Instead of September 3, as in other participating countries, the European Days of Jewish Culture is centered on September 10 — with the theme “Beauty,” not “Memory” as in the other countries.
It takes place in scores of localities up and down the Italian peninsula, with Florence as the lead city.
The history of the Jewish ghetto of Florence, which existed in the city between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, is an exhibition organized by the Uffizi Galleries and arranged in the Gallery of Modern Art of Pitti Palace. Curated by Piergabriele Mancuso, Alice S. Legé and Sefy Hendler (The Medici Archive Project), the exhibition can be visited until January 28, 2024.
The ghetto of Florence was established in 1570 by Cosimo I and Carlo Pitti, and was demolished between 1892 and 1895. For almost three centuries the ghetto was the gravity point of Hebraism in Florence.
Subdivided into five sections,the exhibition draws from the extraordinary cultural heritage of Florence as well as from important international loans. It reveals a significant and forgotten chapter of the Medici’s political strategy in a centuries-old context of conflicts, diplomacy and cultural exchanges.
The exhibition starts with the Florence of Cosimo the Elder and Lorenzo the Magnificent; illuminated manuscripts commissioned by Jewish and Medici patrons, which was the result of the interaction between Jewish scribes and Christian artists of the early Tuscan Renaissance; loans from the Jewish Theological Seminary of New York and many Italian libraries. Republican and Medicean imagery intertwine in the depiction of paradigmatic biblical figures, “Jewish heroes” such as Donatello’s bronze David (on loan from the Berlin Museums), or Joseph from the series of tapestries woven in Flanders for Cosimo I. The exhibition places mythical figures alongside real ones, revealing little-known pieces of the history of Florentine Judaism, such as the activity of the explorer Moisè Vita Cafsuto or that of the Jewish painter Jona Ostiglio, whose pantings were all commissioned by the Medici court, together with the self-portrait of Isaia or David Tedesco, a little-known author who was probably a pupil of Ostiglio in the first ever art workshop inside an Italian ghetto.
A place of segregation, but also the fulcrum of an important human, cultural and spiritual microcosm, the ghetto of Florence is also reconstructed through a three-dimensional model, the result of a decade of research conducted by the Eugene Grant Jewish History Program of The Medici Archive Project.
Caring about the multiplicity of audiences and the need to break down prejudices and stereotypes, the exhibition investigates the way in which the history of the Grand Duchy is intertwined with that of the Jewish minority, finally shedding light on the events of an important and so far little known chapter of the Renaissance Florence.
An exhibit that documents the urban and architectural experience of the historic ghetto in Verona. It is mounted in connection with Holocaust Remembrance Day, January 27.
Opening hours are:
Mondays 14:00 – 19:00
Tuesday-Saturday 9:00 – 19:00
Special opening
Sunday January 28 9:00 – 19:00
Guided tour of the Jewish Museum Lecce and the ancient Jewish district, with Fabrizio Ghio (architect and archaeologist, member of the Scientific Committee of the Jewish Museum Lecce), Fabrizio Lelli, director of the Jewish Museum Lecce and professor of Hebrew language and literature at the Sapienza University (Rome), and Claudio Fano, direct witness of the racial laws and the Jews deportation from the Ghetto of Rome on October 16th 1943.
Free admission, reservation required.
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Book launch of “Zohar: A Photographic Journey through the Places of Italian Jewish Culture,” with the author Francesco Maria Colombo, Ferruccio de Bortoli, President of the Shoah Memorial Foundation, and Sandro Parmiggiani, editor of the book.
The book is under the patronage of the Foundation for Jewish Cultural Heritage in Italy and is enriched by contributions from Sandro Parmiggiani, Adachiara Zevi, Alberto Manguel, and Dario Disegni.
Free admission with reservation.
Photo exhibition by Rudolf Klein, author of the book Metropolitan Jewish Cemeteries — which will be presented at the opening.
The opening takes place February 21, at 7 p.m.
There will be speeches by Klein and others.
A multimedia exhibition by the artist, architect and historian Natalia Romik dedicated to the creativity of Polish Jews seeking to survive the Shoah in hiding.
In Poland and Ukraine during World War II, approximately 50,000 people survived persecution by the German occupying forces in hiding. The majority of them were Jewish. They found refuge in tree hollows, closets, basements, sewers, empty graves, and other precarious locations. Natalia Romik’s exhibition “Hideouts. The Architecture of Survival” pays tribute to these fragile places of refuge and explores their physicality. The show poses basic questions about the relationship between architecture, private life, and the public sphere: it addresses the protective function of spaces and emphasizes the creativity those in hiding brought to bear in their attempt to survive.
In a research project extending over several years, Natalia Romik and an interdisciplinary team of researchers consulted oral histories to identify several hiding places, which they explored using forensic methods. The multimedia exhibition “Hideouts. The Architecture of Survival” presents the results of this research. It consists of sculptures bearing a direct connection to the sites and includes documentary films, forensic recordings, photos, documents, and objects found in the hiding places.
“Hideouts: The Architecture of Survival” is presented in cooperation with the Zachęta National Gallery of Art in Warsaw and the TRAFO Center for Contemporary Art in Szczecin. On the occasion of the show at the Jewish Museum Frankfurt, a catalogue will be published in German and English editions by Hatje Cantz Verlag.
The exhibition was curated by Kuba Szreder and Stanisław Ruksza with the help of Aleksandra Janus (scientific collaboration). For the presentation in Frankfurt, Katja Janitschek, curator of the Judengasse Museum, was responsible for the curatorial project management. We would like to thank the Evonik Foundation for their generous support.
There will be more than 60 events including readings, concerts, lectures, tours, workshops and film screenings, held in 14 different towns and cities in the German state of Thuringia.
The full program can be found HERE from January 30, 2024.
The Jewish Community of the state of Thuringia runs the festival together with the Support Association for Jewish-Israeli Culture in Thuringia e.V.
The exhibit showcases Italian Jewish experience in the 20th century, beginning with the destruction of the ghettos at the end of the 19th century, through the Shoah, and up until almost the present day.
It includes contemporary artworks; photographs from public and private archives; historical documents, and family objects.
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