Having trouble viewing this email? Click here July 26, 2021 – 17 Av 5781

By Daniel Reichel
 
Holocaust survivor and Life Senator Liliana Segre has blasted people who have compared COVID-19 vaccinations to the persecution of Jews by the Nazis. On Monday, the 90-year-old told Jewish newspaper Pagine Ebraiche that these comparisons were “crazy” and a mix of “bad taste and ignorance”.
A small but vocal minority has staged protests against the obligation to have the Green Pass vaccine passport to access restaurants, pools, gyms and open-air events in Italy as well as to travel abroad, and Liliana Segre is not surprised by that. The distorted use of Memory is a shameful trend that has been going on for a while, she points out to Pagine Ebraiche. “After having seen Anne Frank's beloved face used in the stadium (as an antisemitic sticker by Lazio fans, ed), I am not surprised at anything. I'm not saying I'm numb, but I've got thick skin”, says the Senator.
The impossible comparisons between the Jewish persecution and the provisions on vaccines are “follies, gestures in which bad taste meets ignorance. Since I hope I am neither ignorant or have bad taste, I don’t get too mad”. However, condemning those who refuse the vaccine, those who rant about “health dictatorship” and make senseless references to racist laws is a duty, she points out.
“It is such a time of ignorance and violence, not anymore repressed, that it has become ripe for these distortions. It is a school that has been accepted in which the bullies are the strongest”, reflects the witness of the Shoah, who after looking at the no-vaxxers demonstrations, hopes it is only a minority phenomenon. “In any case, I want to hope that those protesters represent a minority. Because how can you not get vaccinated against this terrible disease that has been killing without distinction?”.
To those who are not against the vaccine but are still afraid of it, Segre reminds that “fear can be overcome”. That is to say that, “if the only weapon to combat this disease is the vaccine, because we do not know any other, let's get it. I didn't think about it for two minutes, on the contrary I was very happy. And so everyone in my family got vaccinated. I'm not a doctor, but I believe what they tell me”.
Just for being vaccinated, Segre has been the object of many online attacks of the haters. “Incredible, even for that they attacked me. They said I had shares in Pfizer. Unfortunately, I don't”, is Segre ironic reply to the conspiracy theories circulating about her. “Even these lies don't surprise me. Let's remember all the falsehoods about the attack on the Twin Towers, with some accusing the Jews of being responsible”.
The Senator message to the anti-vaccine conspirators is clear. "If one wants to see conspiracy everywhere, well stay home. Alone. You don't go around the streets, you don't go into the world, you don't harm others. But I know, those who make those kinds of choices usually don't care about others".

The exquisite fresco cycle painted between 1302 and 1397 by different artists in the northern Italian city of Padua has been added to Unesco’s World Heritage List on Saturday. The accomplishment was welcomed in Italy with enthusiasm. “The proclamation is a cause for joy and pride for the whole country”, stressed the Prime Minister Mario Draghi. The frescoes, which include the stunning Giotto’s Scrovegni Chapel cycle and are set in within building of diverse functions, are well known around the world.
Less known is that it was a great Padua Jewish mayor in the early 1900s – Giacomo Levi Civita – to make the difference. In his youth a fervent Garibaldian patriot, Levi Civita made it possible for the Scrovegni Chapel to be entrusted to the municipality, so providing it with protections and safeguards that otherwise would have not been granted. 
“As rumors spread that the Foscari family wanted to sell Giotto’s frescoes to a foreign company, the Municipality began a long series of expropriation attempts with no success. They resorted to a ‘trick’, as its creator itself, Levi Civita, then a young lawyer, called it. He maintained, on behalf of the Fabbriceria degli Eremitani, the claims of the administration for custody of the Chapel […] and finally managed to prove, through a large number of documents, testimonies and a highly trusted closing speech, that since its foundation the Chapel was intended for the public”. Therefore, the inappropriateness to entrusting it to privates.

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By Adam Smulevich
 
The journalist and former Jewish parliamentarian Ricardo Franco Levi, 72, has been confirmed as president of the Italian Publishers Association (AIE), the trade association of publishers of books, scientific journals, products and contents of digital publishing which represents 90% of the Italian book market. His unanimous designation for a further two years mandate represents, according to all the insiders, a recognition of the important work done also during the pandemic. In Italy, a country where reading has always been at a less significant level than in the rest of Europe, numbers start to be encouraging. Recent statistics showed a relevant growth, both in reading in general and in the number of books sold.
“The growth in the purchase and reading of books in the last year rewards the entrepreneurial tenacity of publishers, but also of booksellers large and small, of those who work in online commerce, distributors, wholesalers, translators, authors and demonstrates how positively public policies in support of the demand can impact”, he said to Pagine Ebraiche.

