Histoire Des Juifs En Italie

Map of Jewish communities existing in Italy

The history of Jews in Italy , the oldest Jewish community in Europe West dates back to the Maccabean revolt. It becomes significant in 63 BCE and flourished under the Roman Empire , despite several clashes linked to the commitment of Jews to their ancestral faith and the nascent sect of Christians people, mainly Rome and Milan.

Under the Republic and the Empire at the time of paganism

According to the first Book of Maccabees , Judas Maccabeus , leader of the Jews in struggle against the power of Greece in the land of Israel , sent in 161 BCE, an embassy to the senate in Rome to negotiate an alliance. This will be repeated several times by the princes Hasmonean in 146, 139 and 133 BC in EC . It seems that the Jews, perhaps traders from the large community of Alexandria , are established in Rome since before 139 BC CE because, according to Valerius Maximus , the Jews were expelled from Rome this year for proslytis ^, .

The Jewish community in Rome is gaining importance as Pompey who deports prisoners captured during the capture of Jerusalem in 63 BC and EC is apparently quickly released ^, . The rite of the Jews, still observed by their descendants and called minhag italki is close to the rite practiced by Jews at the time of the Second Temple.

EC from 59 BC, Jews arouse jealousy, as shown by the argument strongly hostile to Cicero for his friend Lucius Valerius Flaccus: " .

But the Jews and especially Antipater had supported during his struggle for power Julius Caesar , the latter grants to the Jews under Roman rule, a more favorable status allowing them to retain some administrative autonomy and tax exmption ^{, ,} . This status remains in effect until the advent of the Christian emperors, without being challenged by the Jewish revolt of 70 and 135, with the exception of the introduction of a special tax, the "fiscus judaicus" by Vespasian . According to Philo of Alexandria , Augustus continued the favorable policy of Caesar vis--vis the Jews, those of them who lived in Rome were Roman citizens, they could donate money for the cult in Jerusalem. Augustus would have also required its officials to postpone a day of free grain to the Jews, if they were to lead them to break the Sabbath . Philo also teaches us that they lived while the area known today as the Trastevere (before spreading in many other areas ) and went into the synagogues on the Sabbath day .

Based on figures provided by Flavius Josephus , an estimated 30 000 or 40 000 the number of Jews in Rome in the ^first century . This large number is corroborated by the size of the five catacombs Jewish and evidenced by the many synagogues in ancient Rome . The epitaphs of the catacombs in fact tell us about the many synagogues then existing in Rome and also on their organization, remarkable for the lack of rabbis, function appeared after the fall of the Second Temple. The Jews of Rome were generally speak Greek because the majority of graves of Greek inscriptions door, which strengthens the hypothesis of Alexandrian origin, only a minority of graves bears inscriptions in Latin. They lived mainly trading and many were poor but the ruins of the synagogue of Ostia show that some merchants were wealthier . There were artisans among the Jews and even painters, actors and poets but also beggars by Juvenal .

From the ^second century, the presence of Jews is attested in a few cities in the southern coast of Italy or the interior .

Discrimination and Proselytizing

The Jews of Rome are engaged in proselytism, and as has already been seen, it arouses the hostility of the ^second century BCE. According to Flavius Josephus , at 19, after the scam of a noble Roman converted to Judaism by Jews who turn to their advantage his gifts to the Temple of Jerusalem, Tiberius deporting Jews Peregrine (those who do are not Roman citizens) in Sardinia , where they have a choice between fighting against the bandits and death. It is only 31, after the death of Sejanus , that the exiles could return to Rome.

The willingness of Caligula to install his own statue in the temples (and synagogues) of the Empire and the refusal of the Jews, which is the pretext of serious riots in Alexandria in 38, does not appear immediately endangered the Jews of Rome. But if Claude cancels the decisions of Caligula and soothes the Jews of Alexandria , he also ordered the expulsion of Jews from Rome (41), unless one knows the real effect of this decision . Following Suetonius , however, we can also understand that this is only the expulsion of members of the new Christian sect or that it is only Jews who protested against the establishment the Edomite Herod Agrippa I as king of Judea in place of a messiah (Christ), a descendant of the house of David .

