Having trouble viewing this email? Click here  September 7, 2020/18 Elul, 5780

By Pagine Ebraiche staff

“Culture, dialogue and respect are the foundations of our coexistence”. Intolerance and racism must never be underestimated, and it is up to every one of us “to bring to life, through confrontation and encounter, the values of civility and solidarity upon which the republican Constitution is based”. This was the message sent yesterday by the Italian President Sergio Mattarella to the President of UCEI – Union of Italian Jewish Communities Noemi Di Segni on the occasion of the European Jewish Culture Day.
The event, which involved over 90 Italian cities and towns, kicked off at the Palace of Culture in Rome, the oldest Jewish community in the Diaspora and this year the leading city. “Our history dates back 22 centuries. So, the theme Jewish Journeys on which the 2020 edition is focused, immediately caught our attention, and we tried to develop this idea in all its facets”, said the President of Rome Jewish Community Ruth Dureghello in the welcome address.
“We are glad and proud to celebrate a new edition of the Day and to emphasize, year after year, that Jewish culture is part of the Italian cultural context” said the President of UCEI Noemi Di Segni. Along with our duty to remember the Holocaust, we have the duty to never forget that “Judaism is not only the Shoah, the pogroms, the persecutions. It is life, yesterday as today”. In the wake of Covid 19, restrictions were in place, and many events were streamed online.

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By Pagine Ebraiche staff

How do you find the synagogue? What about the Jewish community? Is there a kosher bakery, winery, or butcher? The Jewish cultural heritage of Italy is among the richest in the world, but it may be difficult for a visitor to navigate it. Here comes to help My Jewish Italy, the website launched along an app by UCEI – Union of Italian Jewish Communities in collaboration with the Italian Jewish Heritage Foundation and the support of Ministry of Culture.
The site lists ancient historical and cultural sites along with kosher enterprises now operating: shops, restaurants, catering, hotels. Developed by Frankenstein Srl, the website and the app take into consideration both tourists and Italian products companies interested to enter this market, maybe for the first time.
My Jewish Italy was launched in the European Day of Jewish Culture, which in Italy involved over 90 Italian cities and towns. “The website and the app want to tackle a need that showed up while promoting K.it, the national certification brand developed by the Union of Italian Jewish Communities”, says Jacqueline Fellus, UCEI Kashrut councilor. “Dealing with orthodox Jews in other countries, a significant lack of information emerged, which inevitably penalized a specific tourism”.
My Jewish Italy also presents the list of kosher products available in the supermarket realized by the Italian Rabbinical in collaboration with UCEI. “One of our goals is to spread this document, which is not only important to orientate oneself correctly but may also represent a marketing tool. This initiative may strengthen our Jewish communities. There are many opportunities to create jobs and build new skills”, stresses Fellus.
The website My Jewish Italy can be reached here. To download the app for Ios tap here . Click here for Android. 
 

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By Pagine Ebraiche staff 
 
“Resistance to antibiotics is one of the most severe problems in modern medicine”. The alarm was raised by the Nobel Prize Ada Yonath at ESOF2020, the biennial pan-European, general science conference that ended yesterday in Trieste at the presence of the Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte. The Israeli scientist, who won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2009 for her work on the nature of ribosomes, called the attention on a problem less known by the general public but of great concern. Between 2010 and 2014, antibiotic resistance caused about 33 thousand deaths in Europe. Yonath emphasized the importance of support for scientific research seeking out new antibiotics, because of the threat of antibiotic resistance.

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Mazal tov to our colleague Rossella Tercatin e to rav Isaac Landes for the birth, in Jerusalem, of their first daughter, named Noa Leah Deborah. In the Torah, Noah is the first of five sisters. Before entering Eretz Israel, after 40 years wandering the desert, they asked Moses for a portion of the land owed to their family. Since their father was dead and he had no male heir, as women no right was granted to them after consulting with G-d Moses assigned them the land and the law changed.

By Elisabetta Povoledo*
 
 ROME — When the Vatican opened its sealed archives from the World War II-era pontificate of Pius XII in March, the Brown University historian David I. Kertzer was among the first in line.
Like many other scholars, Dr. Kertzer had been eager to mine the papers of a pope — long under consideration for sainthood — whose response to Nazism and the Holocaust has become the target of fierce debate.
Some have cast Pius XII as the pontiff who remained shamefully silent as the Nazis massacred Jews during the war. Others claim that Pius worked behind the scenes to encourage the Roman Catholic Church to save thousands of Jews and other victims of persecution.

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