In view of what we had heard about hostility to Israelis in Europe, my wife and I made an effort to obscure our national identity on a recent visit to northern Italy. We made sure that our luggage was free of Hebrew letters, and when asked about our home countries, we generally answered that we had come, respectively, from the United States and Australia.
Sometimes, as when we visited a museum on Lake Como, we let down our guard. In answer to a question from a young Italian teacher who was shepherding a group of Milan schoolchildren through the grounds, my wife, told the truth. “I am from Israel,” she said.
The questioner was clearly taken aback, but soon regained her composure and continued the conversation. It was really a minor incident. But it left us feeling uneasy. Also disturbing was the graffiti glorifying the intifada and proclaiming that “Sharon is an executioner.”
We had gone to Italy instead of France, our original summer destination, to escape such phenomena and, truth to be told, incidents were few and far between. Moreover, in Venice we saw that at least some Jews are more than willing to proclaim their ethnic identity. The central synagogue in the ancient ghetto was filled to overflowing with men and women when we went there for Friday night services, and then, together with most of the overseas worshippers, we dined at a nearby Chabad-run restaurant. The Chassidim, mainly New Yorkers, had everybody loudly singing Chassidic songs, both inside the restaurant and at tables outside, on the edge of a canal. The hosts refused to accept payment for the chicken, chicken soup and wine, saying that we could show our appreciation by contributing to our local Chabad branch.
Yet evidence of what Israeli’s call “the situation” wasn’t completely absent. Not far away from the restaurant stood a group of Italian policemen armed with sub-machine guns, “just in case.”
Present tensions should not be allowed to obscure the fact that Italian Jews are part and parcel of a generally tolerant nation. Her Jewishness was not a drawback, for example, when Annalisa Bemporad decided to run this year for the city council of Monza, a prosperous town north of Milan. She was elected without difficulty.
Bemporad’s family has lived in Italy for untold generations, certainly since the time of the Spanish Inquisition and perhaps even from the Second Temple period. Yet they have retained their Hebrew name (we would write it Ben Porat), their Jewish affiliations and their interest in Israel’s well-being.
Like her counterparts elsewhere in the diaspora, Bemporad is disturbed by “the biased media reports on Israel.” She is particularly critical of “those Italians who get a good feeling by supporting the Palestinians, the apparent underdogs. However, she adds caustically, “underdogs closer to home, for instance illegal immigrants from Albania, enjoy no such sympathy.”
Her Jewishness, and the fact that her sister lives in Israel, make Ms. Bemporad deeply concerned about what is happening there. “If I see a report about a suicide bombing on the evening news,” she notes, “I keep tossing and turning all night long.”