Jewish Rome …the rollercoaster story of the Jewish community

With his lecture accompanied by a host of colour slides, you will:

• Learn why visiting Maccabees sought Rome’s help against their Greek oppressors back home in the Holy Land …and then fell in love with the Eternal City
• See Rome’s magnificent Great Synagogue which was surprisingly spared destruction during the Nazi occupation and how so many Jews managed to avoid transportation to the death camps ·
• Hear about the horrifying conditions in Rome’s Jewish Ghetto where for over 300 years the community struggled to survive.
• And despite one Pope’s edict of having only one synagogue in the Ghetto, discover how the Jewish community craftily managed to set up five.
• Step inside one of today’s top class restaurants which a thousand years ago was a synagogue and where you can still see in its basement wine cellar the tell-tale signs of a mikvah
• Be introduced to remarkable characters from the past including the non-Jewish nurse remembered today for her heroism in saving Jews from the clutches of the Nazis
• Rome’s favourite artistic son Bernini and his secret tribute to the suffering Ghetto Jews; the wartime rabbi who conducted services in his tiny shul while SS stormtroopers patrolled outside; and the Medici Popes who sought advice from leading Jews
• Meet today’s vibrant Jewish community and the irony of how the remaining one-time hovels of the Jewish Ghetto are now some of the most expensive homes in Rome; and savour on screen some tasty specialities of age-old Roman Jewish cuisine that are loved today by all Romans including a Pope or two