travel

Jewish Identity

Anniversary trip to Italy brings home reality of growing European anti-Semitism.

I

Stacy Gittleman
Contributing Writer

T

his summer, my husband and I cel-
ebrated our 20th year of marriage
with our first European vacation.
In the cold clutches of the polar vortex, we
asked ourselves, what is the one European
city known to be one of the world's most
romantic destinations?
Paris, of course!
Gleefully, we dreamt of a Paris vacation.
In the evenings, we played a Paris Jazz Cafe
station on Spotify. Without a single semes-
ter of French between the two of us, we
spoke sweet nothings to each other in fake

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Parisian accents.

I dug out my college art history textbooks
and plotted my visit to the Louvre.
Then we checked in with the news com-
ing out of France, and our dreams crumbled
like a stale baguette.
Anti-Semitism in France has been on a
steady incline in recent years, even before
Hamas' most recent war with Israel. In
2012, a survey conducted by the Anti-
Defamation League revealed that 40 percent
of approximately 1,200 French Jews said
they avoided wearing Jewish identifiers
such as kippot or Jewish stars. For me, all
it took was one YouTube video filmed on
Jan. 26 with throngs of protesters repeatedly
shouting "Jews Out" through the streets of
Paris, to rethink our plans.
So, forget Paris. We instead spent 10
memorable days in Italy touring Tuscany,
Venice and Florence, eating fresh pasta and
homemade gelato and drinking wine. Italy
was far from a consolation prize to France.

Jewish Identity
All that wine did not cloud my awareness
that war was still raging in Israel, and anti-
Semitism was all around us in Europe.
Still, I refused to be afraid to be outwardly
Jewish. In the Jewish ghetto of Venice, I
purchased a Star of David made of Murano
glass and wore it for the duration of my trip.
In Italy, an appreciation for Judaism's
contributions to humanity on the surface
outweighed any animosity toward the Jews.
An orchestra in Venice's St. Mark's Square
played Klezmer music. In Florence, tourists
wait in line for hours to see Michelangelo's
David, the boy to become king of ancient
Israel. Craning one's neck in the Pitti Palace,
one can view a ceiling painting of Queen
Esther begging King Ahasuerus to save her
people. The owners of one of Florence's hot-
test trattorias proudly hang a hamsa bear-
ing the Hebrew blessing for a business by

82

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Florence's Great Synagogue

their cash register.
Still in Florence, there
remain dark undertones
of Europe's hatred for the
Jews, both past and pres-
ent. As we strolled past
the city's many sites, I
could not shake the eerie
thought that for the first
time in my life, I stood
in places where Hitler
once stood. A Palestinian
flag fluttered on a bal-
cony.
Florence's Great
Simcha Jelinek at his kosher restaurant, Ruth's
Synagogue, where we
spent erev Shabbat with an eclectic minyan
Nazis and used as a parking garage. Now,
of Jews from Italy, Britain, Israel and the
the compound contains the fully restored
United States, was partially destroyed by the synagogue, museum of Jewish Florentine

culture, a school and a Holocaust memo-
rial to the Florentine Jews murdered by the
Nazis.
Cameras are forbidden in the compound,
so you will have to imagine the garden in
the courtyard, featuring a walkway lined
with pomegranate trees heavy with ripen-
ing fruit. The Italian National Guard con-
tinuously watches over the compound and
all visitors go through a rigorous security
screening before entering.
Like every Jewish community, there are
politics and disagreements. Tomas Simcha
Jelinek, known to all as simply "Simcha,"
is a man in his late 70s and the owner of
Ruth's, the city's only kosher restaurant. He
grumbles when the local Chabad tries to
lure Jewish tourists away from his business
with the enticement of a free meal. During
services, the rabbi shushed a toddler and
asked his Israeli father to remove him from
the sanctuary. I sat in the women's section
shaking my head. Don't we have bigger
problems than the natural noisy state of a
toddler, I thought.
After gathering on the synagogue's front
steps to sing "Shalom Aleichem," we went
to Ruth's for a family-style Shabbat dinner.
Simcha sat at the head of the table after he
served us a meal of homemade hummus,
eggplant salad, roasted salmon and pasta al
pomodoro. Dessert was fresh watermelon
and a lighter-than-air Italian cheesecake.
And let's not forget about the fine kosher
Chianti.
in and out of
talking about not only Israel, but also the
situation for Europe's Jews. Simcha noticed
that things are getting worse for Jews in
Italy. Several times, motorists in cars and
motorcycles had shouted slurs at him
because he wears a kippah.
Between Simcha and our other dining
companions — three families from Britain
— there seemed to be a sad resignation
that anti-Semitism never really disappeared
after WWII, but now, they admit, it is get-
ting worse.
On our walk back to our hotel, on the
darkened streets of Florence, my husband
took off his kippah and slipped it into his
pocket.
Later that week, the docent at the Jewish
museum echoed Simcha's sentiments of
things getting worse for Italy's 23,000 Jews.
When I asked her what could be done to
stop the hatred, she shrugged her shoulders.
"This is our history," she said in resignation.
Indeed, anti-Semitism is our past. But,
for the new year, does it also have to be our
future?

Dinner conversation went

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