Italy: PugliaEbraica — new online (and paper) resource for Jewish heritage in Puglia

A new online (and paper) resource focuses on the Jewish heritage of Puglia (Apulia) — the region on the heel of the Italian boot, where Jews lived from ancient times until their expulsion in the 16th century.

Only a handful of Jews live in Puglia today, but the region is home two two Jewish museums — one in Trani and one in Lecce, plus synagogues in Trani  and other traces of Jewish heritage all over the region.

Pugliaebraica — a project of the Jewish museum in Lecce — includes a web site in Italian, English, and Hebrew, with an interactive map that incudes more than two dozen cities, towns, and villages where there is evidence of Jewish heritage.  There is also  a printed version with a map and informational material.

Tracing 2,000 years of Jewish presence in the region, Pugliaebraica follows in the footsteps of travellers who arrived by sea or on ancient Roman roads — in particular the via Appia and via Traiana;  foremost among them the medieval traveller Benjamin of Tudela, who described his visit to the region in the 12th century.

The web site states:

Funerary inscriptions, dating back to the 6th century, show that the local Jewish population used Latin as a language of communication while they used names derived from the Biblical tradition associated with other non-Jewish onomastics. Jewish teachers moved from the Apulian coasts and spread their knowledge throughout the Mediterranean area, so much so that in the northern Europe of the 12th century it was said, paraphrasing a verse of Isaiah, “From Bari will come forth the Torah and the word of the Lord from Otranto.” Important Jewish schools were still active in the 15th century in Bitonto, Trani, Barletta, Monopoli and Otranto, where many refugees moved after the forced conversions in Spain and Provence.

Despite the changing conditions of tolerance imposed by the various regimes that succeeded one another in the Adriatic region, the Jewish presence in Puglia did not stop until the definitive expulsions of the 16th century, when southern Italy became part of the Habsburg dominions of Spain.

The obligation to choose between exile or baptism led to a split between those who preferred to abandon their belongings rather than renounce the faith of their ancestors and those who accepted the impositions. Within a few generations almost all traces of their centuries-old presence were erased. Synagogues and community buildings were demolished or converted into churches and convents, liturgical scrolls, scientific manuscripts and other documents were destroyed, religious objects were melted or sold for their intrinsic value. What survived of this centuries-old presence were the holdings that the refugees managed to bring with them, along with the recollection of Apulian life and other memories of diasporas in the centres where they moved: Venice, Corfu, Mainland Greece, Constantinople…

Access the Pugliaebraica web site

Read our 2018 Have Your Say essay about the Jewish Museum in Lecce, by Martin Šmok