Pianist Miriam Sangiorgio plays her way back to Judaism
“I could have said I’m a Christian,” says Miriam Sangiorgio of Catania , Italy. “I could have had a very easy life.”
Instead, the 42-year-old vivacious Italian chose to explore a tenuous Jewish connection that her father only revealed to her in his dying days. Today, Miriam is in Jerusalem studying at Shavei Israel’s Machon Miriam Spanish and Portuguese language Conversion and Return Institute.
Even before her father’s dramatic announcement, Miriam suspected that she was different from the other Italians they grew up with. “My father taught us to thank G-d on a daily basis and to pray for every single action,” she says. “He never ate pork, though he was not raised as a Jew.”
His life hiding his heritage as a Bnei Anousim – a Jew whose ancestors were compelled to convert to Catholicism more than five centuries ago – is not surprising, Miriam explains. “He grew up under Mussolini. He didn’t have a choice. Otherwise he would have been killed.”
Miriam’s interest in Judaism began years before her father died and she learned of her own past. A skilled classical pianist, she was searching for a new teacher when she met Lazar Berman, a Russian Jew who took her on as his student. Berman had a home in Florence where Miriam lived and another in Lithuania. It was during visits there that Miriam learned about Judaism in the former Soviet Union.
In 1991, Miriam traveled to Charleston, South Carolina, to perform in a musical exchange between the U.S. city and Spoleto, Italy. “I went to accompany a violinist for one week,” she says,” but I stayed ten years,” furthering her musical career along the way.
After only a few weeks in Charleston, she moved to New York, where she found herself propitiously hanging out with a Jewish crowd that kept kosher and Shabbat. Miriam began to as well. She feels strongly that, even though she has not formally converted to Judaism, “if I transgress a mitzvah (a commandment), I have the same responsibility as all Jews.”
Her passion ignited, Miriam made her way to Israel to study Judaism and Hebrew more intensely. Instruction at Shavei Israel’s Machon Miriam is entirely in Spanish – a language Miriam doesn’t speak. But that hasn’t stopped the indefatigable Italian pianist, who is in the process of converting. Not surprisingly, her favorite class is Hebrew (where her native language matters less). She studies twice a week – in both Jerusalem and Efrat – and lives in the Gush Etzion community of Migdal Oz.
Miriam is not alone in Israel. She has a brother who worked for a telecommunications company in Tel Aviv for ten years and who travels back and forth from Europe. “He’s not close to Judaism,” Miriam explains, “but he said ‘if you want to spend a year learning about Judaism, I’ll support you.’”
Miriam is only in Israel for three months. After that, she will go back to Italy to continue her career but also to advance a personal mission. She hopes to help counter some of the anti-Semitism she has encountered in her native Sicily.
“I was studying in Reggio Emilia Conservatory of Music with 18 colleagues from Sicily and, as soon as I said I’m Jewish, they pushed me aside,” she says. “They would fight me in every way they could. I said to myself, this is G-d testing me, making me ask ‘do you really want to do this, to convert to Judaism?’”
Her response to the antipathy she felt has been to formulate an ambitious plan to bring a bit of Israel and Judaism to Sicily, with classes and communal celebrations of holidays and Shabbat. “There’s a NATO base in Sicily and there are usually 7-8 families there that can never have a service during Shabbat,” she adds.
Ever optimistic, Miriam is sure, she says, that she has the requisite “charisma to influence Sicilian politicians.” She’s already organized a “musical peace conference” where she brought together thirty 14-year-old boys from Greece, Italy, Spain, Israel, Jordan and Lebanon. “We played an entire concert,” she beams. “At first they didn’t want to sit together, but by the end they were friends.”
Despite the work she feels she has to do in Italy, Miriam already knows she’ll miss Israel. “When I landed in Tel Aviv the first time, I didn’t feel anxious,” she says. “I felt at home. In Sicily, I always felt different, an outsider. Here, I feel connected to G-d. I don’t feel alone anymore.”