Having trouble viewing this email? Click here October 4, 2021 – 28 Tishri 5782

On Sunday 10 October, Padua will be the leading Italian city of the 22nd European Day of Jewish Culture, which this year is dedicated to the theme of “Dialogues”, a theme that lends itself to a range of possible declensions. “Sometimes we are tempted to imagine Jewish history as a succession of centuries in which there have been only persecutions - certainly the result of the absence of any interest in dialogue with the Jewish presence and the prevalence of blind hatred”, points out the President of the Italian Jewish Communities Noemi Di Segni.
“But even alongside the forced diasporas, the centuries of discrimination and subordination, the Inquisition, the era of ghettos, modern antisemitism, and its tragic consequences in the first half of the 20th century, there has always been a karst river of dialogue and exchange with other religions and with entire society, which has also led to shining examples of coexistence”.
“The history of the Jewish people is also the history of a constant and fluid exchange with the surrounding world”, she says. “An exchange that today, in advanced and pluralist democracies, is evidently the norm, and which with globalization has also become global”.
As for Jewish Padua, an international centre of reference for rabbinic education, Jewish Padua has expressed a vast array of intellectuals, academics, and professionals in several different ages and represents at its best the spirit of pluralism that the European event is aimed at highlighting. The program of the European Day of Jewish Culture, which will be held all across Italy, is available online.

In Padua the rabbi is an institution of reference not only in the Jewish community but in society at large. “Rabbi of Padua” is an expression that designates the role for centuries. The roman rabbi Adolfo Locci, in town from the December of 1998, is the last piece in this puzzle/ the last link in this chain. Over twenty years of work with various reasons of satisfaction under his belt. “All the religious services are guaranteed, tefillot at the temple of Shabbat and in all the holidays/party, mikwè which is also enjoyed by ladies from other communities, a Kolel ‘Od Mevakshè Hashem’ for adults whereby during the week they study Talmud, Torah Halakhah, the Talmud Torah for the youths until the age of Bar Mitzvah, the kasherut. Every slot is very occupied” he explains, remembering how had begun his career in Rome as an officiating Rabbi, a school teacher, the head of the cultural services at the Rabbinical Office and collaborator of Rav Elio Toaff z.l.

Above, Rabbi Locci and the Bishop of Padua in a recent visit to the synagogue.

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

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Three were the synagogues once in operation in Padua. In addition to the German one, once damaged by the Fascists and seat of the Jewish Padua Museum today, also the Sephardi one, converted into a private home, and the Italian one, still in use today, animated the praying and worshiping life. The latter, as documented by the Jewish Cultural Heritage Foundation in Italy, has sixteenth-century origins and was perhaps founded to replace “the previous Italian rite oratory located in Piazza delle Legne”.
The current site was identified at the beginning of the seventeenth century, with subsequent completion of the interiors and further renovation during the nineteenth century. The synagogue hall is characterised by an “oblong rectangular plan organized according to the traditional bifocal model, with the aron and the tevah leaning against the centre of opposite walls. The larger ones in this case”.
 
Above, the Aron, the cabinet that houses the Torah scrolls, in the synagogue of Padua. 

Translated by Gianluca Pace, student at the Advanced School for Interpreters and Translators of the University of Trieste, intern at the newspaper office of the Union of the Italian Jewish Communities.
Revised by Oyebuchi Lucia Leonard, student at the University of Trieste, intern at the newspaper office of the Union of the Italian Jewish Communities.

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Davide Romanin Jacur - council member to the financial statements of the UCEI with a career as councillor spanning forty years and one as president spanning fourteen - has many stories to tell. His first thoughts go to Rav Achille Viterbo, Rabbi of Padua from 1955 to 1999. One of the most representative figures of the post-war Community. “There was no one - he affirms - he would not know or look after. I greatly admired his way of working”. He showed tenacious commitment he would perform on the field, “Almost like a country priest”, smiles Jacur. The years of his commitment to the Community, he continues, coincided with a turning point in terms of relationships. “Until the 1990s, the relationship with the authorities was rather narrow, mostly limited to contacts with the police headquarters and the prefecture. A change, in terms of a greater intensity, was introduced with the establishment of the European Day of Jewish Culture and most of all with that of the Holocaust Remembrance Day, especially with the latter”.
 
Translated by Antonella Losavio and revised by Gianluca Pace, 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. 

