Doing Jewish in northern Italy

EVA COHEN

One of the best and most interesting things about Europe is that each country holds pockets of distinct Jewish communities. This is most certainly the case in Italy, where I had the privilege of travelling last month.

I am a student in Leeds, England, and was able to find a return flight to Italy for less than 40 pounds. However, after quickly getting the flight, I saw that there weren't any normal youth hostels in the city of Milan, which is where my flight landed. The university here has a student chaplain rabbi and a student Chabad House. Rabbi Danow contacted one of the Milan rabbis, with whom he had gone to yeshivah, and not only did I get a place to go for Shabbat, but a member of the community gave her key to the rabbi in order for me to use her apartment while she was away in Israel for Yom Ha'atzmaut.

The Chabad synagogue of Rabbi Hazan is called Beit Menachem, but, although Chabad, it is a Sephardi shul. Rebbetzin Hazan, originally from Cincinnati, explained to me that, unlike in Canada, where people will go to a synagogue and do as the congregation does because they don't really have many traditions, the Sephardi Jews are very entrenched in theirs.

Sunday I did not spend in the Jewish area. Rather, I went to a Serie A soccer game between Inter Milan and Siena. It was a huge game because, with a victory, Inter could have won the league. The stadium was almost entirely full and I had never seen such crazy fans. My ears were ringing from all the whistling (which is done when the other team touches the ball, instead of booing) and I almost got pushed over a few times by the fans around me. I have been to see Manchester United play in Old Trafford, but it hardly compared to the spirit I found in Milan. Inter lost, to the great dissatisfaction of its supporters, but the experience was still exhilarating.

Late that night, the girl who owned the flat I was staying in arrived back from Israel. Hanna converted to Judaism last year after being interested in it since studying abroad for a year in France while in high school, where she met several Jewish people. A mathematics teacher at the religious day school, she was very familiar with the local community. A bonus was her high level of English, which is uncommon in Italy. Unlike other European countries, where people may speak several languages, in Italy, most people only speak Italian.

The next morning, I woke up bright and early to catch a train to Venice for a day trip. It's about a two-hour ride and it takes you through the most beautiful landscapes, skirting the northern mountains.

Upon arrival, I was stunned at how awesome even the site at the exit of the train station was. Hanna had told me the Jewish ghetto was only about a five-minute walk from the central station, so I headed off in a random direction, figuring I would run into it. Across a couple of bridges, I saw a man in a kippa with his son and asked him for directions. He pointed to his right and told me to go 30 metres down and turn right again. I followed his directions to find an inconspicuous entrance between shops into an alleyway. I was uncertain of it until, immediately inside the shadows, I saw mezuzot on the doorposts and a kosher bakery. One store further down was an antique shop. A few paces down the corridor it started to widen and lighten and opened up to a small courtyard of an ancient synagogue. There are three in total in the Jewish ghetto.

Opposite the synagogue, I found a store selling prints of Jewish festivals in Israel and Italy. The owner was Israeli so I spoke to him in Hebrew and he gave me a bargain on one of the prints – true Israeli style.

After this shop, the path opened up to the main square, which has more stores, a Chabad learning centre on the corner and a bustling kosher restaurant. Beside the restaurant is a special store.

Venice is known for its Morrano glass and almost every store in the main part of the city sells beads, figurines, etc., but this store sold Judaica made out of glass produced by the owner's sister – glass rabbis, mezuzot, Stars of David and chamsas for necklaces lined the shelves.

I purchased a few of the Magen Davids as souvenirs and walked back out into the courtyard and took a seat under the shade of a tree. It was a glorious day outside: 25 degrees Celsius and sunny. From my seat, I surveyed the courtyard and sat for a while to eat my packed lunch. School groups passed through, as well as people clearly looking at the ghetto because it was on a tourism map's destination list.

What especially caught my eye, however, was a group of boys playing football on the far side of the courtyard. They were all teenagers, Sephardi, wearing their white shirts, blacks pants and kippot and they were kicking around a ball. This scene was priceless and gave a unique, genuine air to the place.

I returned to Milan that evening and accompanied Hanna to the central Milan synagogue to hear a speaker. The synagogue's front goes straight up and imposes quite a presence onto the street in front of it. The main sanctuary, which I was shown even though the talk took place downstairs, is beautiful, but relatively recent. The building was bombed in the Second World War and only the back portion of the main sanctuary survived.

The evening's speaker was Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, whose life work was translating the Talmud into several languages. He spoke in Hebrew while a man from the community translated into Italian. He did not speak about his work, but rather focused on one main point, which I had explained to me by Hanna and another member of the community afterward. Over the course of more than an hour, in many different ways, he reiterated the idea that all Jews are one chevra (community), one mishpochah (family), no matter what their color, traditions, etc. This talk was specifically targeted at the Milan community because, within it, there are Iranians, Libyans, Lebanese and other Sephardi groups, and each looks down on the rest and will not intermarry outside their group. There is much strife between the groups. They look down on each others' minhagim (customs and ways of acting upon interpretations of the Torah) and, in several instances, religious people have married out of the faith completely if they didn't find someone in their immediate community.

Tuesday, before flying back, I walked through central Milan and saw Santa Maria delle Grazie, the church in which Leonardo Da Vinci's "The Last Supper" is kept. But, it was really the Jewish areas that were so fascinating on this trip. Everywhere you go in Europe there are churches and multitudes of people snap photos of them everyday, but the Jewish area in Milan and the ghetto in Venice are truly gems.

Eva Cohen is a freelance writer based in Leeds, England.

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