Having trouble viewing this email? Click here December 13, 2021 – 9 Tevet 5782

By Daniel Reichel

“If he has expressed this wish and I will be strong enough, I'll be very happy to meet him. His release is wonderful news”. Speaking with Pagine Ebraiche, Senator for life and Holocaust survivor Liliana Segre responded with affection to the request of Patrick Zaki, the right researcher detained in Egypt since February 2020, to meet her in the future.
“His story impressed me very much. Twenty-two months in prison in Egypt and those constant postponements of his hearings. The fear dictated by the uncertainty of one's destiny. He made me rethink my experience. Of course, there are many differences and comparisons cannot be made”, said Segre who survived Auschwitz. “However, I know the meaning of what Zaki said: fear of a door that opens when you don't know if behind it freedom awaits you or the hand of the torturers”.
When the motion was passed in Parliament to ask the government to confer Italian citizenship on the young Egyptian, a student of the University of Bologna, Segre supported it with conviction. “I will always be present at least spiritually when it comes to freedom,” she said then. Now she reiterates the symbolic meaning of making Zaki Italian. “For me, we are all citizens of the world, but certainly giving them citizenship would still have value”.
Segre had called herself the young man's ideal grandmother and she stressed the importance of fighting for his freedom. “His detention without trial is a sensational violation of human and civil rights”, she explained to Pagine Ebraiche.

Read more

“Knowledge is crucial to fight against prejudices that through antisemitic and hatred actions have influenced, and unfortunately, still influence today’s history. This is why we want to improve a mutual understanding in our nation”. So Secretary general of the Italian Episcopal Conference Stefano Russo, about a significant initiative organized by the representatives of the Catholic world stimulated by the UCEI: the creation of 16 sheets updating school textbooks, so as to explain clearly and extensively what Judaism is.
“A project conceived long ago”, highlights UCEI councilor for educational policies Livia Ottolenghi, called to outline the huge potential of this project during the 61st edition of the Colloqui Ebraico – Cristiani (Jewish – Christian Conversations). The conference, held in Camaldoli at the beginning of December, focuses, among other things, on the assumption that “Antisemitism and the teaching of disdain are still present today, as well as the sometimes-unwitting opinions that spread a distorted relationship between Judaism and Christianism”.
Many critical factors remain, starting from textbooks, especially history and geography ones, used in both private and public schools. “Very often – explains Ottolenghi – Judaism is mentioned for the first time among the ancient civilizations disappeared millennia ago. Jews reappear only in the 20th century, when talking about events like the Second World War and the Shoah. We do not get to know what happens between these two moments”. A cultural violation that can be seen even when tracing today’s geographical boundaries of the Israeli State, often manipulated and misrepresented. Instrumentalization and distortion, also in this case, are on the agenda.

Translated by Alice Pugliese, 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.

Read more

A dive into 70 artworks ranging from paintings, sculptures, drawings, engravings, to manuscripts and photographs, accompanied by a sound installation of music composed during the Italian Unification, also known as Risorgimento.  Such is the expressive value of “1849-1871. Roman Jews between segregation and emancipation”, the new exhibition of the Jewish Museum in Rome presented on this day to the press and made open to the public starting from tomorrow until next year’s 27 May.
Curated by Francesco Leone and Giorgia Calò, the exposition uses some borrowings from the most important Italian museums on the Risorgimento and prestigious private collections with the objective of recounting the Jewish effort and involvement in that decisive historical phase for national events. There will be special focus on the reality of Roman Jews, the most ancient of the Diaspora, who obtained freedom only after the annexation to the Kingdom of Italy, after they had been denied it for centuries by the Church.
Risorgimento and Jews: a deep bond. “It wasn’t a simple and obvious process, but the hopes aroused by the Albertine Statute and the subsequent, albeit not so timely, decrees that conferred equality to the Israelites in the kingdom determined the vast movement of Jewish identification in the national cause and resurgence” recalls rabbi Riccardo Di Segni, head rabbi of Rome. “On the other hand – adds the rabbi – Jewish history became an artistic and spiritual model, for the patriots, as demonstrated by the success of Verdi’s “Va’ pensiero”, which compared the fate of the Jews, unhappy, exiled and deprived of the homeland and that of the Italians, divided and dominated by foreigners.
Ruth Dureghello, president of the Roman Jewish community was struck by this wish to claim full italianity. In Italy and particularly in Rome. “The wish for a common homeland – she reflects- was amplified in the Jewish community by the wish for standardisation of rights to every other citizen. The participation in the Risorgimento was also great because of this reason”. This was also shown by one of the most significant documents in the exhibition, a letter of the National Guard to Samuele Alatri “with the request of a Bible for the Jewish soldiers’ oath”.

