Having trouble viewing this email? Click here December 6, 2021 – 2 Tevet 5782

Il Sole 24 Ore focuses on the latest distortions of the memory of the Holocaust by opponents to vaccines and Green Pass, the domestic COVID-19 passport indicating if someone is fully vaccinated or has recently tested negative. “There is an ongoing phenomenon of misappropriation of symbols, themes, and words related to the context of the Shoah, in truly shocking ways”, Di Segni stressed. It is remarkable also at a legal level: “We are unable to fit these manifestations into a specific category, and it is all so insane that the legislator has not foreseen this type of offense”.
The main issue, Di Segni pointed out, is “how to really deal with this appropriation of something that offends the victims, the survivors, an entire people, but also the whole of Italy”. As a matter of fact, she said, protecting the memory of the Holocaust “is a public interest”. And so, “words are not enough: we need concrete facts from the legislator and the judiciary”.
The interview also lingered on the personal side, starting from President Di Segni’s first biblical name. “Noemi's story – she explained – is read on the holiday of Shavuot. But it is also a name closely linked to my family history. A sister of my grandmother with the same name, during WWII, managed to save herself from deportation to the extermination camps, taking the last boat leaving for France”.
“I was born in Israel and lived there for 20 years. But I am also deeply Italian, Roman. Two strong identities, for me”, Di Segni said.
Israel is a country of education from many points of view. As in the case of military conscription, which is mandatory also for women: “The service is required, but it is also lived as a choice, with a spirit of service to the country. We are not pawns. Therefore, in the recruitment phase, one follows their own aptitudes. Today this is even more pronounced than when I did it since the spirit is of hiring human resources rather than conscription of recruits”. Throughout that experience, the UCEI President said, “I never received an indoctrination to the hatred of the enemy”. 

A touching ceremony commemorated last week in Rome the Jews of Libya buried in desecrated cemeteries and of the meritorious who, after the forced exodus of 1967, contributed to rebuilding the community in Italy. The four tombstones were discovered on Friday at the Verano cemetery by Gino Mantin, Lillo Naman, Vito Arbib, and Samuel Zarrough, who all witnessed this history of displacement, violence, and then blossom elsewhere. The ceremony was at the heart of the international conference “Stories of rebirth: the Jews of Libya” which ended Sunday with a special event for the students of the Roman Jewish school.
Many young people participated in the conference, which its promoter David Gerbi structured thinking precisely of the new generations and the representatives of the various Libyan synagogues in Rome. Among the participants, Rabbi Riccardo Di Segni, Rabbi Alfonso Arbib and Rabbi Pino Arbib. As Rabbi Di Segni, although severely wounded, “the Libyan community has become stronger and stronger, and Rome is an excellent testimony of this”. The president of Italian Rabbinic Assembly Rabbi Arbib, who was born in Tripoli in 1958, offered a personal testimony: “The first thing that the Jews of Libya did upon their arrival in Italy was to found a synagogue: this - he said - means defending our identity”.

Above, the ceremony at the Verano cemetery in Rome.

In 1620, Rachele Olivetti embroiders a beautiful parochet (curtain that covers the Aron Kodesh, chamber where the Tora is kept) in view of her wedding. In the center, between different ornaments, she places her family's coat of arms and that of her husband-to-be, Yehuda Montefiori, matched with an elegant and romantic rhymed description. As a matter of fact, when referring to Montefiori's coat of arms, a lion holding a lily, she describes it as “beautiful and charming”. “It's quite clear that we are dealing with a wordplay: the lion is not only the symbol of Montefiori family, but it is also Yehuda's Italian name. A beautiful yet unusual embroidery on a Parochet. That is the perfect example to explain the meaning of our exhibition that, through symbols and coats of arms, tells a peculiar aspect of Italian Judaism”. This exhibition, named “Family Matters”, has been recently inaugurated at Nahon Museum of Jerusalem. Daniel Niv, curator of the museum and the exhibition, explained the meaning to our periodical Pagine Ebraiche. “The idea came from my studies. Some years ago, I attended a course at the Jewish University with professor Shalom Sabar, expert in Jewish art, and I analyzed the theme of symbols and coats of arms used by Jewish families over the centuries. Having also some ancestors from Ferrara, I mainly focused on the Italian reality”.

Translated by Alice Pugliese 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.

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By Dario Calimani
 
To Ernesto Galli Della Loggia, according to whom saying that Fascism has 'also done good things' would be a self-evident truth, we can recommend the careful and rigorous pages of Francesco Filippi, Mussolini ha fatto anche cose buone (lit. Mussolini has also done good things). Della Loggia, and also some of my friends who are benevolently 'sympathetic' towards Fascism, are asked what yardstick should be used to assess Fascism's contribution to history. On the one hand, roads and bridges, land reclamation (a fake), pensions (a fake), the economic boom (a fake), the enhancement of the role of women (a fake), justice (let us not even mention it!) and, on the other hand, the political clash elevated to crime, discrimination and racial laws, the war alongside Hitler, half a million dead, of which (irrelevant, we understand that!) seven thousand five hundred Jews torn from their homes because all of them - children included - bankers, schemers, usurers and exploiters of the people. But now, what is happening in Italy if even an intellectual - right-wing, of course, but still a presumed intellectual - strives to offer us 'good things', as if to compensate for the immensity of the crimes?

Translated by Gianluca Pace and revised by Alice Pugliese, 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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By Samantha Brenner*

Picture this: the waves of the warm Mediterranean waters crashing ashore, as the groom steps on the ceremonial glass underneath a floral chuppah, and the guests break into a joyous shout of “Mazel Tov!”. These images of a Jewish destination wedding in Italy, are increasingly embraced and promoted by wedding planners.
For American couples planning a destination wedding, figuring out details such as location, florists, and chefs isn’t always easy. Businesses like Primavera Dreams, a wedding planning service located in Boston, specialize in helping couples to organize a wedding thousands of miles from home. 
Luba Gankin, the founder of Primavera Dreams, has been planning dream weddings for the past six years. Traveling between Boston and Italy, Luba handles everything when it comes to planning weddings. During her six years of business, Luba has met couples from all over the U.S. who want to get married in Italy.
American Jewish couples who decide to get married in Italy are typically not Orthodox. Luba has seen that couples are not “deeply religious or are not strictly religious”.  Even though many couples are not religious, most do want traditional Jewish elements in their wedding ceremony.

* This piece is part of a series of articles written by students of Muhlenberg College, Pennsylvania, USA, enrolled in a course on the history and culture of Jewish Italy, taught by Dr. Daniel Leisawitz, Assistant Professor of Italian and Director of the Muhlenberg College Italian Studies Program.

Italian senator for life and Holocaust survivor Liliana Segre received the National Order of the Legion of Honour, France’s highest order of merit, on November 27. She had been appointed a Knight of the Legion of Honor by French President Emmanuel Macron a year ago but had not been officially given the award until now, Ruetir reported. Segre, who was “deported at the age of thirteen together with her father and grandparents, confronted with the inhuman brutality of a regime” was able to persevere and “to choose hope”, said France’s ambassador to Italy Christian Masset at the ceremony, held at the French Embassy in Rome. He added that throughout her activism, Segre has “honored the memory of those who did not survive, among other things by inaugurating the Memorial of the Shoah in Milan, or by presiding over the committee of ‘stumbling blocks’”.Masset spoke of Segre teaching children in school about her experience in the Holocaust “to transmit the darkest hours of history so that they never happen again”. He also said that Segre “found the courage to relentlessly fight intolerance and indifference”.
 
*This article was originally published on Arutz Sheva on November 29, 2021.

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