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Joy and emotion in the suggestive synagogue of Biella Piazzo for Tuvia Cattaneo Treves's Bar Mitzvah. On those benches, witnesses of his maternal ancestors' prayers, the miracle of life and the continuity of the glorious, however small, Jewish communities in Piedmont has repeated itself once again.
Accompanied by Rabbi Alberto Moshe Somekh and Rabbi Ariel Di Porto, the young man, now on the threshold of his spiritual maturity, read from 13^th century's Sefer Torah, the oldest one still in use on the world, guarded by the Jews from Biella. Also, on next Shabbat Vaetchanan he will read, G. willing, the Parsha in the synagogue of Turin.
Our editorial board wishes a loving Mazal Tov to our colleague Ada Treves, being Tuvia her third child, to her sisters and her brother and to the whole Jewish community of Biella. We also address a special thought to recently-passed-away rabbi Elia Richetti, who served as reference rabbi for the Jews of Biella and Vercelli for several years.

From top: a moment during the reading of the Parasha: from left, Remy Cohen, Tuvia Cattaneo Treves, and Rabbi Alberto Somekh; the suggestive synagogue of Biella Piazzo in Piedmont. (Ph. Stefano Stranges).

Translated by Gianluca Pace and revised by Antonella Losavio, students at the Advanced School for Interpreters and Translators of the University of Trieste, interns at the newspaper office of the Union of the Italian Jewish Communities.

By Anna Foa*

As the municipal elections of the city of Rome get closer and closer, a new book by Fabio Martini recalls the figure of Ernesto Nathan, mayor of Rome from 1907 to 1913, thought to be the best mayor of the city. Several initiatives, conferences and publications have recently been dedicated to him, on the centenary of his death in 1921, coordinated by Marisa Trythall, director of the Nathan Project. Nathan was born in England. He was a Jew, a Freemason and a Mazzinian.
His mother, Sara Nathan, was one of the most interesting and bright female figures of the Italian nineteenth century. Under Fascism, Nathan was censored and forgotten. His descendants had to hide in order not to run into Nazi raids. He was a complex figure who showed great culture, intelligence, and organizational skills. He was able to surround himself with expert collaborators who were remarkably honest and righteous. But now let us try to imagine what it must have been for Rome to have a Jewish mayor in that year, 1907! 

*Historian 

Translated by Gianluca Pace and revised by Antonella Losavio, students at the Advanced School for Interpreters and Translators of the University of Trieste, interns at the newspaper office of the Union of the Italian Jewish Communities.

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Por Tommaso Koch*

Al cabo de un rato, solo se veía el mar. Quedaban atrás la tierra, Trieste y la vida que Andrea Goldstein había conocido hasta entonces. Engullidas por el horizonte. Y por el delirio de un dictador. De golpe, el país donde el chico había nacido ya no le quería. Ni a él, ni a los suyos. “El judaísmo mundial ha sido […] un enemigo irreconciliable del fascismo”, proclamó Mussolini en septiembre de 1938, ante las masas exaltadas. En noviembre, Italia aprobaba las leyes raciales. Y un año después Goldstein zarpaba hacia un futuro más prometedor en Estados Unidos. Empezó a hacerse llamar Andrew, encontró un trabajo, una pareja y una nueva casa. Notaba, sin embargo, que sus cicatrices no se cerraban. Así que se enroló en el ejército, se subió a otro barco e hizo el camino inverso. Al fascismo, decidió, había que combatirlo desde cerca. En las trincheras.
Con su belleza, su rebeldía juvenil, su conciencia, su impulsividad y su valor, parece el héroe perfecto de una historia trágica”, asegura el dibujante Andrea Serio. Pero todo es real, tanto como la carta que Goldstein envió desde el frente, en febrero de 1943, a su prima Cati y que cierra la novela gráfica Rhapsody in Blue (Sapristi). 

*Este articulo fue publicado en El País el 28 de Junio 2021.

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