Visiting Jewish Heritage in Padova, Italy

In the 16th century Jewish cemetery on via Wiel, Padova. Photo: Gadi Luzzatto Voghera

On a stiflingly hot day a couple weeks ago, I spent an afternoon in Padova (Padua), Italy, visiting some of the centuries-old Jewish heritage sites in the city -- they are being developed now as both a resource for local people and as an attractive itinerary for tourists and other visitors.

The sites I visited included the new Museo della Padova Ebraica (Museum of Jewish Padova) which opened in June. As I wrote on the Jewish Heritage Europe web site ahead of the opening, it is housed in the former “German,” synagogue, Sinagoga Tedesca, used by the Ashkenazic community, which was inaugurated in 1525 in the heart of the Jewish quarter, or ghetto, in the city’s historic center.  (Note -- part of this post is a repost of my article on Jewish Heritage Europe.)

The synagogue, on via delle Piazze, was severely damaged during World War II when it was torched by local Fascists, and it stood derelict until it was completely rebuilt in 1998 (the ark was transferred to Tel Aviv in 1956). The museum exhibition includes before and after photos.

The exhibit includes items from the Jewish community’s extensive collection of Judaica objects from past centuries to the present. Among them are a very rare Mameluk parochet from Egypt dating back to the 15th or 16th century.

There is also an 18th century Megillah of Esther,  a 16th century Torah scroll, exceptional silver torah ornaments, and several ketubot. A backlit photographic reproduction of the Ark occupies the space where the Ark once stood — the ark now being in Tel Aviv.

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Two films are included in the exhibition. One is a general introduction to the history of the community. The other — projected on the walls of the sanctuary where the exhibit is located — tells the story of Padova Jews through the life stories of several prominent members of the community over the past five centuries or so, portrayed by actors. I was somewhat dismayed that this film does not include reference to any women in Padova Jewish history....perhaps there were no famous women, but it was the women who kept the community alive, and I believe that their role must also be highlighted, even if it simply means through exhibits dealing with food and marriage customs.....

Other sites I visited included the 16th century  Italian rite synagogue, which is still used by the small local Jewish community, and the Jewish cemetery on via Wiel — dating from the 16th century and the oldest of the five Jewish cemeteries in the city. (You can download an article about these cemeteries HERE.)

Bimah in the Italian rite synagogue. Photo © Ruth Ellen Gruber

The sanctuary of the Italian synagogue is a small, rather long and narrow space, with an elaborately carved Ark and a delicate wooden Bimah positioned to face each other from the middle of the long sides of the room. The Bimah is believed to have been carved from the wood of a single tree that fell in the botanical gardens.

Ark in the Italian rite synagogue in Padova. Photo © Ruth Ellen Gruber

The Jewish cemetery behind a high brick wall in via Wiel, in central Padova near the Old Town and of ghetto, has been restored and is beautifully maintained by the Jewish community. Opened in 1529, with more than 90 16th century tombs, it is the oldest surviving Jewish cemetery in Padova and one of  five Jewish cemeteries that remain in the city. (Fragments from two 15th century gravestones from a cemetery destroyed in 1509 are displayed in the city museum).

Jewish cemetery on via Wiel, Padova, founded in 1529

The most famous people buried there are Me’ir Katzenellenbogen, or Maharam, a renowned Ashkenazic rabbi who died in 1565, and his son, Samuel Judah, who succeeded him and died in 1597.

Mainly because of them, Padova is believed to be the only place in Italy where devout followers make pilgrimages to the tombs of their masters. Indeed, Jewish community leaders say that these pilgrims often do not contact the Jewish community to obtain the key to the cemetery, but climb over the wall to pray, leave kvittlach (written messages) and light candles.

Katzenellenbogen gravestones are (rather charmingly) marked by the crest of a crouching Cat (“Katze” in German).

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Another noted personality interred here is Anselmo Del Banco (Asher Levi Meshullam) who died in 1532. A powerful banker (owner of several loan-banks in the Venice area), he was the head of the Jewish community in Venice and represented the community when in 1516 the authorities decreed that Jews there must live in a ghetto. His gravestone is notable for its fine and unusual carving.

Gravestone of Anselmo Del Banco (Asher Meshullam) d. 1532

Balagan Cafe in Florence is Back for the Summer

by Ruth Ellen Gruber

Going to Florence this summer? Well, Balagan Cafe is back -- the weekly open house/garden party on the tree-shaded grounds of the city's magnificent synagogue.