Even the imperial family is not immune to proselytize and Josephus mentions the Empress Poppaea , wife of Nero as a pious (Theosebia) .

A few years later, it is Christians who, according to Tacitus are victims of persecution by Nero, although some authors believe that the Jews were the real victims .

Arch of Titus : Jewish prisoners carrying the Menorah and the trumpets of the Temple of Jerusalem

The Jewish war led by Vespasian and Titus did not appear to affect too tragic for the Jews of Rome. However, according to Flavius Josephus, 97,000 Jews were taken prisoner. Some were deported to Rome as evidenced by the famous frieze of the Arch of Titus in the Roman Forum or the increase in the number of Jewish graves in the catacombs under Hadrian , perhaps linked to the deaths of the children liberated from Jewish prisoners of Titus .

However, Vespasian, inaugurated a policy of systematic hostility to Judaism by establishing a special tax on Jews, the fiscus judaicus which is a perversion of the tithe that the Jews of the Diaspora paid to the Temple of Jerusalem until his fall in 70 . This tax is then used to rebuild a temple to Jupiter and is particularly humiliating for the Jews. It also betrays the intention to punish proselytizing. This position is strengthened several years later by Domitian who matches humiliating practices to verify Judaism Jews. It is partially abandoned by his successor, Nerva , but in fact persists for decades . This hostility to the converted is confirmed by the performance in 95 of the consul Titus Flavius Clemens and the exile of his wife Flavia Domitilla , relatives of the emperor, who expressed sympathy for Judaism .

Under Hadrian , circumcision is banned throughout the empire to the Jews as to non-Jews, which may have contributed to the revolt of Bar Kokhba (132-135). She is allowed out once again that under Antoninus Pius who does not circumcision of converts .

It is therefore certain that the Jews proslytisent with some success in the Roman high society where, since the translation of the Bible (the Septuagint ), the major Jewish texts are available in Greek. This is denounced by the most famous writers, Cicero, For Flaccus in, 66-69, Seneca and Tacitus which can influence the power in his fight against Jewish proselytism. The ban on circumcision of converts from the Roman authorities, his abandonment of Christianity in general and the renunciation of many obligations (such as Kosher ) do not prevent proselytizing to proliferate until the adoption of Christianity by Imperial authorities .

Perceptions of Jews by the Romans

The Romans had little interest in the Jews. Suetonius says Augustus believed that the Jews fasted on the Sabbath . Plutarch (Greek and Roman citizen) told one of his characters that pork is a animal sacred to the Jews . Seneca , he regrets that the Jewish customs "spread with such force: the conquered were the law to the winners. . And Juvenal treats the rest of Shabbat laziness .

What intrigues most Romans is no image of the god of the Jews and their refusal to appoint him. Thus, Livy writes: " . While some, like Tacitus, yet little suspect of sympathy for Judaism, are rather impressed by this philosophical approach, others, like Cicero, assimilate rather of impiety . Others are stigmatized Jewish rites of the Romans: the Sabbath is equated with idleness, circumcision with castration, the denial of pork consumption is considered by some as Petronius to the deification of the animal, while others as Tacitus lend to Jews a special reverence for the donkey. All this explains that Cicero saw in Judaism a foreign superstition (barbara superstitio) . As for Tacitus, his comments on Jews are a collection of absurd prejudices and defamatory . He considers the Jews execrable (taeterrima people) especially for their proselytizing, and the contempt they have for other gods, and even hostility in a confused Jews and Christians .

Under the Christian Empire

Under Constantine ⁱⁿ the fourth century, Christianity became the state religion and if religious freedom continues to be met, the Jews were increasingly marginalized : ^the fifth century, Jews were excluded from public office or legal marriage with Christians are prohibited and the possession of Christian slaves. Under the Gothic king Theodoric (476-524), Jews, like other ethnic or religious groups obtain administrative autonomy which will become the norm .

