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Bologna Jewish cemetery to be restored (21 March 2007)
Venice - Jewish heritage activities to expand (2 September 2006)
European Day of Jewish Culture throws spotlight on Modena (27 August 2006)
Anti-Semitic Graffiti in Rome as Italy celebrates World Cup victory (24 August 2006)

Bologna Jewish cemetery to be restored (21 March 2007)

An important restoration project is due to begin at the Jewish Cemetery in the Certosa, Bologna's municipal cemetery, thanks to a grant from the Italian Ministry for Cultural Heritage and Activities. The Cemetery dates back to 1867 and is of great significance for the Bolognese Jewish community, which will run the project.

In the first phase of works, Architect Daniele De Paz (of Studio sgLab) will conserve and restore 89 gravestones of historic and artistic value, some of which have fallen or been damaged, in collaboration with colleagues Camilla Bottino and Andrea Morpurgo.

Cimitero ebraico
Photo © Guido Piacentini

It is hoped that further funding will enable restoration of the cemetery's perimeter walls, footpaths and Ohel (funerary chapel). Bologna City Council has also undertaken to work with the Jewish Community on the development of new site interpretation, including a programme of guided tours.

The Certosa, established in 1801, stands on the site of a former monastery; it contains one of Europe's finest collections of funerary monuments. Bologna City Council plans a conservation programme for the whole site.

For more information, see:
www.certosadibologna.it
www.significantcemeteries.net
Original news article (in Italian)

Venice - Jewish heritage activities to expand (2 September 2006)

The Jewish Community of Venice is expanding programming at the 50-year-old Community-owned museum (operated in partnership with the cultural resource management company Codess Cultura) and related institutions and sites. Projects include museum expansion and greater accessibility for the Old Jewish Cemetery on the Lido.

The Old Jewish Cemetery has often been visible to visitors only through its metal gate. But tours of the cemetery and associated lapidarium expanded dramatically this summer, and were a highlight of the Day of European Jewish Culture, 3 September 2006. Guides from Codess Cultura have been trained by Commandante Aldo Izzo - historian, custodian and curator of the cemetery - enabling regular scheduled tours to take place.

Rialto bridge
Photo © Sharman Kadish 2006

Ghetto Nuovo (Jewish Museum on the right)
Photo © Jon Cannon 2006

3 September also saw tours of the Venice Ghetto, the oldest in Europe (established 1516), and the Jewish Museum of Venice (Museo Ebraico di Venezia), one of the most popular Jewish sites in Europe, also operated by Codess Cultura. The museum includes two exhibition spaces and historic synagogues, which date from the 16th and 17th centuries - the Scuola Grande Tedesca and the Scuola Canton -which are visited in museum tours. A nearby third synagogue is also included in the tour - either the Scuola Levantina or the Scuola Spagnola, depending on the season. A fifth synagogue, the Scuola Italiana, is not open to the public because of access difficulties. All these synagogues are used for religious services at least once a year.

Although visitor numbers have now returned to the level reached before 11 September 2001, further expansion is limited by the numbers of synagogue tours that can be offered. The museum, founded in 1955 and last redesigned in 1986, is being reorganised to help respond to this challenge, creating new exhibition areas which will provide much fuller historical information about the community and the Ghetto.

The Museum is much admired for its display of Judaica, but criticised for giving little social and historical background. Although included in tours, such information has not been incorporated into the displays themselves. New texts have been prepared, based on the research and writings of community archivist and historian Umberto Fortis.

The opening of the new spaces was planned to coincide with the annual meeting of the Association of European Jewish Museums in November 2006, to be hosted at the museum. But Venice's fire safety codes have been strictly enforced since the devastating fire at the Teatro La Fenice Opera House in 1996, and the necessary adjustments will require the Museum to raise significant additional funds before they can be completed.

For more information, see: www.museoebraico.it.