Just about every Thursday evening through August, the Jewish community invites the public for what they call an "apericena" -- a combination aperitivo drink and cena, or dinner -- with kosher food, wine and fancy cocktails.

In addition to the edibles and libations, each night programs concerts, talks, performances or other events, not to mention stands selling books, CDs and souvenirs.

Click here to see the full program.

The first edition of the Cafe was a big hit last summer -- with hundreds of people attending each week. They included members of the Jewish community but also many members of the mainstream public.

As I wrote last November in an article for The Forward:

Each Café featured music, lectures, discussions, performances and other events. There were free guided tours of the synagogue and stands selling books, CDs, Judaica and Balagan Café T-shirts depicting a full moon over the synagogue dome. Performers and featured participants included nationally known figures such as the rock singer Raiz, the Tzadik label klezmer jazz clarinetist Gabriele Coen, and the architect Massimiliano Fuksas, who designed, among other things, the Peres Peace House in Israel.
Meanwhile, food stands sold kosher meals and kosher wine to crowds eager to sample couscous, baked eggplant, beans with cumin and harissa, spicy chickpeas, Roman-style sweet and sour zucchini and other specialties. One evening saw a “competition” between Sephardic and Ashkenazic cooking; another featured a lesson in challah-making.
[...]
About 300 people turned up for the first Café in early June — most of them Jewish community members and their friends. But each week the numbers grew, thanks to enthusiastic local media coverage as well as word of mouth.
“It conquered the city,” journalist Fulvio Paloscia wrote in La Repubblica. By the summer’s last Café, on Aug. 29 — where I was featured in a public conversation ... about Jewish culture and mainstream society — the event drew 800 people. Crowds milled about the garden and listened to two concerts, one by a klezmer band and one by Sephardic singer Evelina Meghnagi. They also mobbed the food stand, where some 450 kosher meals were sold.

Thousands visit Rome Jewish Museum, show Solidarity to Brussels

Visitors to Rome Jewish Museum Monday night. Photo: Shalom7

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

This post also appears on my En Route blog for the LA Jewish Journal

Thousands of people lined up to visit the Rome Jewish Museum, which was specially opened for free Monday night to show solidarity with the Jewish Museum in Brussels and honor the victims of Saturday's shooting attack, which left four dead.

Other Jewish institutions in Italy also opened Monday night -- including the Shoah Memorial in Milan.

“This is our response to the attack, a ‘white night’ against fear,” Rome Jewish community president Riccardo Pacifici told the Italian media.

In Rome, Jewish leaders and political figures including the presidents of the Lazio and Puglia regions addressed the crowd before they entered the museum. The ambassadors of Belgium and Israel also were in attendance at an opening ceremony broadcast live on Italian TV.

"The Brussels assassins wanted to strike in the heart of culture, in a place where one wants to learn," Pacifici said. "They wanted to intimidate the Jewish community and the general public. Tonight the museum opens its doors to whoever desires to get to know it."

"There is no choice more just than to find ourself in a place of culture in order to respond to hatred and ignorance," Nicola Zingaretti, president of Lazio region, said. "The act of us all being here sends out the message that whoever carries out an act of ignorance will always have the eyes of the world upon them."

Dario Disegni, the president of the Italian Jewish Cultural Heritage Foundation, issued a statement Monday urging the more than a dozen other Jewish museums in Italy to also open to the public for free one day this week. “We feel confident that civil society in our country will want to feel the moral imperative to bear witness, through solidarity with the victims of the crime, to a firm commitment to safeguarding democracy and to the construction of a future of peace, justice and liberty,” he said.

The Association of European Jewish Museums issued a statement about the Brussels attack:

A murderous attack has taken four lives in the Jewish Museum of Belgium in Brussels on Saturday 24 May. The AEJM is deeply shocked by this atrocity directed against an institution that for many years stands for mutual understanding, tolerance and intercultural exchange - a symbol for the only possible future of Europe. We lack the words to describe our feelings of horror and we humbly want to express our solidarity with our friends. Hopefully the murderer will be identified and caught soon and it will be possible to shed light on this crime. We mourn with our colleagues of the Jewish Museum in Brussels and the families of those who lost their loved ones in this attack.

This past week's updates from Jewish Heritage Europe

Murals of the Holy Land from Beit Tefilah Benjamin in Chernivtsi, Ukraine. Photo © Ruth Ellen Gruber

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

As I did last weekend, I'm posting here this past week's updates from www.jewish-heritage-europe.eu, the web site that I coordinate as a project of the Rothschild Foundation Europe. There's news from Ukraine, Hungary, Romania, Serbia, Italy and the UK....