From the fall of the Roman Empire to 1492

We do not know much about the Italian Jewish communities in the High Middle Ages except that it existed in Rome, Ravenna , the capital of Theodoric and Milan .

From ^the seventh to ^tenth centuries, the Italian maritime cities are on the trade route radhanites and it is likely that the Jewish communities remain there. They will play a large role in the history of Judaism: the first successful communities of Ashkenaz are based, according to tradition, after Charlemagne brought him to the Kalonymus family , originally from Lucca in Tuscany ^, . Two centuries later, Rabbeinu Tam said that "The Torah came from Bari and the word of God, of Otranto " ; Houshiel ben Elhanan , large Tunisian authority of Judaism from ^the ninth century, is also a native of Bari , which seems to confirm the existence of Talmudic academies in these cities .

In the ninth ^century the Arabs took over the Sicilian where Jews settled. A Jewish intellectual life is born, and in southern Italy, even dependence of the Byzantine Empire. Sabbatai Donnolo is the oldest Jew to write a treatise on medicine and it is ⁱⁿ the tenth century that in southern Italy, the Sefer Yosippon , a book of Jewish history that had great success throughout the Middle Ages .

From ^the eleventh to ^thirteenth centuries, Jews have prospered throughout southern Italy, especially during the reign of Frederick II of Hohenstaufen (1220-1250) who reigned over Sicily and gives them the monopoly of the industry Silk . A family after a converted Jew, the Pierleoni gives an antipope Anaclet II (1130-1138) which aroused considerable opposition from its Jewish origins, particularly from Bernard of Clairvaux . This economic growth also brings intellectual influence. In Rome, Nathan ben Yehiel Anav (about 1035-1106) composed the Aruch , a dictionary of Talmudic Aramaic, which also serves as the rabbinic literature anthology. It was also at that time begin to fix the Judeo-Italian to be spoken or italki until the twentieth ^century and the Italian rite , still used in synagogues Italian .

However, from the late twelfth ^century, the papacy is hostile to Jews. In 1179, the ^Third Lateran Council banned the use by Jews of Christian employees and the ^Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 equates them to serfs and established the port Jews of distinctive insignia on clothing , to enable their recognition. In the middle of the thirteenth ^century, the Inquisition established in Rome and Milan in 1278, Jews were forced to attend sermons calling for the conversion . With the seizure of power by the Angevin dynasty in Naples in 1266, related to the King of France and protected by the pope, the hostility toward Jews spread to southern Italy and Sicily. An accusation of ritual murder is spreading Trani in Puglia. From 1266 to 1294, it is estimated that half the Jewish population of southern Italy (then estimated 12 000 to 15 000 people) are forced to convert .

If previously there were few bankers or lenders among Italian Jews, as confirmed by Thomas Aquinas , it changes the early fourteenth ^century for several reasons: the rise of Italian cities demand the money lending at interest is forbidden to Christians, Jews since then have some cash, especially those from southern Italy, had to make their property to escape persecution and others have accumulated by availability their business ^, . Lenders came from southern Italy or Rome, for a time abandoned by the Papacy, or Rhine thus stand with their families, further north, where previously there was little Jews, Ferrara , Mantua , Padua, etc. ... The facility in the largest cities is later, whether as Venice , Genoa and Florence . An estimated 300 the number of Italian cities where Jews had settled in the middle of the fifteenth ^century . The Italian Jewish community also benefits from the expulsion of Jews from France by Philip the Fair in 1306 and then under Charles VI in 1394. In 1437, in Florence , Cosimo de Medici allows Jewish financiers to create a bank loan, raising the competition with the creation of Christian piety Mount of Perugia in 1463 .

