The spirit of the exhibit, is captured in the words of Rabbi Elia Benamozegh of Livorno in 1847:
"Italian Jews! Two great names, two enviable glories, two splendid crowns are joined together in you. … Who among you, in human and divine glories, does not reverently bow before the prodigious names of Moses and Dante …"
Celebrate the Jewish-Italian Confluence
Museo ItaloAmericano exhibit details triumphs and tragedies
Sacramento Bee S. Magagnini Sunday, Jan. 18, 2009
All my life, I've been fascinated by the fusion of Italian and Jewish culture. I'm what's known in New York as a "Pizza Bagel" – there are a lot of us Italian Jews around.
My Jewish mother from Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, went to Italy to find romance and fell for an Italian medical student. The church wouldn't let Catholics marry Jews, even in 1954 Italy, so I was conceived in Rome – or perhaps on the romantic island of Ischia – and born in Brooklyn.
A month later, my dad got off the boat in New York with $100 and a medical degree.
The unique intersections between Jews and Italians dating back more than 2,000 years are displayed through Feb. 15 at San Francisco's Museo ItaloAmericano.
"Il Ghetto: Forging Italian Jewish Identities 1516-1870" leads visitors through Jewish-Italian relationships dating back to 161 B.C., when envoys of Judah Maccabee came to Rome to ask for help against the Syrian Greeks.
The exhibit centers on what's believed to be the first "ghetto," the Jewish enclave in Venice, made famous by Shakespeare in his 16th century play "The Merchant of Venice." Shylock, the play's central character, is a tormented Jewish moneylender who's been described as part villain, part victim.
Jewish moneylenders have indeed played a prominent role throughout Italy's history, particularly during the Middle Ages and Renaissance, said curator David Rosenberg-Wohl.
Almost from the beginning, the Catholic Church had ostracized Jews, especially those who were prosperous, Rosenberg-Wohl said.
Beginning about A.D. 1215, by papal order, Jews in Italy were ordered to wear yellow O's, or circles, perhaps representing coins. In some regions, the O's were not enough – Jews were ordered to wear yellow hats.
Interestingly, "Jewish doctors received permission not to have to wear a distinguishing mark because doctors were of use not just to Jews but to Christians, and you didn't want your neighbors to know you called in a Jew," Rosenberg-Wohl said. "Without these marks on the clothing, you can't tell who's Jewish, which shows a lot of ease in Jewish-Christian relations."
Between 1517 and 1721, 230 medical degrees were awarded to Jews in Padua.
Though Italian Jews and Christians weren't allowed to marry in either tradition, "that didn't stop people from having sex, of course," he said.
Aside from being successful merchants, moneylenders and doctors, Jews were musicians, artisans, architects and poets. Their patrons included that most famous Renaissance family, the Medicis of Florence and Livorno.
One of the stars of Venetian society was Sara Copio Sullam, who grew up in the Jewish ghetto and hosted a salon that attracted the city's leading cultural lights. Sullam, who wrote sonnets including "Manifesto of the Jew" in 1621, was celebrated for her musical abilities and other charms.
While Italian Jews never shook the stigma embodied by Shylock, "they were useful to Christian communities in Italy, in that they helped them develop economically," Rosenberg-Wohl said. "They provided much-needed loans to the poor as well as the wealthy – it was all right for Jews to do this work, not Christians.
"Jews were like prostitutes, a necessary evil. You could criticize their activities, but below the surface, they were extremely valuable."
Jews also played a huge role in promoting "peace, stability and tolerance," he said. "If you look at 15th century Tuscany, every five years there's some calamity, whether it's famine or war. Economic development does a tremendous amount to alleviate pain and suffering."
The Papal States relied on Jewish taxes to fund armies in the 15th and 16th centuries, and Jewish merchants had been building bridges throughout the Mediterranean region for 1,500 years.
But anti-Semitism was alive and well in xenophobic Shakespearean England, Rosenberg-Wohl said.
"Jews were excluded entirely and not admitted until the late 1600s."
After the Christians conquered Muslim Andalusia in 1492, Jews were expelled from Spain and southern Italy, which was then ruled by Spain.
The Venetians, realizing the importance of the Jews, established the ghetto in 1516, which, along with Livorno became home to some of the Jews driven from Spain and Portugal.
The ghetto gates were locked at night and patrolled by guards, but Jewish culture thrived. By 1529, the Great German Synagogue opened in Venice, where Daniel Bomberg had published the first complete edition of the Talmud.
Religious tolerance didn't last long – in 1553, Pope Julius III ordered the burning of the Talmud in Rome, Venice, Bologna, Mantua and Ferrara.
