Milan — Today, many European countries — including Germany, Italy and the UK — are observing the annual International Holocaust Remembrance Day. What makes this particular Holocaust Remembrance Day peculiar in Italy is the fact that quite a few public intellectuals, both Jewish and non-Jewish, have called for its abolition. Well, that and the fact…
Boxes containing the head of a pig were sent to Rome’s main synagogue, the Israeli embassy in Rome and a museum showing an exhibition on the Holocaust. The packages, sent via a courier service, were delivered Friday, just days before International Holocaust Remembrance Day. All three packages were turned over to Italy’s special terrorism and…
Special meetings are being held this week to discuss increasingly sharp political tensions within the Italian Jewish community centered on differing attitudes toward Israel and the Middle East. The meetings were called in the wake of an incident on Jan. 14, in which Jewish protesters disrupted a panel discussion of a book on the left…
The former Jewish ghetto on the banks of the Tiber in central Rome. / Getty Images Should Jews living in the Diaspora feel ashamed of being, well, Jews living in the Diaspora? A growing number of European Jews, it seems, believe the answer is yes. But when did we start buying into this narrative? I’ve…
An Italian research group has begun investigating the case of Giovanni Palatucci, a World War II Italian policeman whose record of rescuing Jews recently has come under question. The website of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities, or UCEI, said Friday that the so-called “Research Group on Fiume-Palatucci 1938-1945” held its first meeting earlier in…
A populist protest leader’s claim that Italy is “slave to Jewish bankers” has drawn condemnation. Andrea Zunino, spokesman for the Forconi, or Pitchforks Movement, which spearheaded widespread anti-government and anti-austerity protests in Italy last week, made the comment in an interview with La Repubblica newspaper Friday. “We want the government to resign,” he told the…
A Hanukkah candle-lighting ceremony was held in the Steri Palace Prison in Palermo in Italy, which served as a prison during the Spanish Inquisition. The candle lighting Wednesday was sponsored by the Shavei Israel organization and led by Rabbi Pinchas Punturello, the organization’s emissary to the Bnei Anousim, or Crypto-Jews, in southern Italy and Sicily….
(JTA) — Since the 1980s the Italian Jewish actor Moni Ovadia has garnered a popular following with stage productions and cabaret acts largely based on Yiddish, klezmer music and Jewish jokes and legends. Born in Bulgaria, Ovadia, 67, came to Milan as a small child and attended the Jewish school there. Arguably Italy’s best known…
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