rome | Whenever Georges De Canino worries about the future of Italian Jewry, he looks at the bricks in the building across the street from his apartment in the center of this city’s old Jewish ghetto.
A painter who sometimes stares at the stones for inspiration, De Canino claims that they originally came from the Colosseum, and they remind him of history’s long arc.
The stones have been in Rome for nearly 2,000 years. The city’s Jews have been here for longer. And neither of them, De Canino says, are going anywhere.
“Above all, it’s a community that survives invasions, barbarians, the economy,” De Canino said. “We’re a small community that is reborn, that grows. We play a very important role in Italy.”
It’s a sentiment widely shared by other members of Italy’s 24,000-member Jewish community. At a time when growing anti-Semitism and rising immigration to Israel is prompting even large European Jewish communities to fret publicly about their future, community leaders here are surprisingly optimistic even as they contend with many of the same challenges facing small communities elsewhere: high intermarriage rates, young people moving abroad and shrinking numbers.
“The Jewish community in Italy is a small world, but very diverse,” said Renzo Gattegna, president of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities. “There is a phenomenon of demographic decrease of the Italian communities. But I think this is balanced out by the increase of the cultural activities.”
With a history dating to the time of the Roman Empire, Italian Jewry predates — and developed in relative isolation from — both Sephardi and Ashkenazi Judaism. What has resulted is a Jewish population with distinctive customs and dress. Florence’s 1,000-member community has a prayer book with a liturgy and melodies all its own, as do Rome, Venice and other cities. Unlike other European communities, many Orthodox Italian synagogues have organs, a holdover from a 17th-century legal ruling.
The community has an intermarriage rate of 50 percent, and many young people, driven by a skyrocketing youth unemployment rate — it hit 44 percent this year — have sought better opportunities abroad. Last year, 340 Italian Jews moved to Israel, doubling the previous year’s figure. The national Jewish community’s numbers are also declining, from an official figure of almost 27,000 in 1995 to 24,000 today.
“I don’t think of the future of my children in Italy, not in terms of jobs,” said Johanna Arbib-Perugia, former chair of the Jewish fundraising operation Keren Hayesod in Rome. She added that some Italian Jews “see Israel today as the land of opportunity.”
Some Italian Jews focus on what they describe as a vital community. Rome supports more than 20 kosher restaurants, many of which opened in the past few decades. One eatery, Ba’Ghetto, has opened two branches in the past seven years. The capital also has three Jewish kindergartens and one K-12 school.
In Florence, an effort to engage more with the wider community led to the launch of Balagan Cafe, a biweekly series of cultural events. In Milan, the local Chabad outpost hosted an annex to the EXPO Milan 2015 food fair that focused on kashrut. And in Florence and Torino, Jewish student associations have formed to organize cultural events and celebrate holidays.
“I think the communities of Rome and Milan and Florence and Torino will have a very strong Jewish life,” said Gabriele Fiorentino, a consigliere, or board member, of the Union of Young Jewish Italians. “I think in the near future there’s no danger for the bigger communities.”
One of the community’s greatest strengths is what it lacks – a fear of anti-Semitism. There have been attacks, but leaders and laypeople alike dismissed them as a fringe phenomenon.
On a recent summer day, Italian Jews wore yarmulkes on the street and tourists loudly spoke Hebrew under Israeli and Italian flags. The scene stood in stark contrast to Jewish communities elsewhere in Europe, where locals warn visitors against any outward signs of their Judaism.
Community members say Italy’s Jews have always gotten along with their neighbors. This is a strength, Gattegna says, adding that Italian Jewry could grow even stronger by forging relations with Jewish communities in neighboring countries, to play an active role in world Jewry’s future.
“Italian communities are not well connected with other European communities or American communities,” Gattegna said. “It is a mistake not to develop this contact. We risk missing a great chance for cultivating friendly relations.”
De Canino disagrees, saying the community should invest in emphasizing its own distinctiveness. Italy has succeeded, he says, in drawing tourists to view its historical and cultural landmarks, and Italy’s Jews should do the same.
“The future of this community is as a cultural community,” he said. “We need to invest in culture, in tourism. Petroleum runs out. St. Peter’s Basilica never ends. Venice never ends. Milan never ends. The Uffizi never ends.”