Tagged Italy

(JTA) — Michele Sciama, a former secretary-general of the Jewish Community of Milan — the city’s local Jewish communal life organization — has died of the Covid-19 coronavirus. Sciama, known to his friends and family as Micky, was 79 when he died Monday morning. He is survived by his… Read more »

(JTA) — The outbreak of the coronavirus in northern Italy forced Claudia Bagnarelli to make a painful choice. “To keep visiting my 94-year-old mother, I needed to stop seeing everyone else in my life,” Bagnarelli, a Jewish ballet teacher from Milan, said Monday. To avoid the risk of infecting… Read more »

(JTA) — An Italian couple whose ancestors were forced to hide their faith got married atop the ruins of an ancient synagogue, giving the site its first Jewish wedding in centuries. Roque Pugliese and Ivana Pezzoli tied the knot earlier this week in the presence of about 100 guests,… Read more »

It’s always Hanukkah in this picturesque town in northern Italy’s Piedmont region. Jews have lived in Casale Monferrato for more than 500 years, with the community reaching its peak of 850 members at about the time Jews here were granted civil rights in 1848. The town still boasts one… Read more »

CASTELNUOVO BERARDENGA, Italy (JTA) — Up a windy road in the tranquil Tuscan hills, down a gravel path and past acres of grapevines, a visitor will come across a stainless steel door frame secured with a piece of clear packing tape. The Hebrew scrawled on the adhesive reads: “David Solomon.”… Read more »

(JTA) — During my four months studying in Italy in the fall of 2007, you could say I had more than my fair share of strange Jewish experiences. Running late for a train one morning in Florence, I decided the best course of action would be to lay tefillin… Read more »

The design of Italy's Holocaust museum in Rome will feature a huge flattened black cube bearing the names of Italian victims. (Courtesy Rome City government)

ROME (JTA) — If all goes according to plan, a starkly modern, $30 million Holocaust museum will soon rise on the site of fascist dictator Benito Mussolini’s Rome residence. The site, also the location of ancient Jewish catacombs and now a city park, will be home to a museum… Read more »

Bar-Ilan University historian Ariel Toaff being served a double-roasted goose and baked onion salad by a "medieval" waitress in Bevagna, Italy. (Ruth Ellen Gruber)

BEVAGNA, Italy (JTA) — In a medieval tavern in 21st century Italy, waitresses in archaic costumes served a tepid, chalk-white substance the texture of oatmeal to tables filled with slightly skeptical diners. Sweet yet salty, and flavored with a mix of unexpectedly tangy spices, it turned out to be… Read more »

Dancers outside the 13th century Scolanova synagogues in Trani, during the Lech Lecha Jewish culture festival, September 2012. (Ruth Ellen Gruber)

TRANI, Italy (JTA) — Francesco Lotoro resurrects the music of the dead. Since 1991 the Italian pianist has traveled the globe to seek out and bring to light symphonies, songs, sonatas, operas, lullabies and even jazz riffs that were composed and often performed in Nazi-era concentration camps. “This music… Read more »

Amendolara Mayor Salvatore Antonio Ciminelli, left, standing next to JTA's Ruth Ellen Gruber, after presenting award certificates to some of the 100 schoolchildren who attended a Holocaust Memorial Day ceremony in the town hall, Jan. 27, 2012. The children received awards for art or writing projects about the Shoah. (Photo courtesy Amendolara Town Hall)

AMENDOLARA, Italy (JTA) — It was International Holocaust Memorial Day, and when I told my audience that I was a Jew, they burst into applause. I was speaking at the City Hall in this ancient seacoast town in Calabria, deep in southern Italy on the instep of the Italian… Read more »

Silvio Berlusconi (left) toasts with Israeli President Shimon Peres at the President’s Residence in Jerusalem in February 2010. (Photo: Miriam Alster/FLASH90/JTA)

Crowds on the streets of Rome jeered and cheered when their long-serving, scandal-plagued prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, stepped down earlier this month. A choir even sang Handel’s “Hallelujah Chorus” in front of the presidential palace as he handed in his resignation. Italian Jews don’t expect Berlusconi’s ouster to have… Read more »

Rabbi Stefano di Mauro has jump-started a tiny Jewish community in southern Sicily. (Alex Weisler)

On her deathbed, Salvatore Zurzolo’s grandmother confided a long-held secret: Their family was Jewish.… Read more »

Rabbi Elia Richetti, the president of the Italian Rabbinical Assembly, mingles with tourists outside the Jewish Museum in Venice (Ruth Ellen Gruber/JTA Photo Service)

ROME (JTA) — The years-long battle that ended recently with the dismissal of the chief rabbi of Turin, Italy, highlights a 21st-century identity crisis afflicting the oldest Jewish community in the Diaspora. Rabbi Alberto Somekh, who like all recognized rabbis in Italy is Orthodox, had served as chief rabbi… Read more »