Foto Friday – The Italian Synagogue

December 4, 2009 - 9:24 AM by Rachel Neiman

The Conegliano Synagogue in Jerusalem is the heart and soul of the local Italian Jewish community. The building, formerly a German Catholic school for girls, houses a museum, a restoration center, research and educational center, and a chapel, magnificent though modest in size, whose interior was rescued from destruction and brought to Jerusalem imported from Italy after World War 2.

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The Italian synagogue, or Minhag Bnei Roma (the Roman rite), also serves to protect the Jewish prayer rituals not only of Rome but of communities from all over Italy, the roots of which date back all the way to the Second Temple period. According the Jerusalem Italian Jews Association website: “It is still possible to identify some traces of that ancient rite in the present Italian rite, such as the special Shema blessings on the eve of Shabbath “asher kila ma’asav beyom hashevi’i” – “emet ve-emunah bashevi’i kyamta” and the Hebrew “kol nedarim” on Yom Kippur night, instead of the Aramaic one “kol nidre’” which is said in other rites.”

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The synagogue itself, however, is far less classical Ancient Rome and way more fabulous over-the-top Baroque. The womens’ section has elements of a balcony at the opera…

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I should point out that the Italian rite is traditionally open to influences — there is no one Italian ritual, with Northern Italian communities having a more Ashkenazi rite, central Italian communities having a more Sefardi one and all of Italian Jewry now being influenced heavily by Chabad — and Bnei Roma has an informal sort of gender-neutral area outside the main hall where men and women pray alongside one another. Definitely worth visiting on any Saturday morning – check the website for details. And if you can’t get there right away, take the virtual tour.

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I also want to mention that the photos were taken by Jonathan Sierra; a sensitive and imaginative photographer, he is also my beloved life partner who suffered a sad loss this week when his father, Professor and Rabbi Sergio Joseph Sierra, passed away at the age of 85. Rabbi Sierra was a great scholar who, together with wife Ornella, reconstituted the Jewish community of Bologna after the war. He also researched, wrote and edited books and essays on medieval Jewish scholarship (he translated a good portion of the commentator Rashi into Italian), was Chief Rabbi of Torino (Turin) and, after coming to Israel a decade ago, continued as an active member of the Italian Jewish community in Jerusalem until Alzheimer’s cruelly stepped in and vanquished his mind and spirit.

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This week, as the family mourns, the entire Italian community has gathered to pay tribute – whether physically at the shiva, or virtually through emails, instant messages and even Facebook – and to pray in the Italian rite.

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Comments

One Comment on Foto Friday – The Italian Synagogue

  1. Sergio on Fri, Dec 4th 2009 12:26 PM

    2. Actually… In Italy there is a specific MInhag, with its own prayer books, which is called Kadum, or Minhag Bene’ Roma, or Loaz in the Talmud, which is neither Ashkenazi nor Sefardi but much older than both, and very similar in many aspects to the Yemenite minhag, which also has elements from the times of the First Temple and the Second, preceding the Babylonian Diaspora.
    The Ashkenazi Minhag is actually derived from the Italian Minhag, having the Ashkenazi communities been started by Rav Kalonimos, a Rabbi from Rome, in the IX Cent. V.E., who received permission from Charlemagne to create a community in Central Europe.
    In Italy there is only one fully Ashkenazi community, because of the city belonging to the Austro-Hungarian empire until second half of the XIX Cent. V.E.; and likewise there is only one Sefardic Community, which is Livorno (Leghorn), because the Medici family, the rulers in Toscany, invited the Jews being exiled from Spain in 1492 to move there, while the rest of Italy was either under Spanish control (the South) or under princes and governments hostile to Jews.

    There are, nowadays, after the recent forced Jewish migration from muslim countries, several Persian, Lybian, and Lebanese communities, however the bulk of the Jews of Italy follow and pray according to the Italian Minhag, with variations from city to city due to the general Italian tendency to particularism, even at the level of local dialects which are VERY different from one another, and the very recent unification (1871) under the Piedmontese Kingdom of Savoy.

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