By the time the word "ghetto" first appeared in English, in 1611, there were Jewish ghettos in Rome, Florence and other Italian cities.
Paola Bagnatori, managing director of the Museo, said the word "ghetto" came from the Italian word gettare, "which means to throw or throw away – in the Venetian dialect, the G becomes hard."
Anti-Semitism was based on jealousy – Jews were very successful merchants who weren't Italian - and the belief that Jews were killers of Christ, Bagnatori said.
"The Franciscan monks were the worst," spreading rumors of Jewish child sacrifices that provoked anti-Jewish riots.
Napoleon's French forces tore down the ghetto gates in Venice in 1797. The Jewish ghetto in Rome lasted until Italy was unified in 1870 and the Jews were given full civil rights.
Despite the religious barriers that kept Jews and Christians from marrying, Italians and Jews have enjoyed an enduring relationship based on a mutual love of life, food, mothers, family, art and traditions, Rosenberg-Wohl said.
That relationship became critical during World War II, when Adolf Hitler ordered the extermination of all Jews, Bagnatori said. By 1938, about 8,000 Italian Jews had been deported to death camps.
[Actually, these 8,000 Jews were mostly Refugees from Germany-Austria, and were Not deported until Italy had surrendered, and the Germans took over Italy.]
"But even Mussolini resisted Hitler as long as he could," Bagnatori said.
Jews throughout Italy went into hiding, often aided by Italian Catholics. My grandfather Giovanni Magagnini, the Fascist mayor of Ostra Vetere in the Marche region of central Italy, hid a Jewish family in his home.
The San Francisco exhibit includes Jewish art, writings, a Hanukkah lamp, spice box, Torah pointer and cover, and other Jewish artifacts from Italy.
"Culture knows no walls," said Rosenberg-Wohl. "When people live together, their respective traditions bend but do not break. In some ways, they begin to look like each other. In other ways, they try to maintain difference."
The spirit of the exhibit, which has already been toured by thousands of visitors since it opened in September, is captured in the words of Rabbi Elia Benamozegh of Livorno in 1847:
"Italian Jews! Two great names, two enviable glories, two splendid crowns are joined together in you. … Who among you, in human and divine glories, does not reverently bow before the prodigious names of Moses and Dante …"
3 comments:
Gentlemen,
The spirit of the exhibit and the commentary of the curator (David Rosenberg-Wohl) hardly speak convincingly of Jewish-Italian confluence. To wit; the great achievements of the Italian Renaissance were in fact Jewish accomplishments, achieved despite rampant discrimination, socio-cultural exclusion, overt xenophobia, and physical harassment. I am reminded of the recent book of Gavin Menzies who argued that expeditions to Italy and the Papal court by a large Chinese fleet in 1434 sowed the seeds of the Renaissance and that Italian technical and artistic developments during this period were the result of the new Chinese learning. Once again, we see the almost universal attempt to denigrate and/or diminish the accomplishments of the Italian people and I’m not quite sure why Mr. Magagnini sees a cause for mutual celebration. Of course the evidence produced by Menzies to support his thesis is non-existent and it is quite disconcerting for the serious reader to find no foot-notes/archival references. However, the casual reader may find it an interesting read.
To respond to Rosenberg-Wohl falls outside the scope of this post so I’ll concentrate on just one aspect. The Jews of Venice were linguistic/cultural foreigners (Germans, Spaniards, Portuguese, etc.) and arrived to establish their respective communities in a geographic/cultural area established by the Venetians AND the Rabbis, who for cultural and religious reasons wanted no part of intermarriage with Italian Christians. I know this because I read it in the ancient archives of the German Synagogue in Venice (there are 5), which anyone can visit. The imposed “ghettoization” of the Jews is a myth much like the massacre of Jews during the Spanish Inquisition (I have also read the pertinent parts from the enormous archives in Madrid). In addition, Jews were indeed moneylenders while the Italians were international bankers and businessmen, hardly in dire need of the commerce of a very few. Lastly, I have seen the baptismal certificates of Da Vinci and Michelangelo in the churches where they were baptized along with their antecedents. They were not, as some insist, middle-eastern Jews. That Italian Jews contributed to the cultural and classical heritage of Italy is of course certain; it is should not be a license to defame.
nothing against jews because my girlfriend is jew,but in this time you should write also the bad things that jews did in italy.
it is very disappointing that such a charming and interesting article should be followed by two antisemitic posts. the internet is a wonderful thing, but it does allow antisocial behavior to become public in noxious ways.
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