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“Adopt a Book”, UCEI campaign to save
Italian Jewish cultural heritage
By Pagine
Ebraiche staff
Some of the books were confiscated by the Nazis and luckily
retrieved in Frankfurt after the end of the Second World War. Others
were rescued from the 1966 Arno’s flood. The nearly 8,000 volumes
preserved in UCEI’s Bibliographic Centre have a myriad of fascinating
stories to tell. They represent an inestimable heritage for Italian
Judaism and national culture, which needs to be protected against the
damages of time. This is why UCEI has recently launched the
crowdfunding campaign Adotta un libro (Adopt a Book). Through online
fundraising, everyone will have a chance to personally contribute to
the safeguard of this precious book collection.
“Abandoning those books in the state they are in at the moment would
lead to their irretrievable loss,” explains the project presentation.
“The preservation of this heritage, which is an integral part of the
history of Italian and European Jews, is an action of the utmost
importance. It can be neither transferred nor delayed: these books need
extensive rescuing.”
“We are talking about antique volumes which date back to the 16th-19th
centuries,” explained Gisèle Lévy, head librarian of UCEI’s
Bibliographic Centre. A considerable part of them belongs to the
Library of the Italian Rabbinical College’s historical collection,
which was raided in 1943 and restored by the Allies after the war.
The collection, which include antique and rare books, also contains
those which were rescued from mud and water ravaging Florence in 1966.
“This collection is made up by different types of works,” said Rome
Chief Rabbi Riccardo Di Segni, director of the Rabbinical College, “it
houses extremely specific books such as the responsa written by Italian
Jews; but there are also books of common and educational use, like
Torah copies for students; tefillah books and other rabbinical texts.”
The renovation project of the entire collection requires different
stages and will kick off in September: it will include drying,
disinfecting and dusting them. A number of books will be donated to the
people who took part in the campaign, whereas the rest will be archived
again. “Why are these books so important? Because, after all, they make
us understand the cultural foundations on which the Jews who studied on
these texts formed their thought, actions and faith,” underlined Sofer
Amedeo Spagnoletto.
Upon launching the campaign, we must recall a maxim taken from Pirkei
Avot (1:2): “The world stands upon three things – Torah, divine
service, and acts of kindness.”
Translated by Mattia Stefani and
revised by Claudia Azzalini, both students at the Advanced School for
Interpreting and Translation of Trieste University and interns at the
newspaper office of the Union of the Italian Jewish Communities.
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italiano - Reg. Tribunale di Roma 199/2009 - direttore responsabile:
Guido Vitale.
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.
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