An Italian professor said on Wednesday he has identified what he believes is the world’s oldest complete scroll of the Torah, containing the full text of the first five books of Hebrew scripture. Mauro Perani, professor of Hebrew at the University of Bologna, said experts and carbon dating tests done in Italy and the United…
Chabad in Milan is preparing to launch what is said to be the first kosher soup kitchen in Italy. Sponsored by the Milan branch of Chabad’s educational organization, Merkos l’Inyonei Chinuch, it is expected to begin operation at the end of the summer. The initiative will be a canteen providing free take-away meals to needy…
Jewish and pro-Palestinian demonstrators faced off in Rome during a parade marking the World War II liberation of Italy. At the annual parade in Rome on Thursday marking Liberation Day, a small group of pro-Palestinian demonstrators waving a Palestinian flag bearing a portrait of Yasser Arafat protested against the group of Jews and others who…
Rabbi Pinchas Punturello will begin work in southern Italy and Sicily to reach out to the Bnei Anousim, the descendants of Jews forced to convert to Catholicism centuries ago. Punturello’s posting is a joint project of Shavei Israel, an Israel-based nonprofit that helps strengthen and recover Jewish identity, and the Union of Italian Jewish Communities….
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 first proposed in 2005 but held up repeatedly by…
Moments before he passed away, in 1945, composer Aldo Finzi whispered the words, “Fate suonare la mia musica” (“Let my music be performed”). Recently, on a particularly cold December night, his last and greatest wish was fulfilled in the 19th-century Donizetti Theatre in Bergamo, less than 35 miles away from the legendary La Scala Opera…
In the wake of mounting anti-Semitic and anti-Israel incidents, Italy’s Jewish leadership has “forcefully denounced” a “spiral of violence” that has erupted in the country over the past few weeks. “It would be too long to enumerate the individual episodes, but we cannot refrain from drawing attention to a climate of tension that is increasingly…
Rome’s provincial council is calling for websites that promote racism and anti-Semitism to be blocked and such online hatred criminalized. The council on Monday unanimously passed a motion voicing solidarity with Rome local official Carla Di Veroli and with the Rome Jewish community in general following anti-Semitic attacks on Di Veroli that appeared last week…
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