Having trouble viewing this email? Click here  September 21, 2020/3 Tishri, 5781

By Pagine Ebraiche staff

On Yom Kippur, the sound of the shofar will resonate for the first time after a century in the magnificent Great German Schola in Venice, the first of the five synagogues in the area of one of Europe first Jewish ghettos. Built in 1529, this Schola is an essential stop for tourists exploring the Ghetto, but has not been used for worship since World War I. Along with the Great German Synagogue, also the Levantine Schola and the Spanish Schola will be open on the Day of Atonement.
The historical decision taken by the Jewish community of Venice will allow congregants to participate to services while respecting all the measures in place to preventing the spread of Covid 19. At the same time, the reopening launches a powerful message of hope in a dramatic time that brought us so many closures. It affirms the resolution to start the new Jewish year in the auspices of new life.

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By Pagine Ebraiche staff

A logo, for an institution, is a way to talk about its very identity. For this reason, it must be simple and effective. Such elements were acknowledged by the international jury of the 26^th Compasso d’Oro ADI award in the logos of MEIS (National Museum of Italian Judaism and Shoah) in Ferrara and of the Uffizi Galleries in Florence. MEIS received an honorable mention from the jury for the project of Brand identity realized by Teikna Design.
“Such an important acknowledgment in the Italian and international scenery gives us great pride”, MEIS director Amedeo Spagnoletto said. “Since its creation, MEIS has tried to be an innovative museum, curated to the littlest details and with a universal language, starting from the brand identity”. Teikna Design creative director said: “Meis brand identity was conceived to be a sign system, a strongly characterized and recognizable visual language that can adapt with elegance and ease to heterogeneous contents”.
Meanwhile, the Uffizi Galleries won the Compasso d’Oro award, which was given to the museum director Eike Schmidt and to the agency that created the logo, Carmi and Ubertis.

Translated by Rachele Ferin, 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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In summer 2016, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg flew to Venice. Her son was performing in a production of The Merchant of Venice in that city, and she was presiding over a mock trial based on the play. The event marked the 500^th anniversary of the Jewish Ghetto in Venice and drew wide attention, also thanks to the fierce personality of Ginsburg. The Judge died Friday in Washington, before the year 5781 began. She was 87. We remember her with the reportage appeared in the New York Times at the time of the Venetian mock trial and with an essay by Susannah Heschel, professor at Dartmouth College, that was published by Pagine Ebraiche in its special pages dedicated to the event. While the reportage brings us back in a lively manner to the influential role played by Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Heschel delves with some issues raised by the discussion: from racism to prejudice, from antisemitism to the very idea of what is “alien”, a word Shakespeare has used only three times in the whole of his work.

(Ruth Bader Ginsburg with the President of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities Noemi Di Segni)

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By Rachel Donadio*

What do Supreme Court justices do on their summer vacations? For Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg — longtime liberal standard-bearer, recent Donald J. Trump critic — this year’s answer is: Go to Venice, watch your grandson perform in a production of “The Merchant of Venice” and preside over a mock appeal of the city’s most notorious resident, Shylock.
And so, on Wednesday afternoon, in the monumental 16th-century Scuola Grande di San Rocco, beneath ceiling paintings by Tintoretto, Justice Ginsburg and four other judges, including the United States ambassador to Italy, John R. Phillips, heard arguments on behalf of Shylock and two other characters, before reaching a unanimous ruling.

*This article was published in the New York Times on July 26, 2016.

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By Susannah Heschel*
 
“Which is the merchant here? And which the Jew?” asks Portia as she enters the courtroom, disguised, of course, as the maledoctor of laws, Balthasar. Portia’s gender disguise is accompanied by her confusion: can she not recognize the Jew on sight?
In Shakespeare’s wonderfully subtle, implicit way, he is also suggesting that Portia is in a religious disguise: does she speak in the name of Christianity when she speaks of mercy, or are her courtroom legal maneuverings drawn from rabbinic legal arguments (at least as understood by Christians), but disguised as Christian? Portia proclaims the universal nature of mercy:
numerous.

*Susannah Heschel is a professor at Dartmouth College. This essay, translated into Italian, was published by Pagine Ebraiche in its special pages devoted to #VeniceGhetto500 edited by Ada Treves.

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By Pagine Ebraiche staff

There is no period in Italian history more celebrated, praised, and idealized than the Renaissance. Thanks to artists and intellectuals, a new awareness came to light. A new humanism replaced the traditional way of thinking manifesting itself in art, architecture, politics, science and literature.This great revolution did not leave untouched Jewish culture, which became both engine and agent of this unprecedented renewal. A new book by the Italian scholar Giuseppe Veltri, Il Rinascimento nel pensiero ebraico – The Renaissance in the Jewish Thought, recently released by the publisher Claudiana, reconstructs intellectual Jewish life in Italy and Europe during that period, retracing its most important moments. Through six chapters, the volume highlights the birth of a new historical awareness and the process of secularization, the function of Dante’s poetry as a bridge between Jewish and Christian world, the use of vulgar language as integration of different traditions, the birth of criticism, and the debate about the immortality of the soul.
 

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By Anthony Grafton*
 
On July 22, 1955, the Times Literary Supplement welcomed the appearance of a new scholarly book with an enthusiasm rarely matched in its gray, closely printed pages. Pride of place, in those days, went not to the cover but to the so-called “long-middle”—a substantial review, which normally faced the correspondence columns. On this summer Friday, Peter Green welcomed with pyrotechnic praise “a trilingual collection of essays remarkable alike for their classical and humanistic erudition, their historiographical judgment, and a style equally graceful in Italian, German, or English”: Arnaldo Momigliano’s Contributo alla storia degli studi classici. This work, Green made clear, set a new standard for the history of ancient history.
25 countries.

*This article was published in Jewish Heritage Europe on September 11, 2020.

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