Italian Synagogues from 1492 to the Present

Chapter 15 Italian Synagogues from 1492 to the Present

Samuel D. Gruber

Synagogues in Italy present a case study for a community and its synagogues over the longue durée. Unlike other European communities, Italian Jews boast an unbroken chain of settlement and cultural cohesion dating back to ancient Rome.1 Since the fourth century ce, Jews in Italy have commissioned art and architecture that reflected the tastes and talents of the surrounding majority culture. Yet Italian Jews participated in these artistic forms and language to serve their needs and to reflect their values and aspirations. This essay focuses mainly upon the period from 1492 to the early twentieth century, exploring ways that the Jews of Italy constructed their ritual spaces under conditions both unique to Italy and consistent with general trends in the history of Euro- pean Jewry. Evidence of synagogue architecture in Southern Italy before the general Jewish expulsion from the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies in 1492 is rare, though a few synagogues have survived as churches and private dwellings. Traces of medieval synagogues also survive from more northern medieval towns, such as Perugia, where Jews shaped the re-emergence of urban life. Documentary evidence exists of Jewish communities and their synagogues from dozens of towns, including a detailed description of the lavish synagogue of Palermo.2 The Jewish population in southern Italy was considerable, and historians estimate that between 50,000 and 100,000 Jews lived in Sicily alone. Two fine synagogues (of four) survived as churches in the Apulian port city of Trani. The Scalanova synagogue has recently been rededicated as a synagogue and the

1 There is an extensive and varied literature on Italian synagogues. A survey that illustrates integration of Jewish and Italian themes and styles, including some sites mentioned here is Vivian Mann, ed., Gardens and Ghettos, The Art of Jewish Life in Italy, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989) passim. Excellent histories and decriptions of many sites including those in the Lazio, The Marche, Tuscany, Piedmont, and the Veneto, are found in the guidebooks edited by Annie Sacerdoti and Annamarcella Tedeschi and published by Marsi- lio. These are summarized in Sacerdoti’s Guide to Jewish Italy (New York: Rizzoli, 2004) Some synagogues are discussed in J. Pinkerfeld, The Synagogues of Italy (Jerusalem: Bialik Insti- tute, 1954), Hebrew; some arks in U. Nahon, Ornamenti del Sefer Tora (Jerusalem: Mifale mir Amerikaʼyim Yisraʼeliyim, 1966), Hebrew; and in Krinsky, Synagogues of Europe, 341–386. 2 See the letter of Ovadiah da Bertinoro (1487–1490) discussed in detail by Joshua Holo in this volume.

276 Gruber remarkable domed Scolagrande synagogue is now a museum of the region’s Jewish history. In northern Italy Jewish populations were small, often no more than one or two banking families and their retainers. Synagogues were often located with- in the house of the wealthiest Jew in the community, or in another house purchased by an individual Jew and established for community use. These houses were typical of Italy’s medieval urban centers and there is no formal distinc- tion between a house used by a Christian and one used by a Jew. Ariel Toaff has documented in detail the complicated history of the synagogue of Perugia, in existence from the mid-15th century until the Jews were expelled from that Umbrian Italian city in 1570.3 The synagogue (or scola) was located in the fine house (palazzo) in the district of Porta S. Angelo, for which they paid a rent of 7 florins a year to a local nobleman. In 1448, the community began to also rent an adjacent building for 7 florins a year. Then, both buildings were purchased by two wealthy Jewish brothers for 200 florins, and the Jewish community was allowed to continue use of part of the buildings as a synagogue, but ownership remained with Aleuccio and Angelo di Guglielmo, who restored and enlarged the houses as their own residence. An example of such a house is probably illustrated in a small miniature from a 15th-century Hebrew manuscript in the Biblioteca Palatina in Parma which shows a house with a ground floor with a wide high arch, typical of the shops and workspaces of such houses. Two small windows surmount this arch, probably indicating a mezzanine level connect- ed to the shop. Above is the piano nobile illuminated by three Gothic windows, the center one a bifora. One can imagine a prayer room possibly set up behind these windows. An actual similar fine stone townhouse in the medieval town of Sermoneta near Rome has been traditionally identified as a former synagogue. The interior of such a house-synagogue can be imagined from a 15th-century Italian manuscript illustration from Emilia that shows an open room with a tall wooden Ark against one wall and a lower reader’s table set before it. A series of chests or desks at which the worshipers sit faces the center of the room. A prayer book and a candle burning in a candlestick are placed on each desk. The room is elegant, with a large decorated arch supported on Corinthian columns supporting a wooden coffered ceiling and allowing the room to be larger than ordinary. Each ceiling coffer is decorated with a painted star (Fig. 10.6).

3 Ariel Toaff, Love, Work and Death: Jewish Life in Medieval Umbria, tr. Judith Landry (London: Littman Library, 1998), p. 91.