Having trouble viewing this email? Click here April 10, 2023 – 19 Nissan 5783



  

Hemos quedado para celebrar el Pésaj, por fin libres de reunirnos con nuestras familias y en grupos de referencia tras tres años de pandemia, con el entusiasmo y el sano trabajo para organizar la tradicional cena del Séder con todas las atenciones prescritas por ley divina, ley rabínica o ley de la casa. Y el primer pensamiento se dirige justo a este compromiso logístico, pero fundamentalmente moral, para hacer que las personas, cerca o lejos de nosotros, se sientan parte de la comunidad y de una asamblea que los acoge con placer y donde son huéspedes apreciados.
Los significados de la fiesta son profundos y múltiples – sobre todo la liberación de la esclavitud y la constitución de un pueblo unido por un estatuto y una meta – y cada año nos damos cuenta de que no estamos celebrando solo la memoria de los acontecimientos pasados, sino la manera en la que vivimos nuestro presente y los desafíos existenciales que se nos presentan. Se trata de desafíos que conciernen a nuestras comunidades y a la relación con el contexto sociopolítico con el que nos relacionamos. Hay que reconocer cómo aún estamos inmersos en una situación que limita nuestra libertad y seguridad de una forma ideal, pero en muchos contextos también real, y con qué energía y recursos trabajamos para ser libres y capaces de determinar el camino de nuestras vidas.
Celebrando este año también el setenta y cinco aniversario de la adopción de la Constitución republicana italiana, hemos querido, como UCEI, dedicar una serie de encuentros y publicaciones a las distintas declinaciones del artículo 3 (Principios fundamentales > Igualdad), con entusiasmo y atención por lo que ocurre a nuestro alrededor y con una contribución de pensamiento judío con respecto al principio constitucional.

Noemi Di Segni, presidenta de UCEI

Traducido por Francesca Pischedda y revisado por Diana Drudi, estudiantes de la Escuela Superior de Intérpretes y Traductores de la Universidad de Trieste, pasantes en la oficina del periódico de la Unión de las Comunidades Judías Italianas – Pagine Ebraiche.

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By Daniela Gross

In the darkest months of the Nazi Occupation, when the raids were increasing in number and violence was covering Trieste with blood, San Giovanni compound seemed to be a safe place from the storms of history. It was a hospital area, a place of care and hospitality, a whole another universe with a life of its own, secluded from the city. It was easy to be deceived into thinking to be safe from the enemy’s eye, when living behind the walls of the wonderful park along the slopes of that hill.
All hope fell apart on the afternoon of 28th March 1944, when a SS unit burst into the pavilions, gathered the hospitalized Jews and took them away amid excruciating scenes. The patients of the Psychiatric Hospital and the elderly of the Hospital of the Incurables were loaded onto a bus and brought to the concentration camp Risiera San Sabba. From there, they set off for Auschwitz the next day, where they were gassed.
That was one of the most dramatic moments of the Nazi Occupation, commemorated recently at the 'Carlo e Vera Wagner' Museum of the Jewish Community of Trieste. The meeting was attended by psychotherapist Helen Brunner, who talked about her experience as a descendant of one of the deportees; the doctor Federica Scrimin; and Tullia Catalan, historian from the Department of Humanities and scientific coordinator of the museum. Besides them, there were also the psychiatrists Michael Von Cranach, who since the ‘80s has been denouncing in Germany the horrors of the T4 Nazi program, which is responsible for sending nearly one hundred thousand mentally ill people to die because considered 'undeserving of living'; and Lorenzo Toresini, among the firsts to analyse the deportees' medical records from the psychiatric hospital of Trieste.

Above, the letter in which the psychiatric hospital head physician protested the deportation of Jewish patients, which the document's subject refers to as their "discharge".
  
Translation by Alice Pugliese, student at the Secondary School of Modern Languages for Interpreters and Translators of the University of Trieste, intern at the newspaper office of the Union of the Italian Jewish Communities – Pagine Ebraiche, revised by Gianluca Pace.

