It is well worth attending for
Sabbath services or for a weekday
visit.
Visitors should also call Paola
Jarach Bedarida, president of the
congregation, at the synagogue
number, to arrange for home hos-
pitality. The cuisine of the Livor-
nese Jews is famous throughout
Italy, and one should exercise
every wile to sample it.
Sephardim from the Iberian
‘_ peninsula introduced olive oil, for
example, to Livornese cookery —
1 a practice hitherto frowned upon.
They popularized eggplants, a veg-
etable initially deemed fit only for
Jewish palates but now a basic el-
ement in all Italian cooking. They
used other vegetables widely, cre-
ating tortini — thick vegetable
omelets — and beetroot lasagna,
with a sauce of beetroot and
onions to which tomatoes are
added — an embellishment which
Florentine chefs still disdain.
But the most significant gus-
tatory contribution the first
Sephardic settlers made to the
good life in Livorno was that ex-
traordinary beverage: coffee. By
1652, the new drink was such a
success that coffee shops had
sprung up all over town, a phe-
nomenon that has persisted and
expanded to this very day,
Happiness for the Livornese,
Jew and non-Jew alike, is sitting
in a cafe around the arcaded Pi-
azza Grande, reading the soccer
news in the local paper, sipping a
bitter espresso sweetened with
amoretto. The good life journey
continues from Livorno northward
and eastward, through Pisa, to
Florence itself, a venue for Jewish
settlers as early as the 14th
cenury and currently one of the
msjor cities of Jewish population
in all of Italy.
Florence is the Duomo, Giotto's
Campanile, Michelangelo's David,
the Uffizi Gallery, the Pontevec-
chio and countless other treasures
of Gothic and Renaissance art and
architecture. Indeed, the entire
city is a virtual museum, whose
Jewish components are quite
dwarfed.
Nonetheless, the good life visi-
tor to the Duomo who has touched
the biblical figures on the great
bronze doors of Piano and Ghib-
erti or gazed upward to
Brunelleschi's cupola can take
pride in the relatively modest but
still significant Jewish contribu-
tions to the splendor of Florence.
Within walking distance of the
Duomo — and all of Florence is
walkable — is the relatively "new"
community synagogue. More than
a century old, it is new, neverthe-
less, in contrast to the Christian
houses of worship dating from the
14th and 15th centuries.
The Tuscan good life also offers
the luxury of languid immersion
in one of the many hot springs
which abound throughout the re-
gion. Travelers have enjoyed the
spas of Tuscany since Roman
times. CI
ci
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