European Day of Jewish Culture throws spotlight on Modena (27 August 2006)

Italy will celebrate this year's annual Day of European Jewish Culture with events at fifty-five different locations throughout the country. Celebrations will particularly focus on the Jewish heritage of the northern city of Modena, the home of Jews in antiquity, and today the site of one of the country's most impressive 19th-century synagogues. A ceremony at the synagogue at 11:00am in the morning will officially open the day of culture nationwide.

Modena Synagogue seen from Piazza Mazzini

Modena Synagogue
View from Piazza Mazzini
Photo © Sam Gruber 2006

Modena Synagogue seen from Via Coltellini

Modena Synagogue
View from Via Coltellini
Photo © Sam Gruber 2006

Modena Synagogue seen from Piazza Mazzini - façade detail

Modena Synagogue
View from Piazza Mazzini - façade detail
Photo © Sam Gruber 2006

Events during the day will include the opening of the synagogue and cemetery to the public, an exhibition of Judaica from the collection of the Biblioteca Estense, and the inauguration of an exhibition about the synagogues of Piedmont.

The Modena synagogue was begun in 1869 and dedicated in 1873, in the first wave of monumental synagogue construction immediately following Jewish emancipation and Italian unification. Ludovico Maglietta was the architect and Ferdinando Manzini was responsible for the interior decoration. The synagogue has been called 'monumental but with no precise style of its own', but its design is a sympathetic amalgam of traditional Italian architectural forms, filtered through recent synagogue designs from Austria-Hungary. The plan of the sanctuary is rectangular, but the curving women's gallery and the dome make the space appear circular and surprisingly intimate in spite of its grandeur. The domed interior with its large Classical columns is familiar from Italian church architecture, but it also recalls the elliptical form of the Neo-Classical Stadttempel in Seitenstettengasse, Vienna (1826). The richly decorated segmented interior of the dome is again similar to Hungarian synagogues of this period.

Modena Synagogue
Interior view to Ark
Photo © Sam Gruber 2006

Modena Synagogue
Interior view of Dome
Photo © Sam Gruber 2006

Modena Synagogue
Interior Women's Gallery
Photo © Sam Gruber 2006

Several buildings were demolished to construct this prominent synagogue, which stands on the edge of the former Jewish ghetto, much of which was itself demolished in 1903 and 1904. Francesco I D'Este established the ghetto in 1638 and the gates were not permanently removed until 1859.

The synagogue has two Roman-style temple façades: this motif too, while fully Italian, was popular in synagogues throughout Hungary in the first half of the 19th century. The original main entrance faced via Coltellini, a narrow street of the former ghetto. An identical new façade was later added to the synagogue, so as to fill one side of piazza Mazzini (formerly piazza della Libertà), a new square, opened in 1903. Jewish symbols are prominently placed on the exterior of the synagogue and inscriptions proudly and publicly declare that this is a Jewish house of worship.

The highlight of the interior is the bimah and Ark. This monumental raised area is set in a recess, and screened by a triumphal arch. The Ark stands in this niche but is almost freestanding. Its tabernacle-like structure is topped by a glass dome carrying a gold crown (representing the crown of the Torah); it is illuminated from above by a hidden window. The effect is grand and dramatic, but the diminution in scale - from the tall columns that support the main dome, to the smaller ones in front of the recess, to those of the Ark itself - gives the space a certain intimacy.

Modena Synagogue Stained Glass Window in Dome

The building also includes a small prayer hall known as the German Rite oratory, whose form resembles pre-Emancipation synagogues. These were often housed in private residences and were mostly hidden from public view. The German Rite oratory was originally a private prayer hall for the Donati family. There is a Neo-Classical Aron Kodesh in the rectangular hall, and two rows of benches on each side. A small row of benches for women is set behind a mehitzah.

Modena Synagogue German Rite Prayer Hall

Modena Synagogue Hall designed as Sukkah

A vestibule off the main sanctuary has an unusual function. This airy space, surmounted by a roof of iron and glass, was designed as a permanent succah. The roof can be opened to the sky during the autumn holiday of Succot, when Jews are required to eat their meals in such an open-air booth.