I post on the JHE newsfeed several times a week, to keep content dynamic on what we aim to make the go-to web site for Jewish heritage issues in Europe. JHE will celebrate two years online next month, and we are planning to expand the enhance the site with new features.

Meanwhile -- please subscribe to the JHE news feed! You can use the subscribe buttons on the home page or on any of the news pages. The deal is that, on days that I post on the JHE news feed, you will receive one email with the links to the posts. Easy, convenient and informative, no? And you won't miss any of the feed.

Look at all the news we've run this past week:

Plans for Holocaust Museum in Budapest prompt debate 

My article about a complex situation, published in Tablet Magazine

Lublin: Exhibition of photographs of Jewish cemeteries

Call for applications: fellowship at Center for Urban History in Lviv

Niš Jewish cemetery: new signage, possibility to visit

Great news, thanks to the indefatigable Jasna Ciric

Launch of online catalogue of Romanian archives

Rich new resource

New digital uploads of old synagogue postcards from the Rosenthall collection

Fantastic images and great resource -- for the armchair traveler, too

Technology: 3d scanners help digitize weathered inscriptions

Science in action to benefit historic research!

Update: Bradford Synagogue received first tranche of lottery funding for restoration

A shining example of Jewish-Muslim cooperation

“Visions of the Holy Land” in northern Romanian synagogues

Explanation of beautiful murals that decorate synagogues

Florence synagogue highlighted at Cafe Balagan this past summer

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

Almost every week last summer, from early June through the end of August, the palm-shaded garden of the Florence synagogue was the scene of "Cafe Balagan" -- a sort of mini-Jewish culture and food festival aimed at opening up the Jewish community to the city -- and encouraging the city to recognize and embrace its Jewish history.

I took part in the last edition, at the end of August, engaging in a public conversation about Jewish culture and mainstream society, with Enrico Fink, the musician (and director of cultural affairs for the Florence Jewish community) who devised the event.

I wrote about it all for The Forward, in an article published this past week:

Putting Florence's Jewish History into the Spotlight 

By Ruth Ellen Gruber 

Nov. 5, 2013 

If you look out over Florence from Piazzale Michelangelo, high above the Arno, two domes catch your eye. One is Filipo Brunelleschi’s masterpiece, the immense ribbed dome of the Duomo. The other, off to the right, is much smaller but in its way also distinctive: It is the tall, bright green copper dome of the Florence synagogue. 

“Anyone who looks at the Florence skyline sees the Duomo and the synagogue,” said Enrico Fink, a musician and actor who last December took up the post of cultural affairs director of the Florence Jewish community. 

Dedicated in 1882, the synagogue is a monument to 19th century Jewish emancipation and a grand example of Moorish style architecture, with a soaring arched façade and two slim side towers. 

But while the Duomo is one of the most famous attractions in Italy, visited by millions, the synagogue and the Jewish history of the city remain largely unknown to most Florence residents as well as to the vast majority of tourists. 

Fink and other recently installed leaders of the 800- to 900-member Jewish community want to change this. Breaking with past policy, they have embarked on a plan to actively engage with mainstream Florence. They endeavor to make the Jewish community more visible and accessible, demystifying Jews and Jewishness for local non-Jews, while putting Jewish heritage on the local tourist map. 

“We want people in Florence to understand who we are, and to understand that the Jewish community belongs to the city, that we are part of the fabric of the city,” community president Sara Cividali, an energetic woman with a mass of silver hair, told me over lunch at Ruth’s, a kosher vegetarian restaurant next door to the synagogue. “It isn’t assimilation; it’s different, it’s participation,” she said. 

This new strategy was launched this summer with the Balagan Café, an unprecedented experiment in outreach that turned the synagogue’s palm-shaded garden into a mini-Jewish culture festival almost every Thursday night from June through August. Balagan, more or less, means “chaos” — and, said Fink, the idea behind calling the summer’s experiment “Balagan” was “an acceptance of confusion that’s not easy to define.” 

Each Café featured music, lectures, discussions, performances and other events. There were free guided tours of the synagogue and stands selling books, CDs, Judaica and Balagan Café T-shirts depicting a full moon over the synagogue dome. Performers and featured participants included nationally known figures such as the rock singer Raiz, the Tzadik label klezmer jazz clarinetist Gabriele Coen, and the architect Massimiliano Fuksas, who designed, among other things, the Peres Peace House in Israel. 