Three were the synagogues once in operation in Padua. In addition to the German one, once damaged by the Fascists and seat of the Jewish Padua Museum today, also the Sephardi one, converted into a private home, and the Italian one, still in use today, animated the praying and worshiping life. The latter, as documented by the Jewish Cultural Heritage Foundation in Italy, has sixteenth-century origins and was perhaps founded to replace “the previous Italian rite oratory located in Piazza delle Legne”.
The current site was identified at the beginning of the seventeenth century, with subsequent completion of the interiors and further renovation during the nineteenth century. The synagogue hall is characterised by an “oblong rectangular plan organized according to the traditional bifocal model, with the aron and the tevah leaning against the centre of opposite walls. The larger ones in this case”.
 
Above, the Aron, the cabinet that houses the Torah scrolls, in the synagogue of Padua. 

Translated by Gianluca Pace, student at the Advanced School for Interpreters and Translators of the University of Trieste, intern at the newspaper office of the Union of the Italian Jewish Communities.
Revised by Oyebuchi Lucia Leonard, student at the University of Trieste, intern at the newspaper office of the Union of the Italian Jewish Communities.

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The figures who have given and continue to give prestige to Jewish Padua are countless. Among them Leone Romanin Jacur (1847-1928), one of the main architects of the reclamation of the Venetian area of ​​the Po Delta. He is also a great protagonist of national political life, with eleven mandates representing the Piove di Sacco Board. Elected to the Chamber for the first time in 1888, he will be undersecretary of state for public works and from October 1920 senator of the Kingdom. “With Leone Romanin Jacur a noble spirit disappeared, a blameless patriot, a worthy member of parliament and a citizen, a technician of great value” so was he remembered by the Parliament at the time of his death.
“For fifty years he tirelessly advocated reclamations, both with the personal example given in his lands, precious work of technician carried out during the major reclamations in Veneto, and the activity of writer, deputy and man of government, deserving gratitude and undying praise”. His role in the community was also important: he was president of the community for several years and in 1897 he participated in the drafting of the Reunion Plan of the Jewish Pious Works.

Above, Leone Romanin Jacur in an evocative signed portrait. 

Translated by Antonella Losavio and revised by Oyebuchi Lucia Leonard, 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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Par David Meghnagi*

Devant les terribles et angoissantes nouvelles venantes de l’Allemagne, après la montée au pouvoir de Hitler, Ludwig Pollak, avec un acte extrême de résilience notait dans ses mémoires: "Une nation qui remonte à 5693 ans survivra même à Hitler". Huit mois après, en commentant une bibliographie de Alfred Mond de Hector Bolitho, il ajouta: "Le retour de Melchett au sionisme est émouvant. Un livre qui renforce et illumines en ces temps tristes". Comme si c’était "un objet transitionnel" à protéger, la précieuse Haggadah espagnole du 14^ème siècle qu’il avait achetée fut confiée aux soins du rabbin Prato, avec qui dans ces années difficiles il avait tissé un lien intense. Dans les intentions de Pollak la précieuse pièce devait rester à l’intérieur d’une communauté juive. Donc il en fit don au Rabbin Prato. Pollak, il partageait, comme Freud, une illusion répandue dans les greffes européens: l’Italie fasciste, pour des raisons géopolitique et culturelles, se serait trouvée alliée aux puissances occidentales pour mettre un frein à l’expansionnisme nazi et aux dérives de l’antisémitisme.

*Psychanalyste
 
Traduction de Oyebuchi Lucia Leonard, étudiante de l’Université de Trieste, et révisé par Gianluca Pace, étudiant de l’École Supérieure pour Traducteurs et Interprètes de l’Université de Trieste, stagiaires au journal de l’Union des Communautés Hébraïques Italiennes. 

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By Maya Margit*

Inside a small nondescript building in the heart of Jerusalem lies hidden treasure: four painted panels of wood that once made up the sukkah of a wealthy Venetian Jewish family.
A sukkah is a temporary hut or structure built during the weeklong festival of Sukkot, also known as the Feast of Tabernacles, which commemorates the 40 years the ancient Israelites spent wandering in the desert before entering the Promised Land. It is one of the most important holidays in the Jewish calendar.
The painted sukkah panels, which date back to the late 18th century, are on display in the U. Nahon Museum of Italian Jewish Art and, according to the museum, they are extremely rare. “These were sort of common in the late 16th and 17th centuries into the 18th century, but for various reasons most of them were destroyed or lost,” Daniel Niv, curator of the U. Nahon Museum of Italian Jewish Art, told The Media Line. “This is actually one of the last surviving [ones] in this condition in the world,” he added.

* This article was originally published on Medialine on September 23, 2021.

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