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December 3, 2018 - Kislev 25, 5779

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Third Tractate of the Babylonian Talmud Translated in Italian

By Pagine Ebraiche staff

A third tractate of the Babylonian Talmud has been released with an Italian translation. After Rosh HaShanah (“New Years”) and Berachot (“Blessings”), also the Tractate Ta’anit that deals primarily with fasts is available in Italian bookstores, published by Giuntina.
The volume, curated by Michael Ascoli, was presented in an event organized by the Italian Embassy in the Holy See.
“The Talmud has an immense religious, historical and juridical value, it is a work that has permeated our culture and the European culture. This project brings honor to Italy,” highlighted Ambassador Pietro Sebastiani.

news

IHRA Meets in Ferrara

By Ada Treves

A video message by Yehuda Bauer opened the last day of the conference of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, that until next spring will be led by the Italian delegation. Bauer is a distinguished historian of the University of Jerusalem who has been studying the Shoah and anti-Semitism for more than half a century.
The event was held in Ferrara, city of the National Museum of Italian Judaism and the Shoah (MEIS), thanks to its director and IHRA delegate, Simonetta Della Seta who worked together with the Municipality and the Ministry to organize everything.
More than two hundred and fifty delegates from almost forty countries met in Ferrara to work on what Bauer described so effectively: "The central question we are facing today is not denial, but distortion. We must remember that we have tremendous responsibility: we must safeguard the historical documentation of the Holocaust, a responsibility towards ourselves, but also for our future, for our children and for our grandchildren".

Credit: Marco Caselli Nirmal

FEATURES

The Jewish Boy Who Was Secretly Baptized and Kidnapped by the Church

By Ro Oranim*

In accordance with Papal law, Jewish families were not permitted to raise Catholic children. Once news of his baptism leaked, Edgardo Mortara was taken into custody by the Vatican.
It all started with a well-meaning decision. A decision that, without the intention of inflicting harm or pain, would change the lives of an entire family and forever impact public opinion of the Catholic Church.
Edgardo Mortara was born in 1851, the sixth of eight children born to a Jewish Italian family living in Bologna. When he was just a few months old, Edgardo fell seriously ill and, despite his doctor’s best efforts and the desperate prayers of his parents and loved ones, his condition did not improve.
During this time, the Mortara family employed a 16-year-old Catholic maid named Anna Morisi. Anna watched the young boy grow ever sicker. Assuming there was nothing left to be done for the poor child, the young maid took it upon herself to secretly baptize Edgardo in the hopes that, if God decided it was time to take him from this world, at least she would have saved his soul. Without asking for the permission of his parents or considering the potential repercussions of her actions, Anna baptized Edgardo. To the surprise of those around him, the boy grew stronger, conquered his illness and returned to full health.

*The article was published in The Librarians, the blog of the National Library of Israel.

bechol lashon - deutsch

Rassismus

David Bidussa*

Die Frage des Rassismus formt nochmals die zeitgenössische Sprache. Jene, die den heutigen Rassismus ausüben, theoretisieren im Gegensatz zum traditionellen Rassismus keine eigene Überlegenheit. Sie verwandeln aber in Akt der Freilassung ihre Suche nach dem Anderen, dem Fremden und deshalb dem Feind ihrer Tradition. Genau in dieser Dimension kommen die Sprache und die Verschwörungstheorie stark wieder. Die Verfolgung und die Diskriminierung werden also als Akt der Befreiung von der Unterdrückung betrachtet. Das ist die Bedeutung vom Ausdruck “Herr in ihrem eigenen Haus” in dieser Zeit, wo die Verschwörungstheorie triumphiert.

*David Bidussa, sozialer Historiker von Ideen
Übersetzung von Francesca Antonioli mit der Hilfe von Giulia Schincariol, Studentinnen der Hochschule für Dolmetscher und Übersetzer der Universität von Triest, beide Praktikantinnen bei der Zeitungsredaktion der Union der jüdischen Gemeinden von Italien (UCEI).

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pilpul

Protesting

By Anna Foa*

We’re still commemorating the anniversary of the Racial Laws of 1938. Eighty years ago, a different law targeted the Italian Jews every day, while the Fascists cheered and all the others kept quiet. As we know, the people who remained friends with the Jews were accused of do-goodism – oops, I meant pietism – and most people didn’t say anything. I wonder what would have happened if these “pietists” had opened their mouths to protest every day when someone acted in an anti-Semitic way, and obviously I’m not talking about the government anti-Semitism. I wonder if a different public opinion could have emerged and been hostile to the Racial Laws and maybe able to influence, even just a little, that terrible consensus.

*Anna Foa is a historian. Translated by Sara Volpe, student at the Advanced School for Interpreters and Translators of Trieste University, intern at the newspaper office of the Union of the Italian Jewish Communities.

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ITALICS

Opening Italy’s ‘Closet of Shame’

By Saviona Mane*

Hidden in the guts of Stazione Centrale, Milan’s impressive train station, which was inaugurated during the fascist era and now serves 120 million railway passengers per year, is the point where fascist Italy converges with Nazi Germany: Platform 21. This is the platform where postal items were loaded onto freight trains, heading to their destinations around Europe. This is also where Jews, and non-Jewish dissidents, were loaded onto cattle cars heading to their destinations around Europe: the camps of Fossoli, Bolzano, Mathausen, Bergen-Belsen, Ravensbruck, Flossenbürg and Auschwitz-Birkenau. Twenty such transports that left for the concentration and death camps, from December 1943 to January 1945, while on the upper floor passenger trains continued to rush toward European cities.
Platform 21 was transformed into a Holocaust memorial in 2013. In its heart, a few of the original cars are standing along a short track, which ends in an exposed space, from which the train cars with their human cargo were brought up to the station level. Out of sight. At the entrance to the memorial – above which the rumbling of trains coming in and out make one shiver– a huge inscription reading “Indifference” greets visitors.
“Indifference is worse than violence,” says Liliana Segre, an 88-year-old Holocaust survivor and a newly appointed senator, who insisted on inscribing that word on the huge stone.
Segre was one of 25 Jewish children under the age of 14, out of a total of 776, who were deported from Italy to Auschwitz and survived. She was 13 when she boarded a train that departed from Platform 21 for Auschwitz on January 30, 1944 with her father. But for her and over 7,500 other Italian Jews deported to the death camps, the journey to hell had begun many years before, on November 17, 1938, when Benito Mussolini’s Racial Laws against Jews went into effect.

*The article was published in Haaretz on November 16, 2018.

moked è il portale dell'ebraismo italiano

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