I got involved recently with a project that highlights the close relationship between Italians and Jews, thanks to the efforts of Gianni Bardini, the consul general of Italy in Toronto.
For me, it was a wonderful opportunity to promote friendship and understanding between ourselves and our Mediterranean neighbours. The project got started when some prominent Italian-Canadian builders told the consul general that it was Jews who gave them their first opportunities in business in Canada, for which they were very grateful.
Yet this relationship should come as no surprise since Italians and Jews have been intertwined for thousands of years. The Maccabees were the first to send a delegation to Rome before the Common Era. There is evidence as well to suggest that there was already a colony of Jews in Rome by that time.
Jews were among the earliest supporters of Julius Caesar. By the first century CE, Rome’s Jewish population had grown tremendously, augmented by the huge influx of Jewish slaves who had been captured in the first Jewish Revolt against Rome, which culminated in the sack of Jerusalem in 70 CE and the capture of Masada three years later.
The victory parade of the Emperor Titus commemorating the capture of Jerusalem, with the menorah from the Temple as part of its spoils, was vividly portrayed in his Arch, which still stands at the entrance to the Roman Forum. It is even said that Titus’ mistress was Bernice, the granddaughter of Herod the Great.
Many of the Jewish slaves who came into Rome were put to work building the Coliseum. Ironically, some 2,000 years later, Italians who had immigrated to Canada went to work for Jewish builders.
It has even been estimated that at the height of the Roman Empire, in the first and second centuries of the Common Era, as much as 10 per cent of the total population might have been Jewish either by birth or conversion.
Some of the earliest and most imposing synagogues were to be found scattered throughout the Empire in places such as Ostia Antica, the harbour of Rome, and Sardis, one of the major cities located in the eastern part of the Roman Empire in what is now southwestern Turkey.
The toleration that the Roman Empire had shown to its Jewish citizens would change when Christianity became the official religion of the Empire in the fourth century CE under the Emperor Constantine. This trend would be briefly reversed when Constantine’s nephew, Julian, inherited the throne. Julian was even contemplating allowing the Jews to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem, but he was assassinated before he could put his plans into effect.
For the next 1,500 years Jews had a mixed history in Italy. In some eras they did well and in others they did not. Remains of Jewish cemeteries and synagogues have been found throughout the peninsula, attesting to a Jewish presence there for two millennia.
Unfortunately, Italy’s Jews were not able to escape the horrors of the Holocaust. Mussolini had initially welcomed all people into the Fascist party, and Jews were among his first supporters. One of his early mistresses was of Jewish background. But this would change once Mussolini got entangled with Hitler.
Yet as individuals, many Italians aided the Jews. On a personal note, it was Italian PoWs returning from the Russian front who smuggled my in-laws and a group of other refugees out of Poland and into Italy at the end of World War II.
