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Tag : italy
April 25, 2020 by Yona Zeldis McDonough
Beyond the Ghetto Gates: The Liberation of Jews in Italy
In the late 18 century, French troops invaded the Italian port city of Ancona, liberating the Jews from the ghetto where they’d been forced to live. This new freedom had consequences both cultural and personal. Novelist Michelle Cameron’s Beyond the Ghetto Gates (She Writes Press, $16.95) is set in this bracing moment and she talks to Fiction Editor Yona Zeldis McDonough about why she chose this particular time and what she hopes her readers will learn from it.
Yona Zeldis McDonough: You selected an atypical chapter in Jewish history on which to focus; what drew you to it?
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March 27, 2020 by admin
In Italy, Our Lockdown Continues
MILAN, March 2020—Today the news announced that the Carabinieri, the Italian military police, would be patrolling the streets and giving fines to anyone who didn’t have an essential reason to be out.
They also announced that grocery stores, the only businesses still open besides pharmacies, would be limiting their hours, so I decided that I should go out and get more food while I still could. Since we don’t have a car, I asked my teenage daughter to come so that she could help me carry everything back. She gladly accepted, since the three weeks of lockdown in a 390 square-foot apartment have proven to be quite a strain on our family dynamics. With our masks in hand, we left our apartment and walked onto the eerily empty street. It was a glorious spring day in Milan, trees full of colorful blossoms, a gentle breeze, birds chirping, and – just for a moment – everything felt normal.
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November 4, 2019 by admin
Italian Warp & Weft •
Who knew that the textile field was strongly rooted in Italian Jewish tradition, or that embroidery was one of the few Jewish figurative arts Jews were free to practice from the late medieval period until the Emancipation? Embroidery was practiced in Italy by men, and only in the 16th century did it become an important part of women’s education. Since then Jewish women supplied embroidery for Italian synagogues, and became custodians of Jewish heritage in Italy. A unique precious textile exhibition introduces us to a number of Italian Jewish women who sought to leave a lasting mark of their devotion, love, and labor through fabrics and textiles. Founded in 1983, and housed in a 300-year-old synagogue, the Umberto Nahon Museum of Italian Jewish Art in Jerusalem collects, preserves and displays objects pertaining to Jewish life in Italy from the Renaissance to the present. Through December 22, 2019.
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