NEWS

Italian and German Presidents Commemorate Italian Victims of the Nazis

By Adam Smulevich
 
Italian President Sergio Mattarella and German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier together paid respect at the site of one of the worst massacres perpetrated in Italy during World War II by the German occupiers last week: the Ardeatine caves massacre. The caves are located in a little frequented rural suburb of Rome where, on March 25, 1944, the Nazis killed 335 Italian prisoners (among them many political prisoners and members of the local Jewish Community). 
No words nor official speeches were included in the commemoration, only a solemn silence, which made this historical visit even more meaningful.

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NEWS

Italy Votes No to Latest UNESCO
Resolution on Jerusalem

By Daniel Reichel
 
As promised by Italian Foreign Minister Angelino Alfano during his visit to Israel last March, Italy voted against the latest UNESCO resolution on Jerusalem.
“Our opinion is very clear, UNESCO cannot become the venue for a permanent ideological clash to address issues that other bodies are delegated to solve”, said the Italian Minister, calling upon other countries to follow Italy’s example. After the vote, Alfano wrote on Twitter that “Italy voted no against UNESCO’s politicized resolution on Israel. Others are following the same path. Italy leads and is a not follower”.

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dialogue

Italian Minister of Interior Meets
with Delegation of Young Jews,
Muslims and Christians

By Pagine Ebraiche staff

A delegation of representatives of the Union of Italian Jewish Students (UGEI), the Islamic Conferation of Italy and the Community of Sant’Egidio met with the Italian Minister of Interior Marco Minniti at the Viminale, the headquarters of the Ministry last week.
“The future should not be taken hostage by the past. May young Jews, Muslims and Catholics be pioneers of a new humankind,” said the Minister.

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bechol lashon - Français

Tour d'Italie. Les cinq légendes italiennes du Giro

Alfredo Binda (vainqueur en 1925, 1927, 1928, 1929 et 1933, décédé en 1986).
Le plus méconnu des "campionissimi", hors de son pays, domina tant son époque qu'il fut payé par les organisateurs du Giro en 1930... pour ne pas courir. Il empocha du coup la prime allouée au vainqueur. Pour preuve de son éclatante supériorité, il gagna douze des quinze étapes de l'édition 1927, quelques semaines avant de devenir le premier champion du monde de l'histoire. Son record d'étapes (41 succès) n'a été surpassé que par le sprinteur Mario Cipollini (42).
Elégant, stylé, ce surdoué qui avait fait ses premiers tours de roue sur la Côte d'Azur, de l'autre côté de la frontière, devint ensuite un directeur technique avisé, qui parvint même à faire cohabiter Bartali et Coppi dans l'équipe nationale.

*Le Télégramme, 04.05.2017.



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pilpul

Meeting the Divine upon 'the Entrance of the Tent'

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 another one – and that may be the character of the Hebrew nation (from the root ע.ב.ר): to present to humanity the "passage," movement, the framing of change, the systematization of mutation. The circumcised Abraham is then presented in the parsha of Vayera as "sitting at the entrance of his tent," where God appears to him, visually, in the form of three men.




*Yaakov Mascetti holds a Ph.D. and teaches at the Department of Comparative Literature, Bar Ilan University.

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IT HAPPENED TOMORROW

"Not Less than a Prophet"

By Guido Vitale

"Harold Bloom considered Gershom Scholem "not less than a prophet," declaring that for many contemporary Jewish intellectuals, "the Kabbalah of Gershom Scholem is now more normative than normative Judaism itself." And yet many people haven't heard of him. George Prochnik aims to change this with his book "Stranger in a Strange Land: Searching for Gershom Scholem and Jerusalem"." (Randy Rosenthal, Washington Post, May 7, 2017)








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italics

'Sarde in Saor' in Venice

By Kirsten Schlewitz*

When the waiter plucked the flat, rectangular plate between us, I felt my nose wrinkle involuntarily. Across the table my friend shook his head. “I wanted to hit the cicchetti bars. I wanted more of the baccalà mantecato.” I, too, loved that particular Venetian cicchetto, a dish involving creamed cod that’s way more delicious than it might sound. And I, too, enjoyed sampling the different small plates available at the cicchetti bars crowding Venice’s canals and narrow passages. But sarde in saor is perhaps Venice’s most distinctive traditional dish, invoking its days as the mightiest power in the Mediterranean, and there’s no way I was leaving without tasting it.

*The article was published in the magazine Paste, on April 20, 2017.

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