Specials

 

I think the fact that Italian Jews have over 2,000 years of uninterrupted history gives an awareness that identity is not something that can disappear. It is something very profound that can be kept within a group, even though that group can be highly integrated and even though that group can change. This identity can develop through the centuries. And I think that’s something that in younger Jewish communities—with Americans for instance—is not felt. There is no certainty that the Jewish identity can be preserved in spite of changes and in spite of interpretation and the way in which we interact with the larger world. Any historical culture is in continuous progress. I think the contemporary notion of identity, that identity has to be very defined to be true, to be maintained and to be protected, is artificial. This doesn’t really exist in the Italian Jewish community.

 

 I think that in general Italian Jews—and we’re talking about post-Italian unification Jews—have adopted a sort of double life policy, a way of not needing to be identified or recognized continuously as Jews. In fact, a country like Italy, which after Unification had a specific internal struggle of secular trends against the Church, the secular has up to a certain point prevailed. Someone’s religions or customs don’t need to be displayed to the larger community, which is something that happens a lot in this country. This is part of an Italian way: when you live in Italy you don’t necessarily know a person’s religion or whether or not they go to church. In general this display of identity is not encouraged. I find it difficult here, in the U.S., for instance, to reach the individual because people are always displaying their group identity.

 

 It’s very difficult to generalize, but I would say that Italian Jews fall more easily into the Italian category. The language, the culture, the exterior values are more immediately Italian. I think there has been within the Jewish community in New York, if there is such a thing, a growing awareness of the existence of Italian Jews. We are not very easy to categorize. Some other Jewish communities, like the Indians or the Ethiopians or Yemenites, have been labeled as “exotic”: their image is tradable because of certain aesthetics. Italian Jews are so radically secular and their sense of identity is so subtle—it’s something that has to do with political values, intellectual values and ethics—that as a result, awareness of their existence as a group has grown at a much slower pace.

 

There is a central fact that in Italy, up to a certain point, Italian Jews were not deported. They may have been attacked, discriminated against but there was no deportation from Italy the way there was from Central and Eastern Europe. However, the racial laws were promulgated and implemented. I find it horrifying that they happened at a time when Italy was full of intellectuals and very fine artists and poets. Certainly people were able to discern prejudice and superstition from intellectual argument. In the population there was a certain rate of sympathy—there were people from all walks of life who helped—but at the same time there were many people who tried to take advantage of the persecution of the Jews, for money, to gain positions and all sorts of benefits. Can we make a general statement on a nation based on this? Just the fact that a community, as small, ancient and integrated as the Italian Jews were, could suddenly turn into a group of non-citizens unfortunately speaks of the Old Country.

 

The question is what we are doing in our societies to encourage understanding of the “other”. I believe there is a growing general ignorance. The media uses language to define groups and identities in a way that is more confusing than helpful, and based on the idea that there is good and evil in the world. That fosters ignorance and prejudice.

 

Remembrance Day is not a Jewish anniversary. It’s an anniversary of the European societies in which the Holocaust happened. They chose this day, which is the day of the abatement of Auschwitz—it was not the end of the war yet, or the liberation, the Jews still had to march for several days still, but it came to represent the moment in which they worked and fought for the future and for justice. That abatement remains symbolic. It’s the symbol for educating ourselves and a call to put ourselves in the shoes of those who become prejudiced to then find a way to undo it. This coming together of many communities, where the emphasis is not on the fact that we are many communities, but on the goal, doesn’t happen too often. This event, focused on values and education, is slowly being embraced by the United Nations and is observed in Israel and in some Latin American countries—but it’s not relevant who’s observing it. What’s relevant is that we’re all coming together, taking in this moment, which represented an enormous tragedy. The magnitude and absurdity of the attempted extermination of Jews in the 20^th century have become symbolic of something we have to resist. It’s not a Jewish observance in that sense. Italy and France were two of the first countries that established this anniversary, in part because Italy didn’t have a Nuremberg trial. There was a strong need to look at this past. How did this happen to Italy? There was no precise beginning and end to it like there was in Germany. Remembrance Day helps to fill that void.