The synagogue building was designed to hold 1,000 people, but today there are fewer than 100 Jews in Modena. The community is active and the building is very well maintained. While thousands of visitors, including many schoolchildren on sponsored trips, already view the Modena synagogue every year, the community's limited resources make it impossible to establish regular opening hours. 3 September will thus allow access to an even greater public. The Community is very receptive to opening the building to visitors by appointment.

Guided tours of the Jewish cemetery at S. Cataldo will be offered from 4pm to 7.30pm on 3 September. The exhibition of Judaica at the Palazzo dei Musei (Largo S. Agostino 337) will remain open until 23 September. It features highlights from the Este Library (Biblioteca Estense), one of the most important collections of Hebrew illuminated manuscripts in Italy. There is also a collection of illuminated ketubot (marriage contracts), as well as an assortment of significant early printed books.

The exhibition on the synagogues of Piedmont will open at noon at the Palazzo Comunale on Piazza Grande, and run until 10 September. Gli spazi della parola: Itinerari ebraici del Piemonte, presented by the Foundation for Jewish Cultural Heritage in Italy (Fondazione per i Beni Culturali Ebraici in Italia) in collaboration with the Foundation for Art History and Jewish Culture in Casale Monferrato and eastern Piedmont (Fondazione Arte Storia e Cultura Ebraica a Casale Monferrato e nel Piemonte Orientale).

For a full schedule of events in Modena and throughout Italy, see:

www.ucei.it/giornatadellacultura/?ash=01

For further reading about Jewish Modena, see:

www.ucei.it/giornatadellacultura/?ash=06&subsec=01 (in Italian)

Luisa Modena, Il Ghetto e la Sinagoga di Modena. Modena: Guiglia Editore, 2002.

Annie Sacerdoti, The Guide to Jewish Italy. New York: Rizzoli International, 2004, pp. 124-127.

Annie Sacerdoti and Annamarcella Tedeschi Falco, Emilia Romagna: Jewish Itineraries: Places, History and Art. Venice: Marsilio Editori, 1992, pp. 97-105.

Anti-Semitic Graffiti in Rome as Italy celebrates World Cup victory (24 August 2006)

Swastikas were painted on a number of buildings in Rome's Jewish ghetto after Italy's World Cup win on 9 July 2006. This was the second such act reported in the past three months, in spite of the rarity of such events in Italy, and the vandalism was widely reported in the Italian press. Jewish community members have also told JHE of recent anti-Semitic graffiti in Padua. In May 2006, forty Jewish gravestones were desecrated in a Milan cemetery, according to the European Jewish Press.

This is not the first anti-Semitic act associated with Italian football, where the problem often seems entirely independent of the actual presence of Jews. Italian football star Pablo Di Canio has been fined and suspended many times for his anti-Semitic behavior. High-ranking Italian officials, including the minister of the interior, have spoken out against the vandalism, as well as other racist incidents at the World Cup.

Racism was a concern to the World Cup organizers in the wake of continued violently racist behaviour in various European leagues. FIFA (the organizing body of the World Cup) has imposed stringent penalties on teams with players or fans who commit racist acts. In early July, fans of a team from the former East Germany assailed a number of Turkish storeowners yelling racial slurs, carrying Nazi flags, and making references to Auschwitz. Officials and soccer stars started anti-racist campaigns, and stiffened penalities for such behaviour, and FIFA kicked off its 'Say No to Racism' campaign in the Olympic Stadium at Berlin in early July. The stadium was commissioned by Hitler for the 1936 Olympics, which were marred by racism and were seen by many to help legitimize the Nazi regime. In addition to the FIFA campaign, players have initiated Footballers Against Racism or FARE and French star, Thierry Henry, started the group Stand Up Speak Up, even receiving corporate sponsorship from Nike. Racism even played a factor in the end result of the World Cup, with many sources reporting the French Zidane's last-minute headbutting of the Italian Materazzi (for which Zidane was sent off, thus depriving France of its best scorer at a key moment in the game), on a racist slur from his fellow-player.

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Entire website © Jewish Heritage Europe 2004 - 2008 All rights reserved