Having trouble viewing this email? Click here November 23, 2020/ 7 Kislev, 5781

By Pagine Ebraiche staff

“In order to overcome so many deplorable forms of hate we need the capacity to involve ourselves together in remembering. Memory is the key to accessing the future and it is our responsibility to hand it on in a dignified way to young generations”. With these words Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Holy See Secretary of State, stressed the importance of a sense of history in combating anti-Semitism in the closing remarks for the symposium “Never Again: Confronting the Global Rise of Anti-Semitism”.
The event, which was held online last week, was hosted by the U.S. Embassy to the Holy See and featured prominent voices on Jewish matters, including Vatican and U.S. officials, among which the U.S. Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism, Elan Carr. The goal was to shed light on increasing anti-Semitic incidents throughout the United States and Europe, including a 2019 shooting in Jersey City at a kosher grocery store and an Oct. 27, 2018, mass shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh. In her opening remarks, U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See Callista Gingrich (above) noted that while the memory of the Holocaust is still fresh nearly 80 years on, throughout the world Jews are still “vilified, demonized and physically attacked.” “Every free society has a stake in reversing this trend”, she said calling the phenomenon “unconscionable”.

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By Pagine ebraiche staff

Since the start of the pandemic, life has been tough for Jewish communities all across the world. The devastation is immense and resulted in the deaths of thousands and a deep economic crisis that harmed many vital institutions. To assist the communities in dealing with the challenging consequences of the COVID-19 crisis as well as other emergencies including the uptick in antisemitic hate crimes, the Jewish Agency for Israel recently launched JReady, “the Jewish Emergency Network”. The initiative was launched last week at the plenary opening of the Jewish Agency’s virtual Board of Governors meeting, with the participation of hundreds of Jewish community leaders.
JReady is already assisting Jewish communities, including those in Italy, South Africa and Peru, in coping with the pandemic. The groundwork is being set to assist the response to future crises by sharing information, experience and technological capabilities accumulated in Israel and in global communities. JReady is also working with communities to build resilience infrastructures by training local organizations and professionals in emergency preparedness, trauma and rehabilitation.

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By Pagine ebraiche staff

After more than a decade, Netflix's The Life Ahead brings back to the screen the legendary Sophia Loren. Set in Italy’s port of Bari and based on Romain Gary’s book The Life Before Us, the movie tells the story of an aging Holocaust survivor and ex prostitute who makes a living sheltering the children of local sex workers. The unexpected happens when the woman forges an unlikely bond with Momo, a young immigrant from Senegal who recently robbed her.
Directed by the actress’s son Edoardo Ponti, the film is rich in references to Judaism and Jewish traditions. Like the book with the light blue cover in the scene where Momo helps another kid to keep up with his Hebrew reading. Titled Bereshit-Genesis, it is the first volume of the series La mia Torah (my Torah) published by Giuntina and developed by Rome teachers Anna Coen and Mirna Dell’Ariccia under the auspices of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities.
The movie is one of the several contenders to the Italian submission for Best International Feature Film and is considered among the most promising to give the category a genuine chance. Sophia Loren’s comeback drew an extraordinary visibility to the movie on the international scene, and The Life Ahead can count on the powerful promotional support of Netflix. 

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By David Bidussa*

Many years ago, Susan Sontag, in “Illness as Metaphor”, a book that has been lost for a long time and which the publisher Nottetempo will release again in bookstores on November 19^th, warned against considering illnesses as moral malaises and psychic failures.
“Illness – she wrote in the first lines of the work – is not a metaphor”. Then she added: “The most truthful way of regarding illness – and the healthiest way of being ill – is one most purified of […] metaphorical thinking”. We miss this healthy material vision, lost as we are in conspiracy theories and idolatrous culprit hunting.

*Social historian of ideas

Translated by Oyebuchi Lucia Leonard and revised by Antonella Losavio, students at Trieste University and at the Advanced School for Interpreters and Translators of Trieste university, interns at the newspaper office of the union of the Italian Jewish Communities.

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By Elise Ann Allen*

ROME – At an event at the U.S. embassy to the Holy See responding to a rising tide of anti-Semitism in various parts of the world, the Vatican’s current Cardinal Secretary of State revealed that one of his predecessors, a full 25 years before the Holocaust erupted in Nazi Germany, vowed solidarity with the “children of Israel” in a letter to an influential American Jewish group on the basis of defending human dignity. Speaking to participants in the online event, Vatican Secretary of State Italian Cardinal Pietro Parolin quoted what he said was a recently discovered correspondence between the American Jewish Committee of New York and Cardinal Pietro Gasparri from 1915-1916 in the Vatican’s archives. After receiving a letter in December 1915 from the committee asking for the Vatican to intervene on behalf of “the ardor, cruelties and hardship visited upon the Jews in the belligerent countries since the outbreak of the First World War,” Gasparri penned a response offering the Catholic Church’s support.

*This article was published on Crux on November 20, 2020.

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