Jews in Italy & Greece & Right Here
Sermon Shabbat Ekev 5782, Rabbi Sam Cohon
As you know, Sophie and I returned a week ago from a wonderful honeymoon in Italy and Greece, and we thoroughly enjoyed our travels, in spite of the complications of COVID-19 journeying. Wherever and whenever I’ve traveled—and there hasn’t been much of that for the past 18 months prior to this journey, for obvious Coronavirus reasons—I always try to visit the Jewish communities in the places I go, to see the local Jewish museums and Holocaust monuments, attend Shabbat services where they are available, and connect with the local Jewish community.
This is something I’ve had the privilege of doing on six of the seven continents—I never have been to Antarctica, yet, and I’m not sure if they have a regular minyan there among the penguins—but I’ve enjoyed the personal discovery of Jewish communities in a wide variety of settings in Europe, Asia, Australia, Africa and South America. Traveling provides a wonderful opportunity to experience diverse Jewish traditions, to learn more about the history and heritage of the many places around the world in which our people have lived and thrived.
The original itinerary for this honeymoon was supposed to be several exotic spots in the Far East—Sri Lanka, the Maldive Islands, perhaps Mauritius and Bali. But as things turned out, after carefully planning to visit those places just as they were all reopening, sadly there were severe Coronavirus spikes in nearly all those areas and it simply wasn’t feasible, or perhaps safe, to use our original plans and reservations. Mind you, I’m not complaining: these are problems we are grateful to have in such complex and challenging times. So, we pivoted to honeymooning in Italy—including Sicily—and Greece, which had just opened up for tourism, and which are wonderful places to go pretty much any time of year for any reason at all.
If you have been an avid listener to the Too Jewish Radio Show, you have undoubtedly heard me discuss previous visits to Rome and elsewhere in Italy and to the diverse and interesting Jewish communities located in both Italy and Greece. Historically speaking, the very first synagogue in the world that we’ve identified is located on the Greek island of Delos and dates back nearly 2300 years, while the Roman Jewish community goes back to Maccabean times, with a recorded significant Romaniyot Jewish community from about 2200 years ago. I hope you’ll indulge me tonight as I share some observations about the extraordinary history of the Jewish communities in these fascinating places, beginning with Rome, moving on to Sicily, and then sharing a bit about Greece.
Sophie had never been to Rome before, so we had a quite spectacular tour of Jewish Rome from a kind of celebrity tour guide, Micaela Pavoncello, whose is descended from Romaniyot Jews and seems to know absolutely everyone in the Jewish ghetto area of Rome. Micaela really made the community come alive, and highlighted aspects of the ghetto that I was unfamiliar with, although I have been to Rome a number of times in the past and once led Friday night Shabbat services for the Reform congregation there. While the Roman Jewish community is not large by American standards—there are around 35,000 Jews in all of Italy, perhaps half of them in Rome, meaning there are about as many Jews in Tucson as in all of Italy—the community’s remarkable history and heritage make it uniquely important. Micaela made it all come alive, from the original arrival of Jews during the Roman Republic in 150 BCE or so to the growth of the mercantile community in antiquity at the center of the Mediterranean world.
Ironically, the tragic conclusion of the Jewish Great Revolt against Rome, which ended with the destruction of the 2nd Temple by Titus on Tisha B’Av and ended Jewish sovereignty for over 1800 years, vastly increased the Jewish population of Rome. Many Jewish slaves were brought to Rome after the fall of Jerusalem, and some helped build the Colosseum, which was financed with the gold and silver stolen from the Temple treasury by the Romans. The Jewish slaves eventually became free residents of Rome, and some became citizens, swelling the Jewish community of the most important city in the Western world in that era.
A powerful—and painful theme—in Rome was the constant pressure from the Middle Ages on, exerted by the Pope and the Catholic Church in its efforts to convert the Jews to Christianity, or at least to keep us in poverty and oppression as a sign of what happens if you don’t convert to Christianity. In spite of the challenges imposed on the Jews of Rome, including eventually being forced into a walled Ghetto in a soggy and dilapidated area near the banks of the Tiber in the 16th century, the Jewish community continued as a vital place, producing scholars and artists and leaders. The Jews of Rome were forced into the ghetto by edict of the Pope himself in 1555, and the Roman Ghetto was the last Jewish ghetto in Europe to be abolished, in 1870, after the founding of the modern state of Italy. By that time things had changed in Italy, and the Jews of Rome were permitted to build a majestic and beautiful synagogue, the Great Synagogue of Rome, that still stands.
A portion of the Roman Jewish community survived the Nazis, and in the post-Shoah revival of Rome in recent decades the area around the ghetto mostly gentrified, becoming a desirable place to live and work. The Rome Great Synagogue is magnificent, and I’ve attended Shabbat services there, during which the Romaniyot Jews preserve their unique musical and liturgical heritage. And of course, while we were there we had to eat some carcioffi alla giudia, literally “Jewish artichokes,” fried in olive oil and incredibly delicious.
