italian conductor Francesco Lotoro, using the Hebrew word for a meritorious act. “To play this music feels like a reparation for me,” said …
By David Laskin* Even without a book or a guide, even after two millenniums of crumbling, the image of the seven-branched candelabrum — the Jewish menorah — is unmistakable on the inner wall of the Arch of Titus in the Roman Forum. Stand at the base of the single-passage arch and look up, and the …