JEWISH IN ITALY?
Where do Italians go when they look for Jews, in the unlikely event that they do anything of the sort?
For as long as I can remember, a nervous avoidance of "The Jewish Question" colored my daily life in Italy—with plenty of ironic humor along the way.
I tackle this weird phenomenon in Jews as Jews, a chapter in my unpublished book, Carnival Blood.
If you are looking for Jews, there are always museums, memorials, cemeteries and ruins.
The usual markers of a puzzling people who survived for millenia against the odds.
Far easier to manage than the survivors themselves.
There have been Jews in Italy for two thousand years— before there were "Italians", we might well argue.
The Hebrew captives in Titus' imperial triumph in 71 AD knew perfectly well that they were Iudaei— a designated people with a shared faith.
Meanwhile, the surrounding Italici were merely Roman residents of the peninsula. They and their eventually Christian descendents would have to wait until the Risorgimento— nineteen hundred years later— for a distinctly "Italian" identity to emerge.
Theories abound, however, regarding the first appearance of Jewish travelers and traders in Italy, perhaps even before the Judaean Wars and the cataclysm of 71 AD.
When it comes to the mainstream of Italian (or Italic) history, Jews often seem to occupy a distinct chronology of their own— shadowed by myth and legend.
For decades, I have fixated on the opening scene in Giorgio Bassani's great novel, The Garden of the Finzi Continis:
"The Etruscans are at the very beginning of the history book, right near the Egyptians and the Jews."
"But tell me, Dad! Who do you think are older?"
"The Etruscans or the Jews?”
(Translation: Isabel Quigley)
Back in fifth grade, we all studied what passed for Ancient History.
Only decades later, did I meet Giannina, Bassani's nine year-old Roman girl —but I remember a similarly wacky chart over the blackboard in my classroom.
As a Hebrew, I was proud to appear as an Ancient People (albeit at the very bottom, slopping from BC over into AD).
And every Ancient People was tagged with "Chief Contribuitons". Ours was "One God" and "Biblical Literature" (probably their way of skating around the Old Testament/New Testament thing).
Now, I appreciate her company when I navigate the strange strange blur of Jews in the Italian mind.
A very comfortable blur
The God My People never meant me to be an Englishman--but he seemed quite happy with me as a quasi-Italian
The Etruscan thing...Finzi Contini...their own strange and incalculable past
There are living Jews too...
Their own present and their own past
Quote material from Carnival Blood "arch of titus"
refer to Carnival Blood
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