From top, “La perlustrazione” by Alberto Issel (1848-1926) and ancient Ketubah (Jewish marriage contract) preserved in the historic Archive of the Jewish Community of Rome.
 
Translated by Oyebuchi Lucia Leonard and revised by Gianluca Pace, students at University of Trieste and 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.

Read more

By Alberto Cavaglion*
 
There is something tragic or better noble, in Maria Laura Rodotà's refusal: “My father was a southerner illuminist, and he would have super vaccinated. He listened politely to idiots but did not love them”. Apart from the epithet, meant for the organizers of the movement promoted by Mattei, Agamben, Freccero, and Cacciari (which opposes the Green Pass vaccine passport required in Italy to access public places, events, and to travel abroad, Ed.) in this gesture, in those precise words, the ancient commandment of honoring the father and mother, respecting them, and also defending them from posthumous exploitation strengthens. The dead have a bad habit of not knowing how to fend for themselves. Fortunately, there are the children, who patiently looked after them during their old age, staying close to them, keeping them company, not abandoning them, and with them thinking back to the highest and most important moments of life. A memorable lesson, even in the time of fluid and forgetful societies.

*Historian

By Sam Elias*
 
As a Sephardic Jew whose mother is a first-generation Italian-American, eggplant parm was a frequent sight on my kitchen table at home. When celebrating the High Holidays, we often ate what we referred to as ‘Sephardic’ eggplant, which was essentially fried eggplant with fresh tomato sauce. These first-hand experiences led me to believe that the eggplant was adored by Italians and Jews alike. And while this may now be true, it is not the whole story of the eggplant in Italy. In fact, the eggplant was not always a beloved vegetable in Italian cuisine; it was once a food that disgusted many Italians.
Today, the eggplant is a commonly used vegetable in Italian gastronomy, and can be found in a myriad of dishes in many regions of Italy. Sephardic Jews, originally from Spain and Portugal, made their way to Italy in the late 15th and 16th centuries. Long before their arrival in Italy, Sephardic Jews had been cooking with eggplant, which had likely been brought to the Iberian peninsula by the Arabs in the eighth century.
For these Iberian Jews the eggplant filled the role of the potato for contemporary Americans: the egg-shaped vegetable was a staple, used in a variety of dishes. When the Sephardic Jews arrived on the Italian peninsula seeking refuge from their expulsion from Spain and Portugal, they brought their beloved eggplant with them. The eggplant was thus introduced to central and northern Italy. However, the purple vegetable was not so readily embraced by non-Jewish Italians.
On the contrary, gentiles initially shunned the eggplant, since they associated it with the Jews that brought it. Documents survive from as early as the sixteenth century from the region of Emilia in which the eggplant is disparaged as a “Jewish food”. In the 1600s two influential Italian gastronomists noted that the eggplant was “the food of low-class people or Jews”. Since Jews enjoyed eggplant and Jews were despicable, so too were eggplants deemed despicable. 

Above, Eggplants by Charles Demuth, 1927, Metropolitan Museum of Art.

* 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 media on Friday published documents that appeared to confirm long-held accusations that Italy had agreed on a deal not to interfere with Palestinian terror attacks on Jewish targets and had failed to prevent a 1982 assault on a Rome synagogue in which a 2-year-old boy was killed.
The documents showed that Italian intelligence had clear information on the planned attack on the synagogue but did not stop it, and police even reduced security around the Rome house of worship.
The allegations have been known since 2008, when former Italian prime minister and president Francesco Cossiga told the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Aharonoth that Italy had “sold out its Jews” and signed a deal that allowed Palestinian terror groups a “free hand” to operate against Jewish and Israeli targets in Italy in exchange for not attacking other Italian interests.
“In exchange for a ‘free hand’ in Italy, the Palestinians ensured the security of our state and [the immunity] of Italian targets outside the country from terrorist attacks. As long as these objectives do not collaborate with Zionism and with the State of Israel”, Cossiga said. At the time, the allegations were strenuously denied in Italy and Cossiga was portrayed as delusional.

 *This article was originally published on Times of Israel on December 11, 2021.

Read more

In addition to our social media in Italian, Pagine Ebraiche International recently launched its new profile on Facebook. On our page, we share news, photos, and updates. Please take a moment and visit it, and once there, click “Like” or “Follow”. We look forward to bring you great information and connect with you.
We encourage you to comment, ask us questions, or share the content with your friends, family, and co-workers. Join us on Facebook