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March 14, 2016 - Adar II 4, 5776

eventS

Venice, When History Deserves
Consciousness Raising

By Roberto Della Rocca*

Venetian Ghetto has got a very peculiar history, compared to other Jewish communities which have experienced a similar condition of forced segregation during the long Jewish diaspora. Despite being Venice the brain behind the creation of ghettos, inside the physically relegated Venetian Jewish community a cultural environment characterized by the interaction between the community itself and the external world flourished; this is not what happened in Rome, where the Church imposed miserable conditions of life and constant harassment over the Ghetto inhabitants, causing social and cultural backwardness. This is why the unique history of the Ghetto of Venice is a history of consciousness-raising related to the "other". The delicate condition of the Venetian Jewish community represents a crossroads that made people come to tough and uncompromising decisions that, at the same time, were open to the external world.

*Roberto Della Rocca is a rabbi. This article has been translated by Ilaria Modena, student at the Scuola superiore interpreti e traduttori di Trieste, ‎who is doing her apprenticeship in the newsroom of Pagine Ebraiche.

NEWS

European Day of Jewish Culture 2016
Will Focus on Languages

By Francesca Matalon

Hebrew, of course, but also Aramaic, and then Ashkenazi Yiddish, Sephardi Ladino, Greek, Russian and also Jewish-Italian dialects should not be forgotten. All of these are Jewish languages that will be the subject of the upcoming European Days of Jewish Culture, the annual event promoted by the European Association for the Preservation and Promotion of Jewish Culture and Heritage (AEPJ). In Italy the day chosen is September 18, and as usual synagogues, museums and many other Jewish sites of all communities and cities in the country will welcome citizens and tourists with many cultural initiatives, among which are guided tours, shows, and wine and culinary events.

NEWS

Tunisia Will Plant Its Garden of The Righteous

By Daniel Reichel

For the first time, an Arab country will have its Garden of the Righteous. And that country is Tunisia, announced the Italian minister of Foreign Affairs, Paolo Gentiloni. The Garden will be dedicated to all those who fought or are still fighting for freedom and democracy and it is inspired by the one created in Milan, on the Monte Stella.
“We thought of Tunisia because it is a most symbolic and crucial country, placed at the heart of the Mediterranean,” wrote Gentiloni in a message that was read during the European Day for the Righteous in Milan on March 6 (in the picture, the mayor of the city Giuliano Pisapia during the ceremony).

CULTURE

Umberto Eco: "I Unmask the Plots
of the Ones Who Generate Hatred"

By Guido Vitale*

You can be whoever you want to; you can count on an endless authority; you can receive the title for being the most appreciated and well-known Italian, living intellectual; you might have distributed millions and millions of copies of your works all around the world; you can be a legend; and you can even be that big to not have to emphasize your importance to others. But there is nothing you can do when it is the eve of your debut: it is always an open door to the unknown. It always brings that little bit of anxiety, curiosity and impatience, that everyone one faces in their own way. Will they like it? Will they understand it? Will it provoke passions, criticisms? Will it suffer some attacks? Under the sweet light of his beautiful house in Milan that borders the Sforza Castel, the interviewed, apparently relaxed, is waiting for the questions to come, while he is sinking in his candid armchair. Nevertheless, maybe he does not want to admit it out loud, not even professor Eco can avoid the rule of the eve; it is evident while he is giggling and he is chewing his cigarette holder without any cigarette in his mouth.

*This article has been translated in English by Giulia Paris, student at the Scuola superiore interpreti e traduttori di Trieste, ‎who is doing her apprenticeship within the newsroom of Pagine Ebraiche.

BECHOL LASHON - Français Au dîner du CRIF, Valls associe antisionisme et antisémitisme de Cécile Chambraud* Pour son dernier diner annuel à la tète du Conseil représentatif des institutions juives de France (CRIF), Roger Cukierman aurait pu rêver d'un contexte moins sombre. Devant les quelque 80o personnes qui se pressaient, lundi 7 mars, dans un grand hôtel parisien, devant une dizaine de ministres et presque autant de candidats à la primaire de l'opposition, le président du CRIF, qui achèvera son troisième mandat en mai, a décrit la situation actuelle des juifs en France : «Nous vivons une vie retranchée. Nous avons le sentiment angoissant d'être devenus des citoyens de deuxième zone. Cet ostracisme isole et traumatise. Mais est-ce la faute des Français juifs si ce communautarisme progresse?» *Le Monde, 9/3/2016 Lire la suite	pilpul The Unbearable Complexity of Life By Yaakov Mascetti* It's all lapsing back into senseless violence, anger, fear and militant need for revenge. Once again, I feel this urge to yell at people, to scream at the intrusive aggression of a blade into my consciousness. It's all surreal. I wake up at 6:00, make myself coffee, make sandwiches for the kids, ride my bike to the rendez-vous with my student Matanya who will give me a ride to Bar Ilan, where I will teach acts 3 to 5 of "King Lear": in the car I look at my phone and the updates from Ynet (Yediot Aharonot Online), stabbings, cars driven into bus-stops, death. *Yaakov Mascetti holds a Ph.D. and teaches at the Department of Comparative Literature, Bar Ilan University. Read more