The Roman Jewish community is special in that it retains its character as neither Ashkenazic nor Sephardic, since it predates the very existence of those terms. I have a small, personal connection to Italy; ancestors of mine named del Banco was expelled from Spain in 1492—on Tisha B’Av, of course—went to Portugal, from which they were also expelled in 1496, and settled in Italy, possibly Rome. The family later migrated away from the Papal States and the persecutions against Jews that were increasing in Italy at the time and moved on to Germany, the Rhine area. There, one of them married into a Jewish family in the Rhine area named Rheinach; that family later immigrated to the United States, changing the name to Reinhart, but preserving relations with their cousins, the Del Bancos. So it goes in the Jewish world over the generations.
Today’s Roman Jewish community is diverse, but it retains its connections to this remarkable past. Just outside where the ghetto walls originally stood, we visited a fountain embellished with sculpted turtles designed by the great Italian sculptor Bernini, a beautiful fountain that provided fresh water to the Jews of the Ghetto for four centuries. Somehow, in Italy, beauty takes precedence even in the most prosaic of objects.
We also toured the Jewish Museum of Rome, which includes a remarkable collection of magnificent fabric ark covers—parochets—and other Renaissance and Baroque textiles from the former synagogues of Rome and elsewhere in Italy, as well as a complete small Spanish synagogue, relocated from a complex of buildings that was torn down over a century ago.
While Rome has a small but very much living Jewish community, that is not nearly as true of Sicily, which once boasted a thriving Jewish life. Sicily’s history is complex, as it was controlled by Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Normans, Germans, Spaniards, the French, pirates, Sicilians—it was an independent country at times—and finally Italians. There are reminders of the Jewish presence there on streets and courtyards in Taormina, Siracusa, and Palermo, where you can find a Via del Ghetto or a Giudia located in most larger cities. But since Spain controlled Sicily in the late 15th and 16th centuries, the expulsion decree of 1492 also expelled the Jews of Sicily, effectively ending the Jewish presence there, which remains in architecture and images, but doesn’t currently have a practicing synagogue. There was an effort to restart the Jewish community of Palermo a few years ago that resulted in a lovely de-sanctified church being given to the Jewish community, and a rabbi began holding services—but he retired to Israel a couple of years ago, and there is no longer a regular Shabbat service or a functioning congregation.
We also visited Crete on this trip, and the city of Thessaloniki, second city of Greece, which had a Jewish majority population for a good part of its history. While Crete is lovely, it too, has no regular Jewish services. Thessaloniki has an incredible Jewish history, and still has a functioning synagogue and a Jewish center of sorts. You may know that the current head of Pfizer, who developed one of the major COVID-19 vaccines, Albert Bourla is a Thessaloniki Jew. We had a wonderful tour of Jewish Thessaloniki, as it exists now but mostly with references to what it once was, prior to the Holocaust. But again, what exists today is mostly a memory of greatness.
Which is a confirmation of something that I’ve been thinking about for some time now. Throughout Jewish history we have always been wandering Jews, or more properly, migrating Jews. We’ve lived on all of those continents, and in all of those cities, towns and villages among all those different cultures and peoples, for over 2500 years. We established extraordinary communities in many of those places, and achieved great Jewish heights in many of them: the Talmud was created in Iraq; Rashi’s commentaries in France; the Zohar and the Mishnah Torah were written in Spain; the Misnhah Berurah in Poland, and so on. Great Jewish literature came from many of these disparate communities, as did liturgy, poetry, music, art.
And it’s worth exploring all of these fascinating traditions, learning from them, enjoying their insights and their artistry. Judaism would not be what it is today without the incredible contributions of the Diaspora Jewish communities that were once great.
But it’s also a reminder that Jewish life continues to evolve and develop in new, exciting and interesting ways. There are as many Jews in Tucson now as there are in all of Italy, and while we have yet to create anything like the great works of Jewish history here the potential is always present. For when you are part of a living, breathing, active Jewish congregation, when you participate in Jewish life on a regular basis and pray, study, schmooze and discuss Jewish ideas with other Jews weekly or daily, you are actually doing something that potentially is more important than all the wonderful things our interesting ancestors did in all of those beautiful communities that are no longer so vital.
Our Torah portion Ekev reminds us of this: we are to affirm God’s covenant in the way that we live our lives now. We are told repeatedly in Deuteronomy about the Torah and the mitzvot that our goal is v’chai bahem, to live by them. And only a living, breathing, talking, arguing, singing congregation can truly do that.
Which, in its own way, is a gift to us, and a reminder that we have the capacity to achieve a great deal as just such a living community, right here, and right now.
Ken yehi ratson—may this be God’s will, and most importantly, ours.