Memories of Jewish Life: From Italy to Jerusalem, 1918-1960
Memories of Jewish Life: From Italy to Jerusalem, 1918-1960 By Augusto Segre. Translated and with an Introduction by Steve Siporin. (Norman: University of Nebraska Press, 2008. Pp. xxix + 507, illustrations, maps, forward, notes, glossary, references, index. $40.00 cloth.)In June of 1999 I accepted my first position as rabbi for a small synagogue on the west coast of Florida. I understood that women were still pioneers where the rabbinate was concerned; what I had not planned on was the confusion regarding my Italian heritage. This is how it happened. A call came to the synagogue. A congregant was eager to speak with me about a comment made to her by her neighbor. The conversation went something like this:Rabbi, what is your 'real' last name?Aiello, I responded.No, the caller continued, What is the name you were born with?I responded,  Aiello is my father's name, the name I grew up with.But that's said the caller.Yes. I confirmed.The caller continued, My neighbor was right. You're Italian, so you can't be Jewish!How well I can relate to the magnificent memoir Memories of Jewish Life, by the late Augusto Segre (translated by Steve Siporin from the Italian Memorie di vita ebraica). In this weighty volume that begins with Segre's youthful experiences during the post ghetto/pre-war years of World War II in Casale Monferrato, an idyllic paese in Italy's north, through the destruction of Italian Jewish life during the Fascist period, one theme remains constant throughout. That theme is the rich cultural and religious experience that is often unknown to Ashkenazic Jews of Eastern European origin, but that is unique to Italian Jews.Living and working as an Italian Jew in the world's most recognizable Catholic country, my experiences today mirror many of those described by Segre himself. In a delightful chapter on the daily ups and downs of Segre's father's life as a rabbi in Casale Monferrato (chpt. 3, It's Not Always Easy to Become a Rabbi), Segre offers a bird's eye view of how tradition and title can become almost insurmountable obstacles to community service and where a liberal approach to Jewish practice was considered assimilation-a situation that exists even today in modern Jewish Italy.Decimated as our numbers were during the years of the Holocaust in Europe, much more has been written about the suffering of the Jews in Poland, Germany, and Russia. Now, thanks to Segre's documentation, we learn the extent of the Shoah as it affected Italian Jews. Segre describes the beginnings of Italian fascism where, in the early years of the regime, Mussolini and his government were not openly anti-Semitic. In fact, many Italian Jews, including my own Uncle Felice, were early supporters of what appeared to be a government dedicated to sound economic principles.Segre describes the shock felt by Italian Jews when the racial laws, similar to the discriminatory practices enacted in Nazi Germany, where forced on them. …