Meanwhile, food stands sold kosher meals and kosher wine to crowds eager to sample couscous, baked eggplant, beans with cumin and harissa, spicy chickpeas, Roman-style sweet and sour zucchini and other specialties. One evening saw a “competition” between Sephardic and Ashkenazic cooking; another featured a lesson in challah-making.


Read more: http://forward.com/articles/186528/putting-florences-jewish-history-into-the-spotligh/?p=all#ixzz2k8wSvZGS

I Speak about Jewish Heritage in Spectacular Florence Venue

 By Ruth Ellen Gruber

(This post also appears on my En Route blog for the Los Angeles Jewish Journal)

I had the pleasure and privilege Sunday of giving a presentation about the Jewish Heritage Europe web site project in Florence, in one of the city's most prestigious and spectacular venues -- the Salone dei Cinquecento of the Palazzo Vecchio, the city hall of Florence, a massive building with a distinctive tower that was originally built at the turn of the 13th and 14th centuries.

Me & Pope Leo X. (Photo: Angelo Pontecorboli)

I was part of a five-person panel speaking on various aspects of "Developing Jewish Cultural Heritage in Europe." Our round-table was part of a huge, weeklong biennale on Cultural and "Landscape" Heritage sponsored by the Fondazione Florens. Other people on the panel included Giuseppe Burschtein, an IT specialist and Jewish heritage activist in Florence; Renzo Funaro, an architect who heads the "Opera del Tempio" project of restoration and promotion of Jewish heritage in Florence and elsewhere in Tuscany; Dora Liscia Bemporad, the director of the Jewish Museum in Florence; and Annie Sacerdoti, a pioneer of Jewish heritage documentation and activism in Italy and one of the spearheads of the European Day of Jewish Culture.

The moderator of our panel was the journalist Wlodek Goldkorn -- who pointed out at the start of the event that this session was probably the first time that a Jewish program (other than a commemorative event) had taken place in the magnificent hall, a grandly huge space dating from 1494, richly decorated with a gorgeous painted ceiling, sculptures and paintings from the 16th century.

The view from the podium

We had a pretty good crowd -- and nobody left in the middle! Given the mix of people on our panel, presentations included both local and Europe-wide issues -- and none of us had more than 10 minutes or so to speak.

For my talk, I had an internet connection projected on two immense screens. I presented Jewish Heritage Europe as a tool that is already functional, attracting 4,000-5,000 people a month. I took the audience on a tour of the site, describing both the static content for 48 countries -- and also the dynamic content -- the newsfeed, calendar, and the In Focus section.

I had wanted to highlight some other web sites that bring Jewish heritage online -- such as Judaica Europeana and Virtual Shtetl. But, alas, there wasn't time.

You will just have to go to all those web sites and explore!

(Photo: Angelo Pontecorboli)

Medieval Jewish Banquet in Italy

Honey-nut sweets served on bay leaves. Photo © Ruth Ellen Gruber

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

This post also appears on my En Route blog for the Los Angeles Jewish Journal.

Biancomangiare, lentil soup, twice-roasted goose with garlic, sweet and sour baked onion salad, Ippocrasso (spiced white wine), honey-nut sweets.

These were the dishes served at a Medieval Jewish banquet that recreated a meal that Jews in Italy might have eaten in the 14th and 15th centuries.

The event took place in Bevagna, a stunningly beautiful town in Italy's Umbria region -- whose historic center looks much the same as it did way back then.

Entering Bevagna. Photo © Ruth Ellen Gruber

The dinner, in a so-called Medieval Tavern in the heart of the town, capped a little academic conference on medieval Jewish life in Bevagna. I wrote about the dinner for JTA, in an article that also included the recipes for the dishes we ate. The first course was Biancomangiare, a puree made from chicken breast, almonds, rice flour, rose water and spices.

It was followed by a spicy lentil soup and then the main course: heaping platters of crisp, twice-roasted goose with garlic served with a warm salad of baked onions in sweet and sour sauce. The meal was rounded out by a form of spiced white wine called ippocrasso and honey-nut sweets served on fresh bay leaves. 

"We love medieval cooking," said Alfredo Properzi, one of the dinner organizers. Properzi, a local doctor, belongs to a civic association that fosters study and re-enactment of life in the Middle Ages. The recipes for the dinner, he said, came from cookbooks of the period. 

