By Rebecca Abrams* We are so small between the stars, so large against the sky, wrote the late, great Leonard Cohen, and perhaps it is this lurking fear of eclipse that explains our desire to preserve the material proof of our presence. Museums are not only treasure troves of material proof that we humans are …
By Talya Zax* In the first room of the Jewish Museum’s new exhibit “Modigliani Unmasked,” a case displays two issues of La Libre Parole, the early-20th century French anti-Semitic newspaper founded by Édouard Drumont. The covers of both feature caricatures of Jewish men, their features overblown and bulbous. Hung on a nearby wall is Modigliani’s …
By Gabe Friedman* After weary and ravenous American Jews file out of Yom Kippur services, many return home to a similar meal each year to break the fast: typically bagels, lox and assorted accoutrements. For some, it’s an anticipated and tasty tradition. But for others, it can be an anticlimactic end to a day of …
By AP The Giro d’Italia cycling race will begin in Israel next year, marking the first time any leg of the sport’s three Grand Tours will take place outside of Europe. Organisers said on Thursday that details of the exact route of the three stages to be held in Israel will be announced next week, …
By JTA* The Jewish community in Livorno, on Italy’s Tuscan coast, postponed its European Day of Jewish Culture events as “a sign of mourning,” after flash floods due to torrential rain left at least five people dead in the city. Four of the victims were members of one family, media reports said. “The Livorno Jewish …
By Lisa Palmieri-Billig* A highly significant event in the history of Catholic-Jewish relations, as well as of intra-Jewish relations, took place August 30. The top representatives of the world’s three main bodies of Orthodox Judaism from Europe, Israel and the U.S., presented Pope Francis with a memorable document entitled “Between Jerusalem and Rome”. Its significance …
By Cynthia Zarin* In this summer of our discontent, I’ve been rereading “Family Lexicon,” the autobiographical novel by the Italian writer Natalia Ginzburg, which was recently reissued by The New York Review of Books, in a new, attentive translation by Jenny McPhee. The book, first published in Italy, in 1963, comes at its subject, which …
In a rare and invaluable opportunity for Rebbetzens based across the UK, 40 ladies travelled to Rome from as far afield as Cardiff, Newcastle and Liverpool to participate in a 2-day leadership development trip that aimed to supercharge British communities from the top down. The trip, held over Sunday and Monday, comes as the latest …
by David Harris* Fifty years ago this month, the world was transfixed by the war raging between Israel and its Arab neighbors. The war was triggered by blood-curdling threats from Cairo and Damascus to annihilate the Jewish state, troop mobilization toward Israeli borders, and Arab calls on the UN to remove peacekeeping troops in the …
By Rachel Ament* We often draw empathy, not from our imagination, but from seeing our past staring back at us. As the global Jewish community grapples with how best to respond to the Syrian refugee crisis, we remember our own doomed history in the area. Jewish life in 20th and 21st-century Syria was marked by …
By Mara Vigevani* “Unfortunately, Tariq Ramadan has not been able to reach Italy because of health reasons and therefore in the afternoon he will not be physically present at the presentation of the book ‘The Muslim and Agnostic’, as scheduled in the Erickson Center in Trento.” With this statement, a representing of the Erickson Center …
By Lianne Kolirin* The 11th stage of Italy’s annual Giro d’Italia cycling race started today in front of a cycling museum dedicated to a Righteous Gentile, Gino Bartali. Mr Bartali was an Italian champion cyclist who saved hundreds of Jews from the Nazis. Today’s race kicked off in Ponte a Ema, just outside Florence, where …
By Rossella Tercatin* ROME — During a historic meeting with Pope John Paul II in 2004, then-Sephardic and Ashkenazi chief rabbis of Israel Shlomo Amar and Yona Metzger reportedly threw caution and diplomacy to the wind and asked after the whereabouts of Judaism’s lost Menorah. It was the first official visit of Israel’s highest religious …
By Kirsten Schlewitz* When the waiter plucked the flat, rectangular plate between us, I felt my nose wrinkle involuntarily. Across the table my friend shook his head. “I wanted to hit the cicchetti bars. I wanted more of the baccalà mantecato.” I, too, loved that particular Venetian cicchetto, a dish involving creamed cod that’s way …
By Allon Sinai* Leone Efrati was thousands of kilometers away from Europe when World War II broke out in September 1939. He should have been safe from the Holocaust. Born in Rome on May 16, 1916, the Jewish-Italian boxer moved to the United States in 1938 in the hope of advancing his career. At the …
By Saviona Mane* Rome’s Jewish community decided to boycott this year’s annual Liberation Day March on April 25, a national holiday in Italy. Its members will stay away from the march organized by the National Association of Italian Partisans (ANPI) because Palestinian groups will be participating, according to an announcement issued by the head of …
By Sarah Moosazadeh The Jewish community in Rome is one of the oldest in Europe and is where Breman Jewish Heritage Museum community engagement director Ghila Sanders has her roots. Rome has roughly 13,000 Jews in an overall population of about 4 million, Sanders said. Ghila Sanders and her husband are ready for a Roman-style …
By Elisabetta Povoledo* Excavations that unearth some artifact or another are common enough in Rome, but archaeologists monitoring a building restoration were taken aback when they found 38 well-preserved skeletons that they believe were once buried in the long-vanished Campus Iudeorum, or Field of the Jews. Scholars knew that Jews were buried in the Trastevere …
By Naomi Zeveloff* Thirty gold coins were found amid the remains of a Crusader-era shipwreck discovered off the coast of Acre in northern Israel last week. The coins are “florins” from Florentine, Italy, according to the Israel Antiquities Authority. The coins likely sank with the ship, which was one of several vessels to try to …
By Ariel David It wasn’t enough for the Romans to enslave the Jews, plunder Judea, conquer Jerusalem, destroy the Temple and then erect a massive triumphal arch to commemorate those feats of war for millennia to come: They had to build a second, even larger monument to celebrate their victory. Archaeologists in Rome have uncovered …