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Qui Firenze - Luce sulla sinagoga
Qui New York - The New Mobility
of Italian
Jewish Press: Pagine Ebraiche
Alessandro Cassin (Centro Primo Levi) interviews
Guido Vitale
 In a
time when media empires are crumbling and journalism seems like a dying
profession, the Italian Jewish world is going against the grain.
In the fall
a new Italian monthly reached newsstands nationwide: Pagine Ebraiche (Jewish
Pages) produced by journalist Guido Vitale for UCEI, the Union of Italian Jewish
Communities.
Vitale appears to be an extremely nimble David among the slow
moving Goliaths of traditional print press. With the scrappiness of early Jewish
entrepreneurs and bare bone resources used to the max, he invented a smart,
provocative Jewish monthly with across the board appeal.
Pagine Ebraiche is
the flagship of a new and ambitious program, which includes an online Jewish
information portal, Moked.it, the daily newsletter, l'Unione Informa , a
specialized press review, and, as of this month, HaTikwa, the magazine of
Italian Jewish Youth. Through these bold initiatives, Mr. Vitale and his
collaborators have established a dynamic Jewish media presence able to engage in
constructive dialogue with non-Jewish Italians. In the few months since its
inception, Pagine Ebraiche, which reaches all members of Parliament, media
personalities as well as prominent cultural figures, has proved to be a vital
forum with contributions by noted intellectuals such as Anna Foa, Sergio Della
Pergola, Vittorio Dan Segre, David Bidussa and Elena Loewenthal.
As conceived
by Vitale, its role is not to replace the existent Jewish press, but rather “to
speak to the external world”.  Pagine
Ebraiche (www.paginebraiche.it) published in color, with a cover
price €3, features well written news reports, essays, commentaries, cultural
pieces, interviews and more. Among other things, the first issue featured an
unpublished essay by Primo Levi about the role of images in the elaboration of
memories.
Increasingly in recent years Italians have been fascinated by
Jewish culture. The proliferation of festivals devoted to Jewish themes,
debates, plays, concerts, even food tasting events throughout the year, seem
disproportionate to the demographics. Italy’s estimated 30.000 Jews remain a
very small, if culturally overexposed minority in a country of 62 million
people. Jews have lived in Italy since ancient Roman times; the Jewish community
in Rome is the oldest continuous Jewish presence of the Diaspora. Yet for many
Italians, their Jewish fellow citizens they remain little known.
Guido
Vitale, 51, was born in Rome but has spent most of his life Trieste. After 3
years in the US, he moved back to Milan. The headquarter of Pagine Ebraiche is
in Rome, but his small editorial staff is distributed between Florence, Milan,
Turin and Venice. He is a man on the go.
Alessandro
Cassin: What was your day like today?
Guido Vitale: Today was hectic,
but not atypical: in the morning I was in Trieste, by noon I went to Milan for
the printing of the first issue of HaTikwa, spent the day in meetings there and
in the evening joined my staff in Rome. This happens often, my friends joke that
I live on trains.
I guess it’s no coincidence that in the first issue
of Pagine Ebraiche you had a story about Italian high velocity trains
...
These trains are transforming Italy, or at least the way one can live
here. High speed trains, which I ride almost on a daily basis, allow travel from
Rome to Milan in 3 hours, from Florence to Bologna in 30 minutes, and so on.
This becomes more significant if you consider that the majority of Italian Jews
live precisely along the line connecting Rome, Florence, Milan and Venice, which
are all linked via high velocity trains. My editorial staff takes full advantage
of this new mobility, allowing all of us to converge in Milan for lunch and then
return to our respective cities for the rest of the work
day.
Who is the target for a magazine like Pagine
Ebraiche?
The short answer is we are still finding out. My feeling is that there
is a vast reservoir of interest in Jewish themes on the part of the non - Jewish
public opinion. This has many different reasons. One can find evidence of this
in a whole range of phenomena, not least the remarkable success of Israeli
contemporary literature among Italian readers.
My contention is that this
interest for Jewish art and culture could also generate an interest for the
world of media and information, which up to now has not been explored. In other
words, I am convinced that a high quality Jewish magazine (even a weekly) should
and could interest a wider readership if marketed properly.
The first issue
of Pagine Ebraiche (numero zero) was launched at the Turin Book Fair last May,
distributed for free with a printing of 100.000 copies. In Italy, opinion
dailies such as Il Foglio and Il Riformista, respectively from the right and the
left of the political spectrum, sell only 10,000 copies a day. Pagine Ebraiche
continued on newsstands as a monthly since October
2009.