"One of the big differences was the spices that they used -- much more than today," he said. "Also, medieval cooks liked to use various spices to color food as well as season it.

The main speaker at the conference -- and my partner across the dining table -- was Ariel Toaff, an emeritus professor of Medieval and Rennaissance history at Bar Ilan University, who is the son of the reitred, longtime chief rabbi of Rome, Elio Toaff.

Ariel Toaff and a "medieval" waitress. Photo © Ruth Ellen Gruber

Ariel's wonderful book, Love, Work and Death: Jewish Life in Medieval Umbria, is one of my favorite books -- partly because I spend a lot of my time in Umbria (where so very few Jews live today that when my entire family is with me, we make up one of the major Jewish centers in the region) and partly because the book reads like a spicy novel, set in Assisi, Orvieto, Bevagna, Todi, Perugia, Terni, Foligno -- and other towns that I'm very familiar with.

The chapter headings say it all: "Sex, Love, and Marriage;" "Love of Life and Intimations of Mortality;" "Meat and Wine;" "The House of Prayer;" " Outcasts from Society;" "Witchcraft, Black Magic, and Ritual Murder;" "Converts and Apostates;" "The Pattern of Discrimination;" "Merchants and Craftsmen;" "Doctors and Surgeons;" "Banks and Bankers."

Ariel also authored Mangiare alla Giudia, an influential history of Jewish food and eating in Italy, which has not been translated into English. Both books served as inspiration for the Bevagna dinner. (See an article on Italian Jewish cuisine in English by Ariel by clicking HERE.)

"The dinner organizers asked me what would be a typical dish for the menu, and I immediately told them goose because goose was, so to speak, the Jewish pig," he said. "It had the same function for the Jewish table as the pig did for non-Jews. Every part of the animal was used, including for goose salami, goose sausage and goose ‘ham,’ and foie gras was also a Jewish specialty." 

Like today, he said, Jews in medieval times generally ate what the non-Jewish population did, adapting local recipes to the rules of kashrut. 

"Biancomangiare was also made sweet with milk, pine nuts, almonds and raisins," he said. "But if it was served with a meat dish, the Jews would substitute almond milk for dairy milk."
Also like today, certain dishes became Italian Jewish favorites. 

"Lentils were typically Jewish, and lentil soup was commonly eaten in the 14th and 15th centuries," Toaff said. "Being round, they symbolized the cycle of life. Another typical Jewish cooking style was sweet and sour, like the baked onion salad."

No Jews live today in Bevagna, but the city actively promotes its medieval history with festivals, pageants, Medieval dinners, and other events. The mayor told me that she was now thinking of how to add a Jewish component to all this -- and maybe even get a kosher winery started up.

There is particularly rich archival documentation about Bevagna's most prominent Jewish family in the 15th and early 16th centuries, the extended clan of the banker Abramo. Ariel Toaff recounts the story in great detail in "Love, Work and Death." it is a dramatic family saga that has a sort of rags to riches to rags again narrative framework.

Abramo owned banks in three towns, as well as a mansion, investment properties, farmland and many other holdings. But after his death in 1484, the family suffered a series of tragic setbacks, including deaths, bank failures and even a trumped-up claim by a young Bevagna boy that the family had lured him to their home and crucified him over Easter in 1485. Though apparently linked to a default on a loan to the Abramo bank by the boy’s mother, the allegations led to the banishment of several Abramo family members.

Click here to read full JTA article

Jewish Culture, etc., Festivals in 2012

Festival of the Jewish Book, Ferrara, Italy, 2011. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

As usual, I am trying to put together a list of as many as possible of the numerous Jewish festivals -- culture, film, dance, etc -- that take place each year around Europe.  I've already missed a few that have taken place this winter -- Please help me by sending me information!

The big culture festivals and other smaller events make good destinations around which to center a trip. Some, like the annual Festival of Jewish Culture in Krakow, are huge events lasting a week or more, which draw thousands of people and offer scores or sometimes hundreds of performances, lectures, concerts, exhibits and the like. Other festivals are much less ambitious. Some are primarily workshops but also feature concerts. Many of the same artists perform at more than one festival.

 The list will be growing and growing -- and again,  I ask my readers to please send me information and links to upcoming events. Thanks!



