THE JEWS OF ITALY


A story of traders and slaves, of neighbourly coexistence and confinement, of freedom, integration and assimilation, of ostracism, persecution and emigration, of deportation and hiding and of restitution, seen from the perspective of the Foa and the Errera families.

by Piero Pio Foa‘


1. A brief introduction. The seafaring people who, in biblical times, inhabited the land now occupied by Israel and Lebanon are believed to have established trading posts along the shores of the Mediterranean, including those of Sicily and southern Italy. Indeed, archeologic records indicate that some of them may have settled permanently in those regions. Other Jews known to have travelled to the Peninsula were the ambassadors of Judah Maccabi who came to seek the protection of Rome against Antiocus IV. The year was 161 B.C. and those messengers were soon followed by others who moved to the capital of the empire because its power and location made it the most favorable center for trading (1-4). Still other Jews came to Rome as slaves after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 A.D. by Titus (Fig.1) and again in 135 A.D., after the final subjugation of their homeland by Hadrian. Life in Rome and in the Provinces was not easy even for those Jews who had been freed, because they would not worship the "divine" Emperor and, like the Christians with whom they shared monotheistic beliefs and with whom they were often confused, they were forced to hold their religious services and bury their dead in secret catacombs (1). In 313 A.D., when the Emperor Constantine embraced Christianity and made it the official religion of the Roman Empire, matters became even worse: the Jews came under pressure to convert or lose their means of livelihood and were persecuted for not recognizing the divinity of Christ and accused of having caused his death. It was the beginning of a violent and vituperative antijudaism which in time became indistiguishable from ethnic antisemitism. Many Jews chose to flee again and found asylum in North Africa, Greece, Spain, France and Holland (and became known as "Sephardic" or Spanish Jews) or in Central and Northern Europe (and became known as "Ashkenazi" or German Jews).

In 1492, after the Catholic Monarchs expelled the Jews from Spain forcing them into a second diaspora, some of them, including the Errera’s, emigrated to North Africa and Syria, where they lived in harmony with their Arab neighbors (5) until 1700, when Beniamino Errera moved to Venice. His great-grandson, Abramo, became a community leader, a Senator of the Republic and a wealthy banker. In 1845 he bought the Ca’ d’Oro, arguably the best known palace on the Canal Grande, where the family lived until 1884 and where my grand father Adolfo was born in 18__. Other Jews emigrated to a number of Italian towns, such as Carpi, Casale Monferrato, Modena, Pitigliano, Soncino and Sorano . The Foa‘s moved to Sabbioneta, apparently at the behest or the tacid approval of the ruling Prince, Vespasiano Gonzaga and in Sabbioneta Tobia Foa’ established a Hebrew Press, adoped the 6-pointed star as its logo and, thus, helped establish the Shield of David as the symbol of the Jewish people (6,7). The ancestral "Palazzo Foa‘", where the family lived until it was sold in the early 1900s, contains a small synagogue, which is now a national monument. After many years of full integration in the academic, social and public life of the Nation, many Italian Jews were forced to emigrate again by the 1938 antisemitic edicts of Mussolini.*

The fortunes of the Jews in the territories controlled by the Vatican depended on the whims of the reighing pontiff: Gregory the Great (590-604 A.D.) protected them, stopped the practice of forced conversion and ordered the restitution of confiscated property; Alexander VI Borgia (1492-1503) allowed them to live freely in the Papal State; while on July 26, 1556 Paul IV, the former Grand Inquisitor John Peter Cardinal Carafa, issued an order for their segregation into a ghetto surrounded by a gated wall which the Jews could leave only during the day (Fig. 2), wearing a distinctive marking on their clothes. Nevertheless, no pope or other Italian chief of state seems to ever have ordered their expulsion, contrary to what happened in France, England, Spain and Portugal. Only two sources of livelihood were allowed: selling old clothes and lending money, a business prohibited to the Christians by anti-usury laws (1,2) and not likely to endear the Jews to the rest of the population.

The election of Pope Pius IX in 1846 was a turning point in the history of Italy, of the Italian Jews and, in particular of the Foas for, although the former cardinal Giovanni Maria Mastai-Ferretti was known for his reactionary views, less than two years after his election and following, the example to the Kings of Piedmont and Sardenia and of the Two Sicilies, he granted a Constitution, ordered the gates of the Roman ghetto torn down and became the idol of the Italian liberals. Born in 1848, my grandfather Pio was named in his honor. The enthusiasm was short lived for, in a very short order, fearing the growing threat to the temporal power of the Vatican, Pius IX condemned the italian nationalist movement and the Risorgimento and reverted to his reactionary ways, proclaming his opposition to freedom of religion and his belief in a devinely ordered world in which the Jews lived as guests and at the mercy of the Church (8). It was too late to stop the Risorgimento and the political and military events which, in 1870, led to the end of the temporal power of the Church. The Vatican became again an independent State in 1929 when Pius XI signed the Lateran Treaty with fascist Italy. It was a time when, perhaps not accidentally, the first antisemitic utterences by Paolo Orano and others began to appear in a few newspapers and nine years before antisemitism became the law of the land. My middle names, Pio and Adolfo were given to honor my living grand-fathers, as customary at the time.