How did you get involved in all of this?
At the beginning of 2008, the
Union of Italian Jewish Communities, an umbrella organization which links
Italy's twenty-one Jewish Communities, initiated a new communications strategy.
The goal was to increase the connection among Italian Jews and to improve
communication with the outside world. I was offered to direct the Communication
and Culture departments of UCEI. The following March, the Board of Italian
Jewish communities (with the participation of the presidents of all twenty one
Jewish communities) met in Livorno and unanimously approved a project for a
national Jewish paper open to the general public opinion. From a professional
standpoint I am rather satisfied with what we have achieved in these first
months of activity, but I would like to stress the fact that none of it would
have been possible without the efforts and support of the advisers and board
members of the Unione delle Comunita Ebraiche Italiane. Thanks to their vision
and foresight, Jewish information in Italy is taking bold innovative steps
ahead. My role centers around how Italian society perceives the Jewish
minority.
A strategic and vital problem for the future of Italian
Judaism.
Absolutely. And one in need of revitalization. Let me give you an
example. It is not easy to evaluate how a minority is thought of by the general
population. One instrument is the so-called “otto per mille”(an option in the
tax return to devote eight euro per each thousand euro of income, to a
designated religious denomination). Within the Italian Jewish population the
revenues from the “Otto per Mille “ have been largely unsatisfactory. In recent
years the revenue has been about ten times smaller than the amount obtained by
the Italian Protestant minority, five times smaller than that of the “valdesi”
and Italian Calvinist (numerically, a percentage equivalent to the Italian
Jews).
Apart from it’s size how would you characterize the Italian Jewish
minority?
It is a group with a strong identity cemented over time. Yet it has
also important weaknesses: most notably a proverbial litigiousness, regional
rivalry, strong territorial divisions which make any attempt at unity extremely
problematic.
I can only imagine the resistance at the idea of a national Jewish
magazine...
Of course we caused some perplexity, because up to now, as far as print
information goes, everything had been conceived on a local level. For instance
the Community of Rome produces a bulletin, the Community of Milan produces
another bulletin, all for the use of their specific communities. The process of
establishing a national Jewish publication could occur neither painlessly, nor
without opposition.
How do you manage to contain the costs while
producing a high quality and widely distributed
publication?
I have adopted strategies and technologies that allow me to produce a
high quality - low cost publication. We print 30,000 copies of Pagine Ebraiche
per issue. 12,000 of which get sent to Italian Jewish families. It is also sent
to all members of Parliament and to opinion leaders, while the rest is divided
between newsstands and subscriptions, reaching a primarily non-Jewish
readership.
How effective is the Italian Jewish minority in communicating with the
society at large?
I believe there is ample room for improvement. Until
recently, the Italian Jewish Communities were spending 1,3 to 1,5 million Euro
per year on media information with very modest results. Again, by comparison,
the Valdesi, whose media budget is only 400.000 Euro per year, manage to produce
a national weekly which breaks even...
The Italian national media often
picks up your stories.
We are proud to see this. My interview with
Arnoldo Foa in our March issue was picked up by the opinion daily Il Riformista,
as many of our pieces have been in the past. Even the Vatican paper,
l’Osservatore Romano has quoted something from each of our issues. We are
pleased with the interest across the board of the political spectrum that we
generated.
What are the long-term goals of your
publication?
Our “publisher “ is the Union of Italian Jewish Communities, a
complicated and “Byzantine” organization. At present they have hired me and are
satisfied with our product. I cannot speak for the future. I am interested in
proving that there is room for a quality national Jewish publication, certainly
a monthly, and probably a weekly.
The same team that produces
Pagine Ebraiche works on all the your sister
publications?
In order to keep the cost at a minimum, I have assembled a nuclear
editorial staff, which includes two writers and our graphic designer in the
central office in Rome, five journalist trainees (in Milan, Turin, Florence and
Venice), and the collaboration of 80 unpaid contributors. This staff works
simultaneously on our different projects: our flagship Pagine Ebraiche; UCEI
Informa, a highly professional press review, available in PDF early in the
morning; Moked.it, the portal of Italian Jewry and HaTikwa, the magazine of the
Italian Jewish youth. All in all our staff produces about 8000 stories per
year.
HaTikwa is your last born, how did it come
about?
As is often the case with Italian Jewish matters, we built the future
by looking at the past. HaTikwa was the historic magazine of Italian Jewish
youth founded in 1949, later abandoned. Our challenge was to resurrect an
illustrious cadaver. We just went to press with the first issue, a monthly and
already 13.000 copies.