ALL OVER EUROPE

Sept. 2, 2012 -- 13th European Day of Jewish Culture. This year's theme is Jewish Humor


AUSTRIA

April 19-May 23 -- Vienna --  Weanhean: Das Wienerliedfestival (Jewish music and performers are featured this year)


CROATIA

 August 28-Sept. 6 -- Pula -- Bejahad: the Jewish Cultural Scene


CZECH REPUBLIC

July 5-8 -- Boskovice -- UniJazz2012: 19th Festival for the Jewish Quarter

July 30-August 4 -- Trebic --  Trebic Jewish Festival held in one of the most extensive and best-preserved old Jewish quarters in Europe, part of the town's UNESCO-listed historic center.


GERMANY

April 9-15 -- Weimar -- Weimar Winter Edition

 June 3-16 -- Berlin & Potsdam -- 18th Jewish Film Festival


July 21-August 21 -- Weimar -- Yiddish Summer Weimar 


GREAT BRITAIN


June 24-July 1 -- Leeds -- 12th International Jewish Performing Arts Festival


HUNGARY


April 6-14 -- Budapest -- Quarter6Quarter7 Spring Festival, over Passover

July 20-22 -- Bank Lake -- Bankito Festival

November 10-18 -- Szombathely --  Jewish Festival Szombathely


ITALY

April 28-May 1 -- Ferrara -- Festival of the Jewish Book

July 29-August 5 -- Straits of Messina -- Horcynus Festival This year's focus is on Israel and Jewish culture.

September 2-8 -- Puglia Region -- Lech Lecha Festival

November 3-7 -- Rome -- Pitigliani Kolno'a Jewish & Israeli Film Festival

POLAND

April 17-21 -- Radom -- 4th annual "Meeting with Jewish Culture"

April 18-22 -- Warsaw -- New Jewish Music Festival

April 25-29 -- Warsaw -- Jewish Motifs International Film Festival

May 11-13 -- Oswiecim -- Oswiecim Life Festival

May 13-16 -- Warsaw -- Jewish Book Days 

June  2 -- Krakow -- 7@Nite - Night of the Synagogues

June 29-July 8 -- Krakow -- Jewish Culture Festival

August 10-12  -- Jelenia Gora -- Jewish Culture Festival

August 26-September 2 -- Warsaw -- Singer's Warsaw Festival

September 14-22 -- Lodz -- Festival of Four Cultures

October 4-7 -- Wlodawa -- Festival of Three Cultures



ROMANIA

April 27-May 3 -- Bucharest -- 2nd Bucharest Jewish Film Festival


RUSSIA

March 8, 2012 -- Moscow -- Yiddish Fest

SERBIA

June 20-24 -- Belgrade -- Ethno Fusion Fest: Many musics in the courtyard of the Belgrade Synagogue


SLOVAKIA

July 7-15 -- Kosice -- Mazal Tov -- 1st Jewish Culture Festival in Kosice

UKRAINE


Sept. 6-12 -- Drohobych -- Fifth Bruno Schulz Festival




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Italy --Exhibition in Rome

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

What sounds like an interesting photographic exhibition opens tomorrow, Oct. 6, in Rome at the "House of Memoria and History". It's an exhibit of 300 photographs taken by Maurizio Agostinetto during a 960-kilometer trip by bicycle from the Brenner Pass to Auschwitz, retracing the route of 26 Jewish deportees during the Holocaust, including Primo Levi.

Italy -- Huge turnout for Jewish culture event in Rome

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

Organizers report a huge "unprecedented" turnout for a Jewish culture extravaganza held in Rome Saturday night -- the "Night of the Kabbalah".

I wasn't able to attend, as I'm in Prague... but the Rome Jewish community reports that at one point more than 3,000 people stood in line to get in to the Jewish Museum for events. There were readings concerts, discussions, interviews etc etc etc

The event was organized as part of the annual  International Jewish book festival in Rome, which is on this week.

Part of the crowd. Photo: Rome Jewish Community

Italy -- Italian Jewish Food lets you travel via your taste buds

Sign advertising kosher products in Pitigliano, Italy. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

If you can't hop over to Italy, you can "get a taste of Jewish Italy" by sampling  of the recipes of Italian Jewish dishes Joan Nathan spotlights in an article in Tablet Magazine. She also recommends a sampling of cookbooks featuring Italian Jewish cuisine.

If you want to dine less vicariously on Jewish Italian favorites -- there is a growing number of Jewish (even kosher) restaurants in Rome, Florence and elsewhere.

One of my favorites in Rome is called Ba' Ghetto -- it is in the old Ghetto neighborhood, around the corner from the main synagogue. Nice selection of local and Mediterranean Jewish food; relaxed but slightly upscale ambience.