By Joan Nathan* Since Roman times, Jews have lived in this town in northern Provence, which lies on an ancient trade route from Marseille to Bruges, Belgium. This year, about 50 people will hold a communal Passover Seder at the Carpentras Synagogue, built in 1367 and one of the oldest active synagogues in Europe. Today’s …
By Ariel David* It’s another long day of rehearsals in the music conservatory of this small desert town in southern Israel, and Francesco Lotoro is doing what all great conductors do: screaming at his orchestra. “No, no, no! I cannot listen the flutes. You must play più forte, stronger,” he exclaims in a frustrated pidgin …
Jews have been living in Italy since at least the first century C.E., and over the centuries, Italian Jews have created many traditional pasta dishes. Tagliolini colla Crosta is a favorite among Italian Jews, and you can find many variations in different towns throughout Italy. Because an al dente pasta dish is impossible to make …
By Tamara Zieve* The rise of fascism in Italy at the beginning of the 1920s was similar to that of contemporary Italy, the country’s Jewish leader Noemi Di Segni told The Jerusalem Post on Monday, after election results showed that voters favored anti-establishment, far-right parties over the mainstream ones. While stressing that the picture is …
By JTA* Italian police are investigating the theft of a “stumbling stone” Holocaust memorial to an Auschwitz victim. The memorial, a gold-colored cobblestone-sized monument embedded in sidewalk, was stolen last week just a month after it was placed in Collegno, a suburb of Turin in northwest Italy. Collegno Mayor Francesco Casciano called the theft a …
By Associated Press VERONA – When hundreds of hardcore Verona soccer fans chanted “Adolf Hitler is my friend” and sang of their team’s embrace of the swastika, Italian Jewish communities complained, and waited. Local officials initially dismissed the incident — which was filmed and circulated on social media by the so-called “ultras” themselves — as …
By Daniel Leisawitz* Matilda Koen-Sarano was born in Milan in 1939. Her parents were Sephardic Jews born in the city of Aydib (Turkey). Koen-Sarano grew up in Milan, speaking Italian outside the house, and Ladino with her family. She attended the Jewish Community school in Milan and studied languages and literature at the Università Bocconi …
By Laura E. Adkins* One of the perpetual challenges of the Sabbath-observant Jewish cook is finding colorful and flavorful dishes to serve at Saturday lunch that don’t require tons of day-of prep work or any reheating. Enter Caponata, a sweet and tangy Southern Italian medley of cooked vegetables and fruits. Italian cooking, like most regional …
By Andy Massack* Jewish people have been living in Ferrara for over a thousand years. They are in the very stones of this city.” It’s an impressive statement to suit an ambitious project, made by Italian Tourism Minister Dario Franceschini during his speech at the recent inauguration of the National Museum of Italian Judaism and …
By Yaakov Schwarz* Seventy-five years after he helped a group of over 1,000 Jews fleeing Italian-occupied France, 98-year-old Jewish-Italian Enzo Cavaglion was honored in his hometown of Cuneo on Sunday. Cavaglion was presented with the Jewish Rescuers Citation by B’nai Brith World Center-Jerusalem and the Committee to Recognize the Heroism of Jews who Rescued Fellow …
By Talyah Zax* Amedeo Modigliani, the Sephardic Italian painter and sculptor whose work is widely thought to have helped establish Modernism, is a favorite target of art forgers. Such a favorite, in fact, that a shocking third of the artworks shown in a recent exhibit focused on Modigliani in Genoa, Italy may have been fakes. …
By Ben Cohen* Seventy-three years after the end of the Second World War, the gallery of European leaders who proudly collaborated with the Nazi German regime remains firmly established. France had Marshal Philippe Pétain. Romania had the former army officer and prime minister Ion Antonescu. And Italy, of course, had Benito Mussolini, the former socialist …
By Hilary Danailova* From political rhetoric to weather, is there anyone who doubts that 2017 was a year of superlatives and extremes? Our teeth were collectively on edge as world leaders rattled their nuclear sabers and hurricanes battered beloved cities — even people stranded on a desert island probably followed the latest tweets out of …
By JTA* Italy got a Hanukkah present – the opening of a national Jewish museum. The National Museum of Italian Judaism and the Shoah, or MEIS, opened Wednesday with an inaugural temporary exhibit called “Jews, an Italian Story: The First Thousand Years” that illustrates the history of Jewish presence in Italy from ancient Roman times …
By Rob Gloster* Courtney Beck, executive director of the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, was so intrigued by the story of 17th-century Italian Jewish composer Salamone Rossi that she created an entire series examining the work of Jewish musicians from Rossi’s era to today. Over the past three years, Philharmonia’s Jews & Music Initiative has grown into …
By Sian Gibby* Seventy-four years ago, on Dec. 1, 1943, Benito Mussolini ordered Italian police to arrest all Jews in the country as enemy aliens. One of the Italian Jews rejected by his government that day was Emanuele Artom, a young Torinese scholar of extraordinary intellectual power who possessed a startling sensitivity, as well as …
By The Economist* “SOMETIME, somewhere, between Africa and Hindustan, lay a river so Jewish it observed the Sabbath.” “Belonging”, the second volume of Simon Schama’s story of the Jews, begins with this pious waterway, and continues with a cast of characters so extraordinary that some seem hardly more believable than the Sabbath-keeping Sambatyon river. David …
By Alan Rosenbaum* There is more to Dr. Anna Padoa, 48, of Tel Aviv, than meets the eye. Her last name is similar to the name of the northern Italian city where she spent much of her childhood, Padua, but in fact her family hails from a different Padua, located in Portugal or Spain, and …
By Aiden Pink* A volume of the first Talmud to be printed in Italy in 500 years has been donated to the Library of Congress. “Italy is the place where the Talmud was printed for the first time. … It is a very symbolic event that we wanted to share with the wider public,” Rabbi …
By Benjamin Glatt* More than 70 years after Romans stepped aside and let the Nazis deport the city’s Jews, Rome once again made the declaration that the only way to defeat the antisemitism of the present is by remembering the antisemitism of the past. On October 16, 1943, more than 1,000 Jewish residents of Rome …