news

Italian Minister of Education Giannini
and UCEI President Gattegna Visit Israel

By Pagine Ebraiche Staff

The Italian minister of Education, Universities and Research, Stefania Giannini visited Israel last week. The minister was accompanied by the president of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities Renzo Gattegna, the Italian ambassador, Francesco Talò, and the cultural attaché to the Italian embassy, Elena Loewenthal. Minister Giannini’s visit was focused on the cooperation between the two countries in the field of education, culture and scientific research.
A delegation of the Conference of the rectors of Italian universities also traveled to Israel so as to take part in a number of conferences, workshops and debates on different subjects organized by the Italian Embassy in Israel. This was only one effort in to celebrate 15 years of scientific cooperation between the two governments. The visit was also the occasion to sign new protocols and agreements between Italian and Israeli universities.

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NEWS

Genoa Celebrated the 80th Anniversary
of its Synagogue

By Adam Smulevich
 
A large crowd of people packed the synagogue of Genoa last week to celebrate the eightieth anniversary of its construction.
Located in the residential area of Castelletto, near the nineteenth century Via Assarotti, the synagogue of Genoa is the only synagogue in Italy built under fascism, just a few years before the Racial Laws that excluded Jews from the society.
The celebration in the synagogue was deep and full of meaning.
“Among the non-Jewish Italian people, there were some who showed solidarity to our community, but it’s also true that many played an active part in the persecution. After the war we had to rebuild the trust between the Jewish community and the society at large,” current president of the Jewish Community, Ariel Dello Strologo, stressed in his opening remarks.

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EVENTS

A Ceremony to Honor the Jewish Brigade

By Pagine Ebraiche Staff

A ceremony to honor the Jewish Brigade was held at the War Cemetery in the village of Piangipane, in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy. The cemetery contains hundreds of Commonwealth burials of the Second World War, including those of the Jewish Infantry Brigade group, which played an important role in the liberation of Italy from the Nazis and the Fascist regime.
“The Jewish Brigade represents an extraordinary page of history which belongs to the entire country and cannot and must not be forgotten. This is particularly true today as there are still people who try to re-write history and the Brigade’s contribution and who try to deny truth with shameful distortion. However, we are not going to allow it to happen,” the president of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities (UCEI) Renzo Gattegna said, speaking at the ceremony.

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VENICE AND THE GHETTO

"Le cose della Vita," Portraits of Jews

By Paolo Della Corte*

I designed “Le cose della Vita” - “The things in life” as a multimedia photographic project involving several steps. The aim of my work is to trace a collective history starting from the individual story of some relevant persons in the Italian Jewish Community. Each step consists of a gallery of portraits representing the subjects in their everyday lives, in a familiar context and surrounded by daily objects. We cannot look at the image in a passive way, as we are invited to have an in-depth observation of the composition, which involves the viewer in a play of cross-references and connections between the present and the past, between the storyteller and the listener. Every portrait provides six starting points for the development of six stories: each plot appears in opening panel of the exposition.

*Paolo Della Corte is a photographer. The article has been translated by Isabella Favero, student at the Scuola superiore interpreti e traduttori di Trieste, ‎who is doing her apprenticeship in the newsroom of Pagine Ebraiche. The picture by Paolo Della Corte portrays Amos Luzzatto and his wife Laura Luzzatto Voghera.

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BECHOL LASHON - Nederlands

Verantwoordelijkheid

Benedetto Carucci Viterbi*

Als Aharon (Hogepriester en voornaamste verantowoordelijk van de inwijding van het Tabernake) ziet dat Gods aanwezigheid op dat niet daalt, dan voelt hij zich er volledig schuldig voor. Dat is een grote gave, zegt Rabbijn Yerucham Levi di Mir; als er iets negatifs gebeurt, dan leggen mensen altijd de verantwoordelijkheden bij anderen.









*Benedetto Carucci Viterbi is een rabbijn.

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

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pilpul - double life

Parades, Plural

By Daniela Fubini*

Tel Aviv went back to its usual white and sandy beige, after over one week of streets full of rainbow flags, and rainbow people spreading around town like happy campers on a summer holiday. 35.000 from abroad, they say, and if it's accurate, that means over 160.000 were Israelis, last Friday, marching colorfully on the seaside.
Since my arrival to Tel Aviv, I am always amazed during the Gay Pride week, and not for the mere amount of flashy hyper-refined male representatives of the human race, rather because I read the subtext. When you are a Telavivi, even more if you have been a New Yorker before, you learn how to see the carefully planned politics embodied in the texture of your city.

*Daniela Fubini (Twitter @d_fubini) lives and writes in Tel Aviv, where she arrived in 2008 from Turin via New York.





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IT HAPPENED TOMORROW

Yes, It's Genocide

By Guido Vitale

“In what has become an almost annual exercise, Turkey has thrown a fit because someone has spoken the truth about its dark past. This time, it has pulled its ambassador from Berlin and threatened dire consequences over a resolution, passed overwhelmingly by the German Parliament on Thursday, declaring that the century-old massacre of Ottoman Armenians was a genocide. That is what Turkey does every time a foreign government dares to challenge its discredited claim that the Armenians perished in the cruel fog of World War I, and not in a premeditated attempt to eradicate a people. Germany's claims to the contrary, Turkish legislators huffed in a statement, are 'based on biased, distorted and various subjective political motives'. No, it was a genocide, the first of the 20th century. (...) The Germans, who have admirably confronted the terrible genocide in their own history, did the right thing in defying Mr. Erdogan's threats".
(The New York Times, June 3rd 2016)

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italics

Re-discovering Jewish Roots in Italy

By Pagine Ebraiche staff

Last week, Tablet magazine ran two articles about the experience of two people who felt they were able to reconnect to their Jewish roots during their visit to Italy.
“None of these experiences struck me quite as profoundly as the Shoah Memorial in Milan, which is built on platform 21 of the still-operational central train station, from which the city’s Jews were deported in 1944. Every few minutes, departing trains can be heard chugging overhead; the past seems eerily recent. Over the weekend I visited the memorial to hear survivor testimonies during the Milan Jewish community’s 150th anniversary celebrations, called “Jewish in the City.” The three-day event offered visitors music, cooking classes, lectures, and exhibitions all relating to the history of the Milanese Jewish community,” writes Livia Albeck-Ripka.





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