Such development can not proceed without a great literary activity and religious and Italy then attracts Jewish scholars: the time of the great Italian poets and grammarians, at whose head appears Immanuel ben Solomon , a friend of Dante , which also handles Hebrew well as Italian and Latin.

The ^fifteenth century saw the first influx of Jews, Sephardim , after the persecution that ravage Spain from the late fourteenth ^century. The liberal approach vis--vis the Jews of the ruling families in Mantua , the Gonzaga , and Ferrara , the Este , contrasts with the attitude much more variable protecting some of the popes, instead adopting other measures against -Jewish . In the Church, anti-Jewish attitude is especially the case of Franciscan monks as Bernardino of Feltre whose sermons bring an accusation of ritual murder, following the death of a child, Simon of Trent (in 1588 and beatified in dbatifi 1965 by Paul VI ) . Dozens of Jews in Trent are tortured and burned alive (or strangled to those who accept the conversion before the execution).

But the glory of the Jews in Italy is to be printed from the 1470s, the first books in Hebrew. German corporations, including the printers, being forbidden to Jews, printers German Jews came to settle in Italy since 1465. The first book in Hebrew is produced in 1475 and the first Hebrew Bible was published in 1482 in Bologna , while the first prayer book with vowels, the Mahzor Roma, date from 1485 . The printers are the most famous dynasty Soncino , from Germany and settled in Soncino , a small town in Lombardy , in the wake of persecution, they migrated to Constantinople and Salonica in the sixteenth ^century . These printers contribute to the dissemination of the Bible and Talmud and Jewish texts more generally across Europe.

From 1492 to 1848, the time of expulsion and ghettos

Vico dei gia Giudei; Ghetto degli Ebrei - Traces of the Jewish presence in Cagliari

The consequences of the Alhambra Decree in Italy

The expulsion of Jews from Spain profoundly transformed the Italian Jewish community. Jews are forced to leave as soon as July 31, 1492, Sardinia, Aragonese possession, where many Jews had settled in Provence ^fourteenth and fifteenth ^centuries . In Cagliari, they represented almost 9% of the population . Some choose the kingdom of Naples , some of North Africa. Similarly, in Sicily, the Jews must leave the island in August and September 1492 in southern Italy and the Ottoman Empire.

The choice of Naples quickly turns disastrous as it was first invaded by the French then became the possession of Ferdinand II of Aragon in the early ^sixteenth century. Jews are expelled from 1510 and the expulsion is extended for all the possessions of Charles V in southern Italy in 1541 .

Conversely, Spanish Jews chose Italy as a land of exile among them, the family of Isaac Abravanel who settled first at Naples she had to flee during the French invasion , and after some wanderings in the Mediterranean, Venice. The Sephardic emigration continues in the ^sixteenth and ^seventeenth centuries when many new Christians emigrated from Spain to Italy and particularly Venice .

With Sephardic immigration, the Italian Jewish community will take its final composition very original, with the coexistence of three communities will retain their distinctive characters: Jews called Italian or italki, from the community already existing in the Roman Empire, Ashkenazi Jews from Germany and France at the time of the expulsions and Sephardic Jews from Spain in the time of persecution and expulsion ^(XIV - XVII ^centuries ). Through the establishment of ghettos, they will live and build their synagogue next to each other. Their numbers reached a maximum as it no longer exceeds, approximately 50 000 people ^Ghettos

"The Jews all lived together in all the houses located in the Ghetto, near San Girolamo. And so they do not travel all night, we decree that both doors will be installed on both sides of the Old Ghetto, which will open at dawn and closed at midnight by four guards Christians used therefor and appointed by the Jews themselves at the rate agreed by our college. " . The decree of the Senate of Venice, dated March 29, 1516 marks the invention of the ghetto , the beginning of the forced separation from other Christians, even though, historically, the Jews wanted to live together in neighborhoods where Jews were relatively numerous but which Christians n'taient not excluded so as to maintain a synagogue and a school, collect the minyan is to say, the ten men necessary for the agency, and ensure ritual slaughter. This decree has not happened either by surprise. Historically, the Jews had to wear a distinctive sign. The Jews were expelled from Spain, Provence and southern Italy. This Order may seem moderate, as Jews continue to live and work in Venice.