Rome was not the only city to establish a ghetto. Indeed, the word itself derives from that of an area of Venice, not far from a foundry or "getto", where some Jews had established themselves and, eventually would be forced to live. It was a time when Venice had become the principal center of trade between the Orient and Central Europe and had created a number of commercial and residential establishments, called "fondaci", such as the fondaco dei Tedeschi (Germans, now the main post office) and the fondaco dei Turchi (Turks, now a museum of natural history).** Jewish merchants and their families came to Venice in large numbers not only from Spain, but from other European and Middle Eastern countries and, at first, as all other foreigners, were free to trade and to live anywhere in the city. Most of them moved to Mestre and to other cities of the mainland where, motivated by reasons of culture, of business and of security, built their homes and opened their shops close together. This freedom of choice came to an end in the XVIth century when, under pressure from the ecclesiastical authorities, the City Councils of Padua, Rovigo, Verona and Udine formally asked the Venetian Senate to create separate jewish quarters in their cities and when the government of the Doges forced all Jews who had remained in Venice to choose between moving to the remote island of Murano (which they refused to do) or to a then scarcely populated area of the city. Thus was born the Venetian ghetto where, eventually, Eastern and Western Jews were forced to return at sunset , behind locked gates (Fig.3), where they built their homes and opened their shops and where they organized 5 different congregations, each with its own ritual and its own synagogue (Fig. 4). It wasn’t long before this restricted area became overcrowded, forcing its residents to increase the hight of their buildings and decrease that of the room ceilings in order to increase the number of stories. Thus were born the 6- or 7-story high "skyscrapers" of Venice (9-11, Figs. 4,5).
 

* My grand-parents Adolfo and Rita Errera, their son Gilberto and his family chose to remain in Italy, eventually went into hiding and were saved. Adolfo’s brother Paolo and his wife Nella were captured by the fascist militia and sent to Auschwitz, never to return.

** The word "fondaco" may derive from the Arabic "funduk" or from the Greek "pandokeion", meaning "hostel".

Figures Fig.1. The Arch of Titus in the Roman Forum.

Fig. 2. Area of the ghetto and the present day synagogue in Rome.

Fig. 3. The ghetto of Venice. Tommaso da Salo‘, 1567.

Fig. 4. Ghetto of Venice. Section of an apartment building with the names of the tenants. XVIIIth century. State Archives, Venice.
 
 

 References 1. Sacerdoti, A., Fiorentino, L.: Guida all’Italia Ebraica. Marietti, Casale Monferrato, 1986, pp.383.

2. Comunita‘ Ebraica di Roma: A typewritten statement.

3. Johson, P.: A History of the Jews. Harper & Row, New York, 1987, pp.XI-644.

4. Oddoux, C. et. al.: Mendelian Diseases among Roman Jews:
Implications for the Origins of Disease Alleles. J. Clin. Endocrinol.
Metab., 1999. 84. 4405-4409.

5. Sutton, J.A.: Aleppo Chronicles. The Story of the Unique Sephardeem of the Ancient Near East, in their own Words. Thayer-Jacoby, New York, 199 ,17-38.

6. Scholem, G.: The Curious History of the Six-pointed Star.
Commentary, 1949, 243-51.

7. Plaut, W.G.: The Magen David. How the six-pointed star became an emblem for the Jewish people. B’nai B’rith Books, Washington 1991, pp.XII-141.

8. Kertzer, D.I.; The kidnapping of Edoardo Mortara. Vintage Books, New York, 1998, pp. XI-350.

9. Cancina, E., Camerino, U., Calabi, D.: La Citta‘ degli Ebrei. Albrizzi, Venezia 1991, pp. 318.

  10. Calabi, D.: La Cite’ des Juifs en Italie entre XV et XVI Siecles. In: Bottin, J. and Calabi, D.: Les Etrangers dans la Ville. Maison Sciences de l’Homme, Paris, 1999, 25-40.

11. Zaggia, S.: Contrade Juives et Ghettos: les Espaces Urbaines des Juifs dans les Villes de la Terre Ferme Venetienne. In: Bottin, J. and Calabi, D. Les Etrangers dans la Ville. Maison Sciences de l’Homme. Paris, 1999, 223-237.