Italian Bnei Anousim leaders visit Israel: meet Leah, Marco, Carlo and Salvo
Last week, we shared the stories of Kinga, Olga and Catherine, three young Polish “Hidden Jews” who were visiting Israel on a two-week Shavei Israel-sponsored trip to the Holy Land. They weren’t the only Jews from communities Shavei supports visiting Israel recently. Rabbi Pinchas Punturello, our emissary to Sicily and Southern Italy, was in town with four leaders of the Bnei Anousim communities there.
Carlo
“No, no, don’t call us leaders!” protests Carlo, one of the four visitors, as Rabbi Punturello patiently translates.
“They are very modest,” the rabbi quickly points out. “But it’s true: they are very much leaders. They do a lot of work helping to organize all kinds of seminars and events in Italy.” Carlo, for example, organized activities for Hanukah in his home region of Catania, including the lighting of a hanukiah in a public square, something he has been involved with since 2008.
The four Bnei Anousim visitors come from a number of different areas scattered across the south of Italy and Sicily. Carlo is from Catania, Leah from Syracuse, and Marco and Salvo are both from Palermo.
“The idea of the trip was to help build up Jewish identity for these young people, who will then return to Sicily to strengthen the Jewish community there,” explained Rabbi Punturello. As with Shavei’s previous trip for the Polish speakers, the itinerary for these Bnei Anousim visitors includes a jam-packed mix of studying and touring.
“They visited the Old City of Jerusalem, the Italian Synagogue, Masada and the Dead Sea,” Rabbi Punturello says. “They spent Shabbat with the Italian Jewish community in Jerusalem; met with Italian Jewish immigrant David Cassuto (a former vice mayor of Jerusalem), who shared with them the history of Italian Jewry in Israel; and took classes with Rabbi [Eliyahu] Birnbaum,” Shavei Israel’s Educational Director, who speaks Italian and also served as the Chief Rabbi of Turin in Italy.
Leah
What do the Italian visitors think of Israel? Just two weeks has left them all profoundly moved. “I feel much less lonely as a Jew,” says Leah. “Being a minority in Syracuse creates a lot of stress. Now that I have experienced the ‘idea’ of Israel, if only for a short time, I feel safer to be Jewish at home. And stronger – because I know that Israel is always waiting for us.”
Marco
Marco agrees with Leah on the lack of “spiritual stress” in Israel. “Maybe for people who live here, you don’t feel it, because it’s normal for you, but for me, in my first time in Israel, I feel the peace and I want to take it with me back to Italy! I’m not saying that peace means there are no problems. But there’s a sense of completeness – in my soul. I see other people like me and I really feel a part of the Jewish people. Like when we stopped at Ein Gedi, near the Dead Sea, and we somehow had a minyan to pray mincha [the afternoon service]. That doesn’t happen in Italy!”
“Marco said it right, but I want to add one thing,” inserts Carlo. “There is a saying – it’s from the American film ‘Into the Wild,’ that happiness is only real when it’s shared. As Leah said, in Sicily, we are alone. But here, we can share the happiness of our Jewish identity with all the people of Israel.”
It’s a qualitative difference, Carlo continues. “When I’m in Sicily and I keep kosher, I feel ‘proud,’ because I’m upholding Jewish tradition. Here, I simply feel ‘happy’ because I’m sharing the commonality of Jewish identity.”
Salvo
Salvo is similarly struck by how “normal” it feels to be in Israel. He had previously visited the Jewish state, but mainly stayed with friends in Tel Aviv. This is his first time spending time in Jerusalem where seeing the whole city preparing for Shabbat, “as a normal activity,” was a revelation. “Coming to Israel is like getting a new battery pack. It gives me energy to go back to Palermo and to become more active with the Jewish community there. The Diaspora is a place where I live, but it feels disconnected from real life – real Jewish life, I mean. If life is a chain, when I’m not in Israel, it’s like a ring is missing.”
One of the common experiences for Bnei Anousim – whether in Italy, Spain, Portugal or South America – is the discovery, often later in life, of Jewish roots. That has certainly been the case for all four of these remarkable young leaders.
With the holiday of Passover just around the corner, Leah, 24, recalls that the kind of “spring cleaning” her family did was above and beyond what other Italians might do. “They don’t clean out the kitchen and dust the books in the same intense way our family did at home growing up,” Leah says. But that wasn’t the impetus for her to wish to return to her roots. “I simply felt my soul was demanding that I get closer to Judaism, to come back. Even in school growing up, where I studied religion like all Italian kids, I always felt a distance from Catholicism. Something about Judaism was calling me from early on.”
Marco felt drawn to the Jewish people when he was just 6 or 7-years-old. “I don’t know why. It was not something rational. I didn’t even know anyone Jewish personally,” he says.
When Marco left home for university, he had the opportunity to learn more. “I realized there were many traditions in our home that had Jewish origins. For example, after a funeral, we cover all the mirrors, and the men don’t shave for a certain number of days,” he explains, referring to two Jewish mourning customs during the week of shiva.
His family also practiced their own form of shechita – kosher slaughter – on the chickens they raised (“we lived in the country”). And when they ate the eggs, “we made sure there was no blood in the yolks” – another Jewish tradition. “When I think about my childhood, I feel like my Jewish identity was stolen by the forced conversions [of the Inquisition] so many years ago. We were raised as Catholics, yet, my family traditions are Jewish. There is a disconnect. That’s why I am studying Judaism today in a much deeper way.”
Marco, 32, now works as a social worker for immigrants in Sicily. “I’m kind of a cultural bridge,” he says. His dream: to do similar bridgework, but between Bnei Anousim in Sicily and their Jewish heritage.
“For me, everything started with a dream when I was very young,” Carlo, 33, recalls. “In it, my mother and my grandmother came to me and said ‘we are Jews.’ But I put it aside. Then, at 16, I went to the U.K. to study English on a summer program and I met a group from Israel. I was particularly drawn to them. I began to learn more about Judaism. And then I started to think about the dream again. It was like putting the pieces of a puzzle together.”
Like Leah and Marco, Carlo realized there were a number of Jewish traditions in his family: his father always used to salt any meat before they would cook it – something connected to the laws of keeping kosher. His mother’s maiden name “Franco” is a common one among Bnei Anousim. “Most important, we never ate seafood at home. Think about it – it might be possible to not eat seafood in some parts of Sicily. But where we lived in Catania is right by the sea. You can walk to the marina!”
Salvo’s interest in Judaism came the latest, 10 years ago, when he was 25. A Catholic friend showed him a chumash (the first five books of the Bible) in Hebrew and Italian. “It was like a magnet; like the click when you turn on a light,” he enthuses. “I just had to read it, to learn more about it, to study it.”
That surprising connection led Salvo to regularly travel to Milan – a nine-hour train ride from Palermo – where he began studying towards conversion. Along the way, he learned that his family name – Taibe – is a common Sephardic Jewish one from Libya, where his father came from. There was, like with Leah, quite intense cleaning for Passover, an aversion to blood in eggs, and “no images of saints in the house,” as would be common in other Italian homes, he adds.
What do Salvo’s parents think of his process? “My father always loved the Jewish people and was interested in the history of the state of Israel. In the last month of his life, we studied the chumash together. He told me, before he died, that if he were younger, he’d convert too!”
Salvo’s father never had the opportunity, but southern Italy and Sicily – and the Jewish world as a whole – are waiting with open arms to welcome for these young Bnei Anousim leaders back home.