Jews do not cease to flow in Venice, and despite the high rise building which still characterizes it, we must enlarge the ghetto Ghetto Novo said the annexation of a new quarter, the Ghetto Vecchio and later still, that of Novissimo ghetto. Several synagogues representing different rites present in Italy, are open.

Tall buildings of the ghetto in Venice around 1900

Scola Levantina (1678) in the Ghetto of Venice: there are four large bays of the prayer hall

The situation of Jews in Italy deteriorates further with the Counter-Reformation intolerant to everything non-Catholic and advocated by the Council of Trent , which extends from 1545 to 1563. In 1553, the burnings of Jewish books are organized in Rome and Cremona . In 1555, Pope Paul IV published the bull Cum nimis absurdum , by which are established ghettos in the Papal States. Other sections of this bull ban the construction of new synagogues and Jewish practice by other activities that the trade rags. By the bubble Hebraeorum people of St. Pius V in 1569, Jews were expelled from the Papal States except Rome and ghettos of Ancona

The anti-Jewish persecution continued throughout the ^seventeenth century (and in fact will not stop with the French arrived in Italy in 1796): In 1597, Philip II of Spain expelled the Jews from the Duchy of Milan in 1682, Rome Jewish banks were closed in 1684, the ghetto of Padua was robbed .

Dynamism of Italian Jewry

Synagogue of Casale Monferrato ( Piedmont ) - Prayer Room (1599)

Synagogue in Conegliano (XVIII ^century), transported to the Museum of Italian Jewish Art in Jerusalem

Bimah of the synagogue Italian Padua (1617)

Ark of the synagogue of Padua Italian

Although the institution of the ghetto is the result of a policy of intolerance and exclusion, it occurs in a context of expulsions, travel restrictions (on the Spanish territories, French and English) and massacres (in Poland). Italian Judaism therefore knows a comparatively quiet life in a country where the Church, considering the Jews as witnesses to history, do not want their disappearance. This allows, despite living in the ghetto, a remarkable intellectual activity for a small community that is part of Italian society.

From 1502, Judah Abravanel published his Dialogues of love, Neoplatonic work has influenced many writers of the sixteenth century, from Cervantes to Montaigne. Rabbi Menahem Azariah da Fano made known in the West the work of cabbalists Joseph Caro and Moses Cordovero . Sforno Ovadia , physician and commentator of the sixteenth ^century publishes reviews of the Torah and other biblical texts, which themselves themselves, are still under study . Azariah di Rossi puts excitement in the Jewish world by publishing his Meor Einayim, in which he engaged for the first time to a critique of some classic rabbinic Judaism. In 1555, the first play ever written in Hebrew is published by Judah Sommo Leone, an author and theater director .

The Jews of Italy, such as the Mediterranean basin, influenced many cabbalists are affected, the ^sixteenth and ^seventeenth centuries, by the messianic movements that herald imminent redemption. In 1532, the false messiah Solomon Molko is burned to Mantua for apostasy. In the seventeenth ^century, one of the strongest supporters of Sabbatai Zevi , Nathan of Gaza tried to convince communities of Venice and Livorno in the rightness of his cause.

In 1593, Ferdinand ^I allow foreign merchants including Portuguese Marranos settle freely Livorno . This is the beginning of the rise of the Jewish community of Livorno , which will reach 5,000 people by the end of the eighteenth ^century and whose nationals established later in Tunisia will be known as the Grans. Trade in commodities such as coral, wine, coffee etc.. made the fortune of the merchants of Livorno until the nineteenth ^century when the loss of privileges Leghorn increased competition from other ports. It was born in Livorno in 1784, Moses Montefiore , a forerunner of Zionism and founder of the first Jewish neighborhood outside the walls in Jerusalem.

