JEWS IN ITALY Most Italians think there are many times more Jews in Italy than the thirty-one thousand paying members of the Italian community. Native Italian Jews probably number no more than fifteen thousand. There are sizable communities of Libyan (mainly in Rome) and Lebanese and Iranian origin (mainly in Milan). The false perception of a large number of Jews in Italy results from the fact that several Jews have indeed played key roles in Italian society over the past century and a half. ■ Jews see themselves – and also are seen as such by many educated Italians – as one of the “tribes” of what can best be called “the Italian nation in the making.” The rise in recent decades of the Northern League shows once again that the idea of Italy as a single state is a contested one. In such a context there is suddenly a place again for the Jews as one of the distinct Italian groups, as was the case for many centuries before Italian unity. ■ Another development of the last decades has been the reinvention of the Italian Fascist Party. Most of its members joined in 1995 a new movement, Alleanza Nazionale. Its leader, Gianfranco Fini needed the Jews and Israel to give legitimization to his party as genuine democrats. ■ External developments have fostered a sudden reemergence of Italian Jewry. This has made Italian Jews again proud of their identity. “Italy has a population of about sixty million. When one asks educated Italians how many Jews live in the country, the most frequent answer is half a million. In reality the number of paying members of the Italian Jewish community is thirty-one thousand, or five for every ten thousand Italians. There are probably another few thousand Jews who do not publicly identify as such, but no reliable estimates of these people exist. In addition there are many cultured, educated, or well-off Italians who will tell you that they are partly of Jewish origin. “The two major Jewish communities in Italy are Rome with twelve thousand registered Jews and Milan with six thousand and a few thousand unregistered. Native Italian Jews probably do not number more than fifteen thousand. In Rome there is a sizable Libyan Jewish community. Iranian and Lebanese Jews have developed social centers in Milan so as to foster marriages within their communities. Jewish immigrants from Egypt, Morocco, Gibraltar, and Germany as well as Israelis in smaller numbers are dispersed among various communities.” Dan Segre has been a professor of political science at several universities including the University of Haifa, MIT, Stanford, and until recently the University of Lugano. He has simultaneously been involved in journalism for many decades. INITALY.COM
Posted on: Sun, 09 Jun 2013 16:23:31 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015