Having trouble viewing this email? Click here July 12, 2021 – 3 Av 5781

By Adam Smulevich 

From “Football is coming home” to “Is going to Rome”. The triumph of the Italian national Football team can be summed up in this sentence. But are we really sure that football, with the Wembley victory, has not returned to its real home? A little joking and a little no, on the eve of the final in Pagine Ebraiche we talked about a truly original book, Calcio!, by the Colombian writer Juan Esteban Constaín.
The protagonist of the book - a novel, but with precise historical connections - is Arnaldo Momigliano, a great Jewish scholar of antiquity who fled Italy after the promulgation of the racist laws of 1938. In Oxford, where that illustrious exiled is welcomed, he exposes a thesis that shocked those present: Football is not English, but Italian. And more precisely Florentine.
The audience agitates. The offense is of such magnitude that it even comes to a trial. It is pure fiction. But what Constaín makes Momigliano say is the truth: “Football” as we know it today would perhaps never have existed if the so-called historical Florentine football had not been played for centuries. An ancient tradition, which dates back to the fifteenth century.
It was a football still in an embryonic state but whose basic principles have influenced contemporary pedestrian art. Starting from the layout of the field on four lines, echoing the deployment of the ancient Romans in battle.
In fact, historical football has that origin, inspired by a game in vogue among the troops of the Empire: the harpastum. From this we can conclude that “Is going to Rome”, pronounced by Leonardo Bonucci after the final triple whistle, can also take on the full meaning of “is coming back to home-base”. Grazie Azzurri!

Bewilderment among Neapolitan Jews over the decision of the municipal administration to name a side street of Via Garibaldi after Yasser Arafat. The decision was taken by the toponymy commission on the proposal of the councilor Alessandra Clemente. In a note, the Jewish community of Naples says it was taken by “surprise” in learning of such a step, made official on Saturday. “The surprise – reads the note - does not lie so much in the decision itself, given that in the past the leading role of the municipal council led by the mayor Luigi De Magistris on issues falling within the competence of many other public institutions has manifested itself with a clearly unbalanced vision of the Israeli-Palestinian issue”.
It then states: “That Councilor Clemente, probably for reasons that go beyond his current institutional position, has proposed to name a street after the PLO leader, is a question that fits into local political choices in which the Jewish community of Naples prefers not to enter, as evidenced by the habit of not meeting candidates for mayor before the elections”.
“The Jewish community – points out the note - is surprised that such a proposal, which was accepted by the municipal toponymy commission, in addition to the inappropriateness of replacing the name of an illustrious person in the history of Italy with the name of someone who has no connection with that place, it seems even more questionable given that, if it is true that Arafat received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994, it is also true that it was together with Shimon Peres and Itzkach Rabin, the two Israeli Labor statesmen who with Arafat signed the Oslo accords”.
 

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In his seven-years tenure as the president of Israel, Reuven Rivlin has tried to build a constructive dialogue with the Arabic citizens of the country. Just after three months from his appointment in October 2014, he decided to do something which until then had never been done before. He went to Kafr Kassem, an Arabic village, to participate in a commemorative ceremony of the 49 civilians killed in 1959 by the Israeli border police. At the ceremony, Rivlin heavily condemned the massacre, defining it as “a terrible crime” and, the local media highlighted, “it came close to the apology/ excuses of any other Israeli leader”.
On several occasions during his tenure, Rivlin had clarified that the Arabs of Israel- 20 percent of the population – are a fundamental part of the Israeli democracy. “We are not condemned to live together, we are destined to do it” his belief, although deeply cracked because of the clash in may between the Arabs and Jews of Israel. “Just like everyone else, I witnessed with great shock, with a heavy heart and deep anger the violent and unbridled disorder that took away lives, generated anguish and set fire to restaurants and places of worship.

Above, a cartoon by Michel Kichka represents the middle eastern conflict as a dove trapped in a timeless hourglass and surrounded by clashes between Israelis and Hamas terrorists.

Translated by Oyebuchi Lucia Leonard, student at Trieste University, intern at the newspaper office of the Union of the Italian Jewish Communities.

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By David Meghnagi*

Immerse yourself fully while working with students, in the hic et nunc of the lesson time. Do not expect solutions to come from others. It is still possible, by this means, to save the Italian school system. Although this seems “romantic” and despite legislative delays and never-ending reforms, the Italian school system is still operative. It has provided an enviable level of education - especially in the first school years. All thanks to dozens of thousands of teachers and school principals, who keep the whole system up and running in the here and now. This applies to schools but also to universities where many teachers keep students' learning desire alive.
It may seem “romantic” but after many years of teaching I realised that, if the system has held up, it is thanks to this silent work, which has its only “reward” in inner satisfaction. A satisfaction that arises from the mutuality established between teachers and students in the daily commitment to teaching and researching. Intent is an act that puts the search for mutuality first. An approach that has as its background a constant self-questioning, observation and attention to the slightest changes that may occur within the educational process. An attention in revisiting a situation that is capable of adopting - what Freud would call - a free-floating attitude.

* Psychoanalist 

Translated by Antonella Losavio and revised by Silvia Bozzo, students 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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Par Olivier Favier*

Partisan, reporter, historien indépendant, l'Italien Angelo Del Boca s'est éteint mardi 6 juillet 2021, à Turin, à l’âge de 96 ans. Il avait ouvert et vivifié pendant des décennies le champ des études postcoloniales italiennes.  Il a été “l’enfant irrégulier de son temps” a écrit de lui l’historien du fascisme Mimmo Franzinelli à la nouvelle de sa disparition, le 6 juillet 2021, à Turin, à l’âge de 96 ans. Né en 1925 à Novare dans le Piémont, Angelo Del Boca est enrôlé de force dans les troupes de la République Sociale Italienne, état fasciste fantoche créé en septembre 1943 en Lombardie après l’armistice italien avec les Alliés.

*Cet article a été originellement publié sur RFI le 7 Juillet 2021.

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