IT HAPPENED TOMORROW More Open By Guido Vitale "The Venice ghetto was always more open to the city than the Roman ghetto, which was beset by the conversion mania of the church". (Riccardo Calimani, The New York Times). Read more	altrove/elsewhere The Mission of Cinema and Son of Saul By Daniel Leisawitz* When I first read about the premise for the movie Son of Saul, which has just won the Oscar for best foreign language film, I cringed. It is a film about a member of the Auschwitz Sonderkommando – the “special squadron” of camp inmates who were forced to aid the Nazis in their extermination of the Jews of Europe by leading people to the gas chambers, removing their bodies after their murder, and transporting them to the crematoria. Instinctively, the film seemed to me to be an injudicious attempt to plumb the depths of the Shoah narrative in order to find a facet of the history that has yet to be represented on screen. *Daniel Leisawitz, professor at Muhlenberg College (Allentown, Pennsylvania, USA). The artwork is by Abraham Cresques a 14th-century Jewish Spanish cartographer. Read more

moked è il portale dell'ebraismo italiano

This newsletter is published under difficult conditions. The editors of this newsletter are Italian journalists whose native language is Italian. They are willing to offer their energy and their skills to give international readers the opportunity of learning more about the Italian Jewish world, its values, its culture and its traditions.
In spite of all our efforts to avoid this, readers may find an occasional language mistake. We count on your understanding and on your help and advice to correct these mistakes and improve our publication.

Pagine Ebraiche International Edition is published by the Union of Italian Jewish Communities (UCEI). UCEI publications encourage an understanding of the Jewish world and the debate within it. The articles and opinions published by Pagine Ebraiche International Edition, unless expressly stated otherwise, cannot be interpreted as the official position of UCEI, but only as the self-expression of the people who sign them, offering their comments to UCEI publications. Readers who are interested in making their own contribution should email us at desk@ucei.it
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© UCEI - All rights reserved - The articles may only be reproduced after obtaining the written permission of the editor-in-chief. Pagine Ebraiche - Reg Rome Court 199/2009 – Editor in Chief: Guido Vitale - Managing Editor: Daniela Gross.
Special thanks to: Francesco Moises Bassano, Susanna Barki, Amanda Benjamin, Monica Bizzio, Angelica Edna Calò Livne, Eliezer Di Martino, Alain Elkann, Dori Fleekop, Daniela Fubini, Benedetta Guetta, Sarah Kaminski, Daniel Leisawitz, Annette Leckart, Gadi Luzzatto Voghera, Yaakov Mascetti, Francesca Matalon, Jonathan Misrachi, Anna Momigliano, Giovanni Montenero, Elèna Mortara, Sabina Muccigrosso, Lisa Palmieri Billig, Jazmine Pignatello, Shirley Piperno, Giandomenico Pozzi, Daniel Reichel, Colby Robbins, Danielle Rockman, Lindsay Shedlin, Michael Sierra, Rachel Silvera, Adam Smulevich, Simone Somekh, Rossella Tercatin, Ada Treves, Lauren Waldman, Sahar Zivan.

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© UCEI - Tutti i diritti riservati - I testi possono essere riprodotti solo dopo aver ottenuto l'autorizzazione scritta della Direzione. Pagine Ebraiche International Edition - notiziario dell'ebraismo italiano - Reg. Tribunale di Roma 199/2009 - direttore responsabile: Guido Vitale - Coordinamento: Daniela Gross.
Realizzato con il contributo di: Francesco Moises Bassano, Susanna Barki, Amanda Benjamin, Monica Bizzio, Angelica Edna Calò Livne, Eliezer Di Martino, Alain Elkann, Dori Fleekop, Daniela Fubini, Benedetta Guetta, Sarah Kaminski, Daniel Leisawitz, Annette Leckart, Gadi Luzzatto Voghera, Yaakov Mascetti, Francesca Matalon, Jonathan Misrachi, Anna Momigliano, Giovanni Montenero, Elèna Mortara, Sabina Muccigrosso, Lisa Palmieri Billig, Jazmine Pignatello, Shirley Piperno, Giandomenico Pozzi, Daniel Reichel, Colby Robbins, Danielle Rockman, Lindsay Shedlin, Michael Sierra, Rachel Silvera, Adam Smulevich, Simone Somekh, Rossella Tercatin, Ada Treves, Lauren Waldman, Sahar Zivan.