Jewish Ghosts
SINGER, SUZANNE F.
PERSPECTIVE Editor's Viewpoint Jewish Ghosts JEWS TRAVEL THE WORLD LOOKING FOR Jewish ghosts. That's true even for Jews who hardly care a whit for synagogues or Jewish holidays when they're...
...when learned Sicilian Jews knew Hebrew, Italian, Greek, Arabic, and some of them also Latin...
...He became our partner in the search...
...By the time Bruno walked by carrying a cell phone, we had identified the locked building and, courtesy of workmen on the street, we had a phone number for the person who might open it...
...It was then, according to the Encyclopaedia Judaica, that Jews were the translators of scientific works from Arabic into Hebrew and Latin...
...Nothing more...
...In Palermo, Sicily's largest city and capital, we again found a street sign which recalled absent Jews...
...That's all...
...No mezuzah marks on the door jambs or magen Davids or faded Hebrew inscriptions...
...Driving west across Sicily, invisible Jews accompanied us...
...Will it tell the story of King Martin V of Aragon (1392-1410), who, while said to be "well-disposed" toward the Jews, could not prevent forced conversion, and failing in that, a massacre...
...PERSPECTIVE Editor's Viewpoint Jewish Ghosts JEWS TRAVEL THE WORLD LOOKING FOR Jewish ghosts...
...In the hill country southwest of Mt...
...Unfortunately, his phone rang without answer and, on this our last morning in Ortygia, we were forced to give up on seeing the mikvah...
...Few Jews even today have returned...
...A different spelling of "Jews" than in Ortygia, but possibly another reminder of the 100,00 Jews who once lived in 52 communities in Sicily (more than triple the number of Jews living in Italy today...
...Will it be the golden days in the Middle Ages when Jewish learning flourished in Sicily...
...He had seen the mikvah and could describe it in some detail, including the stream that fed it "live" water and made it a kosher ritual bath...
...Etna, which had begun erupting as we arrived in Sicily and now displayed white plumes of smoke, drifting ash, and molten lava flow, we passed a road sign to Castel di Iudica and nearby Monte Iudica...
...More Jewish ghosts on the way...
...Doric Greek Temple of Athena embedded in the walls of a 7th century C.E...
...We later learned from a woman—not Jewish—who is helping to make it happen, that there will be an exhibit in October in Palermo of "2000 Years of Jews in Sicily...
...They had been found more than 50 feet below ground level during renovations beneath a house in Ortygia...
...Of course, we were looking for live Jews, but other than a tour group from Israel that we met in the superb museum in Syracuse, the closest we came to a Jew in Sicily was a delightful man we met on the street in Ortygia, the island extension of Syracuse on the southeast coast of Sicily...
...Although it had been more than 500 years since Jews lived in these twisting lanes, Bruno said he knows some Sicilians who light candles on Friday night—probably descendants of Marranos, Jewish converts to Christianity in the 15di century who secredy continued Jewish practices...
...Norman church...
...But as you see below, we succeeded in finding a photo of it...
...Today, he said, neither he nor his Jewish wife practice anything...
...All of this was prelude to the final expulsion of Jews from Sicily by King Ferdinand, a decree carried out in January 1493...
...The compulsion to preserve and remember their Jews seemed not to be just a Jewish preoccupation...
...Bruno waved his arm and announced that we were leaving the Jewish Quarter, a small area crisscrossed by four streets each called Via della Giudecca, the "Street of the Jews," and numbered to differentiate them...
...Before parting with Bruno, he walked— almost ran with us—to show us Ortygia's exquisite central piazza with its 5th century B.C.E...
...How much more so for editors of MOMENT, who recendy went to Sicily stalking archaeology for our other magazines...
...Still, he became intrigued and decided to help us on our very Jewish quest...
...Map in hand, we went to find the ancient baths on the Via Alagona...
...Several rimes in the 17th and 18th centuries, the government of Sicily tried unsuccessfully to woo back Jews...
...Today an offshoot of a street lined with shops of ironmongers, Via Meschita contains a building identified as the former site of a synagogue...
...What story will it tell...
...Will the exhibit tell how the fortunes of Jews in Sicily rose and fell with the Spanish monarch who ruled the kingdom...
...Bruno's suspicions about our request to use his phone were allayed...
...Just a sign...
...The day before, from an Israeli tour group's guide, we had heard about a recently discovered mikvah, in fact a group of mikvaot, reputed to be the oldest in Europe and possibly the oldest aside from those in Jerusalem below the Temple Mount...
...That's true even for Jews who hardly care a whit for synagogues or Jewish holidays when they're at home in Minneapolis or Boston or L.A...
...Written in Italian, Hebrew, and Arabic, the sign said, "Via Meschita," "the street of the synagogue" {meschita is derived from the Arabic word moschea, meaning "mosque...
...Only shadows remain of the Jewish community that lived for centuries on this beautiful island...
...Now living in Paris but descended from an aristocratic Sicilian family, Bruno acknowledged that maybe long, long ago, before the expulsion of the Jews from Sicily in the wake of the Spanish Inquisition in 1492, there were Jews in his family...
...Will it tell of Martin's successor, Alfonso V, who repealed regulations confining Jews to ghettos and allowed Jewish physicians to practice among Christians, yet despite this benevolence, massacres again occurred...
Vol. 26 • October 2001 • No. 5
