(JHE) — Jewish communities in Naples and Venice will be seeing a “return to the future,” with Yom Kippur services celebrated in historic spaces for the first time in more than a century — in order to comply with COVID-19 restrictions.
In Venice, Yom Kippur services including Kol Nidre will be held in the 16th century Scuola Grande Tedesca for the first time since around the period of World War I, according to Moked, the information portal of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities (UCEI).
Dating from 1529 and the oldest of the five synagogues in the historic Venice Ghetto, the Scuola Tedesca is now part of the Venice Jewish Museum. The Venice Jewish community numbers around 400 people and normally uses only two of the synagogues, the Spanish Synagogue and the Levantine Synagogue.
This year, according to Moked, the Jewish community leadership decided that worshippers will be able to gather on Yom Kippur the Scuola Tedesca as well as those two synagogues in order to provide more space and respect social distancing and other anti-pandemic measures.
The decision to open the Scuola Tedesca was dictated by the need to guarantee to the largest possible number of members the opportunity to follow the services safely, scrupulously respecting the regulations in force. But also and above all from the desire to start the new Jewish year in the sign of life.
Similarly in Naples, Moked announced that Yom Kippur services will be held in a space that has not been used as a synagogue since around 1860 — the historic Villa Pignatelli, once home to the Rothschild family and now a museum.
According to Moked, social distancing regulations would only permit 26 men and 11 women to attend Yom Kippur services in the Naples synagogue.
To help resolve the problem, the Naples museums superintendency offered the community the use of two rooms in Villa Pignatelli.
Built by Sir Ferdinand Richard Acton in 1826, the villa had been bought in 1841 by the German Jewish banker Baron Carl Mayer Rothschild, who had arrived in Naples 10 years earlier to establish a branch of the family’s bank — one of the first Jews to settle in Naples following centuries of expulsion.
Rothschild turned one room of the villa into a synagogue, which was used until the Jewish community was officially established in 1861 and rented space for their synagogue’s current premises, in Vico Santa Maria a Cappella Vecchia.
“The synagogue of Villa Rothschild — Villa Pignatelli, was the first synagogue open in Naples after three centuries of expulsion,” Moked wrote. “It is within these very walls that the Neapolitan Jews will again gather to celebrate Yom Kippur 5781.”
Read the Moked article about Venice
Read the Moked article about Naples