Family Stories

Our family and friends are in Italy to celebrate birthdays.

We happened to  pick a random walled city hilltop town and  discovered  the home of one of the few safe Jewish communities for 500 yrs.

Pitigliano. The Piccola Gerusalemme ! With its Antiche Ghetto Ebraico. What a magic place.

Like another magic place across the Mediterranean, folks have lived here for over 3,000 yrs. Finding sanctuary by burying into the soft volcanic pumice stone in the outcrop and staying high up there out of trouble.

Through Etruscan times, then Roman, then Renaissance Italy when the wise local Orsini warlords welcomed a community of Jews giving them sanctuary from their persecution through Europe.

Reasonable, I guess, since this group ended up there having been dispossessed by colonial Romans some 1,500 years earlier and having their native Israel re-named Palestine by the colonial European oppressors.

Here they could dream about their own mountain home - in Jerusalem - praying for return one day as the Torah promised.

Below are photos of that community of Jews and their connection to Israel:  still prayed about, every day of their exile, and remembered in art - from cultural memory and the Torah - in this case from 1562.

And so safe they were - for 500 years - making an outsized and much loved contribution. Until they weren’t. Though thankfully many were protected by their loving Catholic neighbours during the Holocaust.

Sadly there is no longer a minyan here though our AirBnB host has an Aunt now safely back in Israel.

Of all the walled city hilltop towns in Italy, I randomly walked into this one. Call it divine providence. Where else could I get a kosher wine around here … except in this cellar!