By Daniela Fubini People who divide the timeline of their lives among different continents have some adjustment to make when it comes to the more trivial timeline of a single year. For example, May is for me the month of the books. Since when I was growing up, in Turin, it is the “holy month …
By Jonathan Misrachi “This morning was freezing cold, but it was a pretty successful morning! Like everyday, I woke up at 4.30, and after a cup of hot black coffee and two cigarettes I went for a ride on my bicycle and I rushed through Rehov Aganà to reach the port of Akko. Here, as …
By Yaacov Mascetti 6621 and counting. I am writing this article on May 2nd 2015, and that is the number of deaths in the Nepal earthquake. And as the authorities have declared that there is no longer any chance of finding survivors under the rubbles, the death toll keeps rising. As usual in cases like …
By Daniela Fubini* Pesach is the best Jewish holiday, ask anyone. Family reunions, trips abroad or in the surrounding areas with or without hastily organized picnics, family recipes repeated year after year, and over all, Spring, finally here. This year, two basic components were lacking to my perfect Pesach: the recently discovered and now fundamental …
By Yaacov Mascetti A couple of weeks ago I sat in a conference hall on campus at Bar Ilan and heard an outstanding lecture given by the Israeli writer A.B. Yehoshua. The central argument of his lecture was that the Jewish people possess a mythological conception of history – events are lived in a quasi-ahistorical …
By Sergio Della Pergola* Noted author Amos Oz said something which I quote here from memory and which is worthy of reflection: “If I were to fall in the street in any other country in the world there is a risk that people would pass me by without stopping. If I were to fall in …
By Yaakov Mascetti* Years ago, while spending a Shabat with my best friend Amos and his family in Ma’aleh Gilbo’a, I bumped into Rav David Bigman, the rosh yeshiva there, and had a short chat on teaching literature in Israel, studying Torah, etc. Just the standard conversation one has when bumping into someone in the …
By Daniela Fubini* Since over a week, the weather reports on TV have started giving a full report on the weekend just past, and at once a detailed forecast for Tuesday 17th of March, day of the elections. At the beginning I though they did it in order to push Israelis to go out and …
By David Bidussa* Changing around the order of events doesn’t change the result. With just under two centuries of hindsight, it can be argued that the biting words of German poet Heinrich Heine that “wherever they burn books, in the end they will also burn people” are not always accurate. Sometimes they burn people first, …
By Anna Momigliano* We read a lot of reports about the growth of anti-Semitism in Europe – to the point that, after the deadly attacks in Paris and Copenhagen, Netanyahu called for Jews to leave the continent. But is Europe really becoming more inhospitable for Jews? The issue is far too complex to be answered …
By Yaacov Mascetti* A few years ago, roundabout this time of the year, I stumbled across a booklet on Purim entitled “Pur, namely Destiny – Thoughts and Lectures on Purim, by Rav ShaGaR.” Rabbi Rosenberg was the rosh yeshiva in a small but extremely unique rabbinical seminar called “Siach Yitzchak” in Gush Etzion, and was …
You know you have a double life when you have to start separating parts of your life that it’s a lot better if they never meet. In my case, work, and the rest. When you work in marketing, it is really easy to end up treating everything in your life in terms of good and …
By Roberto Della Rocca* In the chapter 12 of Bereshit (Genesis) Jewish history begins with the command that the Eternal One gives to Abram: lech lechà, which translates to something like “Get yourself out,” but could also be taken as “go toward yourself,” i.e. in search of yourself. This process of identification, however, entails a …
By Yaakov Mascetti* In a world of useful people and of useful job, lost in the craziness of useful projects and necessary actions, I have had to come to terms with being useless, unnecessary, not part of any focused process. Literary scholars, like me for example, deal with the nature of literary fiction and invest …
By Benedetto Carucci Viterbi* “Go forth from your country, […] to the land which I will show you”. The first command of God to Abraham leaves the destination undetermined. Every step of his wandering becomes, itself, fulfillment of the divine word. *Benedetto Carucci Viterbi is a rabbi and the principal of Rome Jewish School. The …
By Daniela Fubini When you have a double life like me, even triple at times, there are moments when you really risk a personality disorder. For example, during and after the Charlie Hebdo and Hypercacher terror attacks. Like many, I was glued to any possible screen after the massacre at the magazine, and just when …
By Yaakov Mascetti* Years ago, in the Beit Midrash of the Hesder Yeshiva of Shilo, while feeling out of place in yet another context I had put myself into, I started a havruta with one of the rabbis there – subject of our study sessions was “The Lonely Man of Faith” by Rav Joseph B. …
By Roberto Della Rocca* The passages of the Torah that narrate the “toledot” — i.e. the lineages — of Isaac (Gen. 25:19) and of Jacob (Gen. 37:2) are both preceded by the “toledot” of their respective brothers, Ishmael (Gen. 25:12) and Esau (Gen. 37:1). The manner in which the Torah relates these pairs of “toledot”/stories …
By Daniela Fubini* When I received my Tehudat Zehut (I.D.) number, almost exactly seven years ago, I would have never thought that it would quickly become the most spoken number in my Israeli life, a lot beyond the phone number which is now almost redundant, in the new Facebook and WhatsApp era. The Russian lady, …
By Jonathan Misrachi “A match like this needs special preparation – tension is running high and my heart is beating in my throat. But Maccabi never fails to calm me down, and I don’t think there will be problems tonight.” “The derby is the match that matters the most in the season. It’s irrelevant how …