I know you are proud to have pulled it off on a
shoestring budget, can you give us some numbers?
The entire production of our first
issue cost us a total of 1000 Euro.
How is that
possible?
I used an existing production structure (that of Pagine Ebraiche); we
had a graphic designer already in place, editors, proofreaders, and a staff of
volunteer collaborators. None of this would have been possible at these costs
had we not built on existing human and technical
resources.
Does this reflect a business model or
philosophy?
It is simply doing the maximum with what is at hand. I am not at all
against spending and investing in people and structures. What I am very
concerned with is keeping close tabs on the balance between investment and
output.
How do you communicate with your staff?
They are young and quick to take
advantage of the best that communication technology and rapid transportation can
offer a group of like-minded, determined people. It does require a particular
kind of mental flexibility. I remember that for our first issue most of the
editors collaborated long distance without ever meeting one another face to
face...
By now I imagine every one has met?
The editorial staff meets
regularly in different locations, but many of our 80 contributors live abroad,
in Israel, in the US, or elsewhere in Europe.
The idea of a traveling editorial
board is at odds with that of static, insular Italian Jewish
Communities…
Indeed! Yet this is the life I have
chosen.
Aside from newspapers, magazines and websites, what are other channels
of communication for the Jewish community?
There is television where my
colleagues at UCEI in collaboration with RAI produce the program “Sorgente di
Vita”, but quite frankly I am not a TV expert, and believe it is extremely hard
to estimate its efficacy. Personally, I don’t even own a TV. A more recent
phenomenon, one with a sizable growth potential, is the wave of cultural
festivals with Jewish themes. This last September, NEGBA, a Festival of Jewish
Culture, took place in Apulia and attracted a wide audience. I am not in a
position to judge the quality of the programming, but from my perspective, the
concern lies with the relationship between investment and quantifiable results.
My feeling is that with the budget of a festival like that, one could have
obtained more visibility and lasting results by producing a high quality,
influential, national weekly magazine...
Seen from abroad this interest
for all things Jewish in Italy appears to have become something of a trend. Do
you sense a danger of overexposure?
As far as the media is concerned
there is certainly an overexposure: our press review gathers over 100.000
entries per year regarding Jewish subjects! What we should be asking ourselves
is how to capitalize on this outside interest and turn it into something
culturally significant. I don’t think we have begun to understand how to take
advantage of the enormous curiosity that Jewish cultural life awakens in the
population at large.
The multifaceted realities of the Italian Jewish
Communities appear too complex and often contradictory for unambiguous
definitions.
I agree! If in some respects Italian society seen from abroad appears
like an enigma, so does Italian Jewry. In many ways it is a rather backward
looking community, yet from time to time it displays instances of being on the
cutting edge.
How do you feel that the Italian Jewish community has changed in
recent years?
Today it is undergoing a profound cultural and demographic crisis, as
is Italian society as a whole. At the same time, the Italian Jewish minority
enjoys the luxury that comes from living off a rich cultural inheritance,
deriving from twenty centuries of uninterrupted Jewish
life.
Following Pope Benedict VXI visit to the Synagogue in Rome, Pagine
Ebraiche came out the following day with the speed of a daily, providing
in-depth coverage...
Clearly the Pope’s visit to the synagogue was an
important media event, but for us it was mostly an opportunity to make a point,
to show that we could have the capacity to produce a high quality weekly. The
Pope’s visit ended at 7:30 on Sunday night and by 8 AM the next morning Pagine
Ebraiche was on newsstands with full coverage, in Rome, Milan, Turin, Florence,
etc., just like any other Italian daily.
What are some of the remarkable
stories you published in Pagine Ebraiche that come to
mind?
I have never been interested in sports journalism. Now one of my
journalist trainees, Adam Smulevich, 24 year old,
has produced a series of sports stories that I have read with absolute
fascination. Further, there was an investigative piece about how the treasures
from some Italian synagogues ended up in Israel, and finally a piece about two
Dutch mayors, one in Amsterdam who is Jewish and one in Rotterdam who is Muslim.
I believe these are just examples of new and different ways to write about
Jewish experiences in the contemporary world. Nobody else is doing
this.
Have you considered an English edition?
I am flattered by the interest in
our magazine from abroad. I have thought about translating a selection of our
stories of greater international interest, but for now it is only one of the
many projects in our drawers...
Alessandro
Cassin
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