Kesher Talk

Jews in odd places: Italy: This fall, Annie Sacerdoti — the editor of Milan’s monthly Jewish magazine, Il Bollettino — published a new, revised and updated “Guide to Jewish Italy,” which combines tourist itineraries with an overview of contemporary Jewish life throughout the country, including addresses of kosher restaurants and other useful information.

Some 30,000 to 35,000 Jews live in Italy today, out of a total population of 60 million people. More than two-thirds of Italy’s Jews live in Rome and Milan.

Jewish history in Italy dates back to ancient Roman times, however, and at one time or another over the past two millennia Jews lived and often left their traces in hundreds of towns, cities and villages up and down the peninsula.

Synagogues and Jewish quarters were abandoned when Jews were expelled from cities and regions over the centuries, but also — as in the United States — when Jews moved from small towns to big cities as part of demographic shifts. About 8,000 Italian Jews were deported to their deaths in the Holocaust.

Richly illustrated with color photographs, Sacerdoti’s book — which will appear in English early in 2004 — looks at 2,000 years of Jewish heritage and culture from top to toe of the Italian boot.

The aim, Sacerdoti said, was to present a real tourist guide, including only sites that could easily be visited. It covers sites in 45 towns and cities, ranging from ancient catacombs in Rome to a medieval mikvah in Sicily and more than a dozen glorious baroque synagogues in the northwest region of Piedmont, most of them in towns where few or no Jews live today.

posted by William @ 2/13/2004 08:56:56 AM