"Living Reform" in Italy

While Reform Judaism in the US prides itself on inclusivity, the Orthodox community in Italy is tightly exclusionary.  The impact on individuals is the saddest part of this story.

In some Italian cities, only children of “community” members are allowed to attend Jewish educational programs.  Decisions about “who is a Jew” in Italy – after a long history of inclusion and acceptance – have become as restrictive and repressive as those in Israel.  Unless one can provide several generations of ketubot to prove one’s mother was Jewish, one will likely be rejected.  People who have been members of the community for years  would not be accepted if they applied today.  How many of us have our great-great grandmother’s ketubah from Poland or Lithuania?

Two weeks ago a student from California found her way to Shabbat services at Shir Chadash, the Progressive congregation in Florence.  A member since childhood of an Orthodox synagogue, she had gone on Kol Nidre to the Great Synagogue in Florence only to be turned away flatly and told no one who was not a member of the “community” was allowed to attend.

A few weeks ago, I sent an email to the main synagogue in Milan, inquiring about the times of Shabbat services.  I never received a response.  Last Saturday morning, we went anyway.  The security agents outside the building didn’t bother me; in fact, in contrast to the grilling we’ve gone through in other cities, it was nothing.

What did bother me – us – was that once inside the building, there was no sign, no person to tell us where to go, how to enter the sanctuary, which of several doors to walk through.  We had been at the synagogue in September for the European Day of Jewish Culture, but we hadn’t come in the same entrance, and it was confusing.

I knew women had to sit upstairs, so I headed there.  In the balcony, I saw no prayerbooks.  A few women were scattered around, mostly in pairs, and they all stared at me.  No one came over.  Finally I went over to one woman who was studying a prayerbook and asked her where they were kept; she pointed vaguely to the other side of the balcony.

We left after an hour.  There were about 80 people there by the time we left, at the end of the rabbi’s sermon:  about 40 men and 40 women.  No one greeted us, no one said “Shabbat shalom” till some teenagers, running into the building as we left, mumbled it to Fred.

Not only is the community unwelcoming.  This past summer, a Chabad rabbi in Milan publicly made the outrageous and totally unfounded charge that Progressive congregation Lev Chadash had served lobster at its seder.  As the battle raged in the Italian media – which couldn’t quite grasp what was happening – he finally retracted his charges around Yom Kippur, but refused to apologize for his preposterous claims.

“We are Orthodox in our traditions,” one member of an old Italian family told me, “but Reform in our daily lives.”  Not really.  Such thinking unfortunately reflects a gross misunderstanding of Reform Judaism.

If the Jews of Italy were truly “living Reform,” they would comprehend and embrace the idea that there is more than one way to be Jewish.

If the Jews of Italy were truly “living Reform,” they would be concerned about the disenfranchisement of other Jews in their midst.

If the Jews of Italy were truly “living Reform,” they would advocate for religious equality of all Jews:  men and women, Ashkenazic and Sephardic, rabbis and lay people.

If the Jews of Italy were truly “living Reform,” they would welcome the non-Jews in their midst, whether married to Jews or seeking a path to spiritual fulfillment through Judaism.

If the Jews of Italy were truly “living Reform,” they would demand religious freedom and cultural pluralism for all Jews.

If the Jews of Italy were truly “living Reform,” they would acknowledge that through community they will strengthen one another.

“Schwer tzu zein a yid.” – It's not easy to be a Jew.  To be a Reform Jew in Italy is to struggle daily with invisibility.

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A Community Divided Against Itself

My husband and I are at the halfway point in our five months of volunteer service to two of the three Progressive Jewish communities in Italy:  Congregazione Beth Shalom in Milan and Shir Hadash in Florence.  We have visited Lev Chadash, here in Milan, also a member of the World Union for Progressive Judaism (WUPJ).  And WUPJ is also trying to grow a group in Rome.

Both congregations we serve are made up of a mix of U.S. and British expatriates and native Italians.  Both congregations include Jews married to non-Jews and Jews-by-choice, many of whom grew up in Italian Catholic families.  Both function, with difficulty, on the edge of the recognized Jewish communities in their cities.

About 50,000 Jews lived in Italy in 1933; 40,000 survived the war.  The European Jewish Congress now estimates the Italian Jewish population to be about 30,000, including a large number of Libyan Jews who came to Italy in the 1960s and 1970s.

The Holocaust is very much a current issue for today’s Jewish community.  Last week, RAI-TV, a state-sponsored channel, showed a docudrama, “Under the Roman Sky,” portraying Pope Pius XII as responsible for saving 10,000 Jews.  Rome's Chief Rabbi Riccardo Di Segni described the series as "junk.

At the same time, there is intense interest in Jewish thought, philosophy, history.  Hardly a day goes by that the Corriere della Sera doesn’t have an article on – to paraphrase Saul Bellow – the Hart, Shaffner, & Marx of contemporary Israeli writers:  David Grossman, Amos Oz, or A.B. Yehoshua.  In fact, yesterday’s Corriere features the new book of Bellow’s letters on its front page, and today’s paper includes a long feature article about I.B. Singer’s The Family Moskat; you don’t find that kind of coverage in The New York Times.

 

The issue that threatens the community the most is not anti-semitism.  Nor is it intermarriage, which now exceeds 50 percent; nor is it the declining birthrate.

Rather – as Ruth Ellen Gruber wrote in an excellent article this past June – it is “a lack of pluralism and increased Orthodox rigidity in the official community” that is alienating and turning people away.

I have written before about the state of Reform/Progressive Judaism in various countries.  Italy is typical of other European countries.  All citizens have the option to pay a “religious tax” that is then credited to their own religious community, which they designate.  For Jews who are considered part of the “official” Jewish community, these revenues are then returned to the Jewish community via the UCEI (unione delle comunità ebraiche Italiane).  The problem is that the UCEI, though its mission statement claims that it represents the Jews of Italy, doesn’t recognize nor accept all of them.

No money goes to the Progressive congregations in Florence or Milan.  These congregations must shoulder their entire financial burden themselves.  They are not listed on the communities’ websites of Jewish organizations.  They spend much of their energy trying to let people know they exist.  The Internet has helped a bit, but the vast majority of Italian Jews know nothing about Progressive or Reform Judaism.  (To be continued.)