By Daniel Leisawitz* “L’estate 2017 non verrà ricordata solo per il caldo, ma anche e soprattutto per i gravi problemi di siccità”. According to Dr. Michele Brunetti, researcher at ISAC-CNR (Institute of Atmospheric Sciences and Climate – Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche), “[the] summer of 2017 will not only be remembered for the heat, but also, …
By Yaakov Mascetti* There is a general understanding that “happiness” is an emotion experienced by the individual upon attaining complete satisfaction – the state of perpetual search, of yearning, and of disjointedness is, on the contrary, seen as one of tribulation, and of lack of happiness. According to this logic, utter individuality is synonymous with …
By Daniela Fubini* You live part of your life somewhere in the large portion of the globe that is not Israel, then one day you choose to pack up and come live in Israel and honestly, the last thing you’d think will change in your life is the irremovable, unsinkable and utterly unshrinkable Yom Kippur. …
By Sergio Della Pergola* Israel is living a passport drama this summer. The Ministry of Interior ordered that the new passports will have to be biometric, which means they’ll have a chip with the owner’s picture and fingerprints. This system is quite common in other countries including Italy. The new passport allows faster border crossings …
By Susanna Calimani* Last week, Piero Terracina was in town. Invited by Italia-Altrove Frankfurt, a local Italian organization, he told us a bit about himself and about his experiences, about his life before and after Auschwitz. He tried to condense everything in less than two hours, but actually it was less than one hour, since …
By Yaakov Mascetti* Signs are everywhere. We move through the myriads of signs that envelop our lives, carelessly, with what has to be a partially ignorant nonchalance, a cognitive impurity we carry around since the Fall. In a cosmos filled with signs, man has enforced upon himself this blinding ignorance, and has then yearned, in …
By Daniel Leisawitz* As we made our way well into the summer, the thoughts of many Americans, just as those of many Italians, turned toward taking a vacation: that brief respite from routine that helps us to break away, if only momentarily, from our responsibilities and obligations… at least in theory. In Italy, where most …
By Daniela Fubini No, the war of the beauties in Israel did not happen or not yet at least. Blondie Bar Refaeli is covering all possible ads on TV and street posters and has one baby, one on his/her way and a quiet husband. Brunette Gal Gadot is raging on screen as Wonder Woman …
By David Bidussa* The papers, library and documents that belonged to Carlo and Nello Rosselli were brought back to Florence after many vicissitudes and a real risk of being lost forever. This is not good news only for historians. There are acts that are important because they represent a story that does not have an …
By Daniel Leisawitz* On Friday, June 2, Italy celebrated the Festa della Repubblica – the annual commemoration of the founding of the Republic of Italy. After the fall of the Fascist dictatorship and the end of the Second World War, Italy was faced with the choice of which form of government the state should adopt. …
By Yaakov Mascetti* The wanderings of the people of Israel in the desert should not be considered as a mere stage in a long process that ends with the arrival in the Promised Land and the conquest thereof: the desert is, or should be considered as, the manifestation of an unattainable objective, and a critically …
By Benedetto Carucci Viterbi Bemidbar/Numbers: only in the desert – a paradoxical place of words and silence without distractions – it is possible to be counted without being just a simple number.
By Benedetto Carucci Viterbi* “If you walk…” (Leviticus 26,3). The real meaning of a journey is in the journey rather than in the destination. *Benedetto Carucci Viterbi is a rabbi.
By Daniel Leisawitz* This past Tuesday, President Obama returned to the world stage with a speech and conversation at the Seeds & Chips Conference on food and technology in Milan, Italy. Although the contents of Mr. Obama’s remarks were non-partisan, politics was not far from the surface, as the New York Times headline declared: “Obama …
By Yaakov Mascetti* When Abraham undergoes ritual circumcision, he does so because of a Divine commandment – through the ritual he enters the covenant, and once he’s in he introduces every male in his household, circumcising the flesh of their foreskins (Gen. 17). Entering the covenant entails a rite of passage, from one status to …
By Daniela Fubini* Soon after arriving in Israel, we learn that we must be ready to any question asked in the most random places and by the most random strangers. At point blank, you are typically asked where you are from, where are your ancestors from until the third or fourth generation, how much you …
Guido Vitale “Jew is a funny word; the comedian Louis C. K. once said, because ‘Jew’ is the only word that is the polite thing to call a group of people and the slur for the same group”. (Mark Oppenheimer – The New York Times April 23rd 2017)
By Susanna Calimani* My mother’s tradition wants it raw, ground with an old grinder that only lately has been replaced with a newer and rust-free one. It is made with apples, dates, raisins, almonds, walnuts and a bit of wine. Then it is scooped into small bowls, sprinkled with cinnamon and decorated with pine nuts …
By Yaakov Mascetti* When Rabban Gamliel states, in the Mishnah tractate of Pesachim 10:5, that “in every generation a person must regard himself as though he personally had gone out of Egypt,” traditionally one tends to bend the accepted conception of time and diachronic depth / distance, into a synchronic merging of moments – the …
By Daniela Fubini* I found myself recently in a field of wheat, during a quiet walk over the weekend. The wheat field was already partially harvested, and on the ground here and there I could see and pick up broken ears of wheat. Funny thing, I only saw them on the way back from the …