In the seventeenth ^century, Simone Luzzatto and Leon de Modena , two rabbis Venetian works are published novel not addressed exclusively to Jews and Judaism that are more modern. Simone Luzzatto (called a demagogue by the Jewish Encyclopedia ) he published his Discorso circa stato defl'Hebrei (Speech on the state of the Jews) that addresses the political and social life of Jews in a non-Jewish . As for Leon of Modena, he was the first to introduce a choir at the synagogue in Ferrara and he published a History of Jewish rituals translated into French, English and Dutch .

Numerous via dei Ebrei, via dei Giudei ghetto or via existing until today show the location of some of these communities, particularly numerous in the Veneto. The streets of southern Italy (where there are many or via giudecca Jewry Street), Sicily and Sardinia, former Spanish possessions, show the existence of communities evicted in 1496 in the aftermath of the decree Alhambra.

Synagogues

The ^sixteenth to the ^eighteenth century, Italian Jews build many synagogues now considered the jewels of synagogue architecture.

Reflecting the ambivalence of life in the ghetto, always subject to the whims of princes, they are discrete, barely distinguishable from the surrounding houses. They are small because the communities are never very large and the small size of the ghetto can not build off. Because they are numerous in big cities like Venice, Rome and Padua, he must have synagogues offering services for each of the communities present in Italy, the Ashkenazi , the Sephardim and the "Italian". The prayer room is almost always upstairs, opened by large windows. But they are very richly decorated. Their interior design reflects the taste of the time and is strongly influenced by art baroque , with bleachers often surrounded by columns, can remember, all things considered, the canopy of Bernini at St. Peter's in Rome . The gem is perhaps the Scola Grande tedesca or Ashkenazi Great Synagogue of Venice .

In the ghetto of Rome, the lack of space combined with the diversity of traditions gave rise to the Piazza delle Cinque Scuole, a building that housed five synagogues superimposed or rather five different rhetorical traditions.

The consequences of the French Revolution

Street map of the Jews in Italy

indicates the use of terms or Ebrei Giudei. tor 3.svg "src =" http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f0/City_locator_3.svg/16px-City_locator_3.svg.png "width =" 16 "height =" 16 " /> indicates the use of the term giudecca. indicates the use of the term ghetto.

In 1781, the Edict of Toleration of Joseph II partially emancipate the Jews from imperial possessions including Trieste. But it is the French troops of Napoleon Bonaparte who bring freedom to the Italian Jews in 1796. The doors of the ghetto were torn and burned, Jewish leaders can sit in the municipalities ... and new and heavy taxes are imposed . As among the French Jews, prominent rabbis as Abraham Vita Cologna who was chief rabbi of France from 1812 to 1826 and just notables as Abraham Tedesco, a merchant in Venice, are involved.

With the fall of Napoleon, the condition of the Jews is in question: the Italians had identified the Catholic French Jews to atheists. The Jews are then victims of anti-Jewish riots while we returned to the old laws concerning them, especially in the Papal States .

But elsewhere, particularly in Milan and the Austrian possessions but also in Tuscany, the Jews are now part of the middle class and participate fully in social and political life.

The modern Italy, from 1848 to today

The conquest of Equal Rights: 1848-1870

Mole Antonelliana a synagogue to be built in Turin

Synagogue of Turin , Hispano-Moorish style

Great Synagogue of Florence (1874-1882)

Great Synagogue of Rome

The 1848 revolution marked the beginning of the process of unification of Italy. From March 4, 1848, King Charles Albert gives a constitution for the kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia , where equality of all before the law is proclaimed and religions other than Catholicism the state religion, tolerated. It is the emancipation of the Jews of this kingdom which is explicitly confirmed by a royal decree, March 29, 1848 .