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Over the past year, a great number of Ukrainians fleeing Russian military aggression arrived in Italy as it never happened before. But the atlas of human suffering is wide, covering several regions and continents: from Nigeria to Bangladesh, from Georgia to Egypt. Many have left their homeland as a result of long-standing persecution and wars. Some due to the lack of educational and job opportunities. Some others, just in search of a better standard of living.
In the school “without borders” in Mantua, refugees coming from many different places are welcomed. The school is named after its founder, Sandro Saccani, and it is hosted in some premises made available by the municipality of Mantua under the aegis of ACLI, the Christian association of Italian Workers.
Here refugees are taught the basics of the Italian language, the first and essential rudiments everyone has to master in order to gain autonomy and, as quickly as possible, even a job. One of many volunteer-based organizations that strive to provide services and assistance to those who need it most and don’t have almost anything, starting with a minimal knowledge of the new society they live in and the new communication codes.
For a few months now, two new teachers are enlivening the school: the president of the Jewish community of Mantua Emanuele Colorni and his wife Loredana Leghziel. “We couldn't help but lead by example. We Jews perfectly know what it means to be in a condition of existential precariousness” tells Colorni, who was born during the Second World War, in the midst of anti-Jewish persecution.
  
Translation by Margherita Francese, revised by Sofia Busatto, students at the Secondary School of Modern Languages for Interpreters and Translators of the University of Trieste, interns at the newspaper office of the Union of the Italian Jewish Communities – Pagine Ebraiche.

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Abraham B. Yehoshua lo ha demostrado más de una vez en sus libros: la familia constituye la mejor llave para interpretar y revelar las dinámicas de las relaciones humanas. Se trata de una lección puesta en práctica con maestría por la dramaturga florentina Laura Forte en su último libro Una casa en llamas (ed. Guanda). En algunas obras recientes la autora ha desarrollado algunos aspectos de su experiencia personal, contándonos sobre su primo Pepo asesinato en Chile por los esbirros de Pinochet (en El acróbata), o sobre la búsqueda de su padre biológico (en Quizás mi padre).
Ahora Laura está probando su mano en una novela. Los personajes son ficticios, pero el marco de la historia alberga una narración íntima que le es congenial. Va de una familia de judíos italianos con rasgos a la vez particulares y universales. El marido, Sergio, es muy tradicionalista, mientras que Manuela, su mujer, es más “judía cultural”. Ella es también la narradora de esta historia que se extiende de verano a verano y de la que forman parte, juntos con ellos, sus dos hijos. Un drama se asoma a sus vidas: un cáncer de mama, una diagnosis de enfermedad tras un control de rutina. Esto representa la primera chispa de un “incendio catastrófico que arrolla todo”.

Traducido por Diana Drudi, estudiante de la Escuela Superior de Intérpretes y Traductores de la Universidad de Trieste, pasante en la oficina del periódico de la Unión de las Comunidades Judías Italianas – Pagine Ebraiche.

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By Marc Weitzmann*

In all likelihood, Leonardo da Vinci was only half Italian. His mother, Caterina, was a Circassian Jew born somewhere in the Caucasus, abducted as a teenager and sold as a sex slave several times in Russia, Constantinople, and Venice before finally being freed in Florence at age 15. This, at least, is the conclusion reached in the new book Il sorriso di Caterina, la madre di Leonardo, by the historian Carlo Vecce, one of the most distinguished specialists on Leonardo da Vinci.
The official version of da Vinci’s birth is that it was the fruit of a brief fling between the Florentine solicitor Piero da Vinci and a young peasant from Tuscany called Caterina, of whom almost nothing was known. Yet there had long been a seemingly unfounded theory that Leonardo had foreign origins and that Caterina was an Arab slave. Six years ago, professor Vecce decided to kill the rumor for good. 

*This article was originally published on Tablet on April 3, 2023.

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