In Rome and the Papal States, Pope Pius IX ordered the destruction of the ghetto walls but the fall of the Roman Republic , with the help of troops from the ^Second French Republic , causes a violent reaction that the Jews back in Papal ghettos.

Broke in 1858 in Bologna, the Mortara case , the name of a boy kidnapped by the papal authorities to his Jewish family on the pretext that an employee of the family had secretly baptized during illness. This is one result of this case is that constitutes the Alliance Israelite Universelle.

Between 1859 and 1870, the Savoy is extending its influence throughout Italy, including Rome and the Jews have, like in Piedmont, a full citizenship.

Emancipation and monumental synagogues

Emancipation was the result of causing very rapid assimilation of Jews in Italy. Vittorio Segre, an Israeli historian of Italian origin can write: "They had cheered emancipation. They were fiercely loyal to the House of Savoy because of the formation of Charles Albert. . Besides these, Ernesto Nathan will be mayor of Rome from 1907 to 1913 and, in another area, Amedeo Modigliani , born of a Jewish family in Livorno, one of the most famous representatives of the School of Paris.

Traditional Jewish life runs parallel with Samuel David Luzzatto , one of the fathers of the Judentums Wissenschaft ("science of Judaism") and director of a yeshiva in Padua, later transferred to Florence and Rome . The philosopher Elias Benamozegh rehabilitates the Kabbalah. Driven by confidence in Italian society, Jews are building monumental synagogues in Turin, then to Florence and Rome.

The Italian Jews during the Second World War

Under Fascism

The fascist Italian who came to power in 1922 with Mussolini did not immediately threaten the Jews, even if it is fundamentally hostile to minority . Some Jewish members, as Aldo Finzi , align themselves with fascism and the Jewish origin of Margherita Sarfatti , one of the mistresses of Mussolini himself, is publicly known.

The situation changes dramatically when all Italy is similar to Nazi Germany and with the official visit to Hitler in Italy (May 1938). During the fall of 1938, is published several decrees that form the racial laws: the Jews are excluded from public education and therefore, marriage between Jews and Aryans and Aryan domestic employment is prohibited, properties are forfeited, then it is banned from publishing a newspaper or own a radio, etc. ... .

Many Jews will then convert to Christianity, scholars like Enrico Fermi , whose wife was Jewish and who had just received the Nobel Prize in Physics , emigrate to the United States. The number of Jews increased from 47,485 recorded in 1931 to 35,156 in 1939 . Nevertheless, the Jewish community faces and organizing assistance.

With the coming of war in Italy in May 1940, the situation is getting worse. Internment camps were created for nationals where enemies are locked foreign Jews who had fled to Italy and some Italian Jews .

Nevertheless, the Italian authorities do not participate in the final solution : they refuse to give Jews, including his Tunisian nationals , the German police, French or Croatian and Italian are illustrated in the rescue of Jews ^, . The Italian occupation zone in France, mainly Nice, is a refuge for many Jews in France until September 1943. Angelo Donati and Father Marie-Benoit y organize rescues, partial success.

During the German occupation

Ghetto Rome : Plaque commemorating the deportation of 16 October 1943

In September 1943 Italy capitulated to the Allies in Italy but, in large part not yet held by the Allies, is occupied by the Germans who control Rome and northern Italy, where Jews live. On 16 October 1943 , a thousand Roman Jews were rounded up in the ghetto of Rome and deported to Auschwitz . Pope Pius XII intervened, unsuccessfully, to beg the German authorities not to proceed with the deportation. Further raids followed in major Italian cities. The Germans opened a concentration camp at Fossoli where are deported 5,000 people, half of them Jews. In the summer of 1944, another camp is open to Bolzano. If some Jews arrive to take refuge behind the Allied lines, many were saved by hiding among non-Jewish Italians .

Pope Pius XII himself, which many blame the lack of public stance denouncing the deportations of Jews, would have protected the Jews, including ordering that Jews and political refugees are sheltered in the convent of Santi Quattro Roman Coronati .

Finally, about 7750 Italian Jews disappear in the Holocaust. Some came back from death camps including Primo Levi , whose book Se questo un uomo is one of the pillars of literature on the Holocaust.

Liberation can discover San Nicandro Garganico a group of farmers claiming to Judaism since the 1930s. After their official conversion at a collective circumcision, most emigrated to Mandatory Palestine before the late 1940s ^, .

The Jews of Italy, today

After the war, the Italian Jewish community remains difficult despite an influx of refugees (most of which ultimately choose to emigrate to Israel) and the arrival of 2,000 refugee Jews from Libya , a former Italian colony. They settled mainly in Rome, where they create a new synagogue and make up a third of the Jewish community , and in Milan and, incidentally, Livorno .

The main centers of Judaism today are Italian Rome and Milan. The birth rate is low, so that mixed marriages are numerous . Italian Jewish communities are grouped in the UCEI (Unione delle Comunit Ebraiche Italiane), which has created the website in 2009 Moked / and a new monthly Pagine Ebraiche . Jewish elementary school there and a school of the ORT and two yeshivot , Rome and Turin . The chief rabbi of Rome since 2002 Riccardo Di Segni , who is also radiologist .

The Jewish community was marked by three terrorist attacks, one against the synagogue in Rome , October 9, 1982, when a baby is killed, one against the Italian liner Achille Lauro in October 1985 when a Jewish American passenger was murdered and one against the bar El Al airport of Rome, 27 December 1985, which killed 16 people .

The most notable recent event is the visit of Pope John Paul II to the synagogue in Rome, April 13, 1986, where he was received by the Chief Rabbi of Rome Elio Toaff. During the first visit by a pope to a synagogue, the pope addresses the Jews by telling them: "You are our dearly beloved brothers and, somehow, we could say our elder brothers. " Benedict XVI renews such a visit, January 17, 2010, in a more difficult following the proposed beatification of Pius XII . During his speech, the pope recalled that Pius XII Rescued Jews "so often hidden and discreet," while the president of the Jewish community of Rome, Riccardo Pacifici, recalled that "the silence of Pius XII during the Holocaust " remains painful .

Notes

References

Bibliography

• Elie Barnavi , Universal History of the Jews, Hachette , 1992 ( ISBN 2-01-0163346 )
• (It) Abraham Berliner, Storia di Roma degli ebrei: dall'antichit allo smantellamento del Ghetto, Milano, Bompiani, 2000. ISBN 88-452-9027-1.
• Riccardo Calimani , History of the Ghetto of Venice, Tallandier , 2008
• (It) Bruno Di Porto, "Ebraismo in Italia tra la prima guerra e il fascismo world. Esperienze, momenti, personaggi ", in Rassegna di mensile Israel, 1981, nn. 1-3
• (In) Eric Gruen, Diaspora. Jews amidst Greeks and Romans, ed. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 2002, review online in early Judaism Newsletter
• Mireille Hadas-Lebel , Rome, Judea and the Jews, A. & J. Picard, Paris, 2009 (ISBN 978.2.7084.0842.5)
• Danile Iancu-Agou , Expulsion of the Jews of Provence and Mediterranean Europe ^(XV - XVI ^centuries) Collection of the Journal of Jewish Studies, 2001 ( ISBN 90-429-1634-6 )
• Dominique Jarrasse , Synagogues, Adam Biro, 2001 ( ISBN 2-87660-304-7 )
• (It) Amos Luzzatto , "It Rinnovamento Cultural dell'ebraismo italiano tra le due war," in David Bidussa, Amos Luzzatto, Gadi Luzzatto Voghera, Oltre il ghetto: e figure della cultura Momenti ebraica in Italia tra l'Unit e il fascismo , Morcelliana, Brescia 1992
• Geoffrey Wigod , Encyclopedic Dictionary of Judaism , Editions du Cerf, 1993 ( ISBN 2-20404541-1 )

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