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Italy is having a Yiddish moment. An unprecedented I.J. Singer translation is part of the boom.

Italy is having a Yiddish moment. An unprecedented I.J. Singer translation is part of the boom.

In September 1932, Israel Joshua Singer boarded a ship bound for New York, where he had been invited to report on the United States for Yiddish-speaking Jews like himself.

“Americans are a difficult people to understand,” the famed novelist wrote in one of his first articles from the U.S. “They have tried at all costs to be, in every aspect, the opposite of Europeans.”

In a series of articles commissioned by Abraham Cahan, the famed editor of the Yiddish Forverts, Singer sought to help his readers understand this mirror world. On the eve of the Nazis’ rise in Europe, he marveled at the landscapes, the Jewish strivers and dreamers and the Christians who lent a sympathetic ear to the challenges facing Jews back home. 

Nearly a century later, Singer’s astonished first encounters with America have appeared together in translation for the first time — not in English, but in Italian. “Viaggi in America” (Travels in America), published by the historic Italian Jewish publishing house Giuntina and translated from Yiddish by Enrico Benella, brings together I.J. Singer’s witty American dispatches for the Forverts.

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Rome’s Pride parade bars Jewish LGBTQ float over refusal to call Gaza war ‘genocide’

Rome’s Pride parade bars Jewish LGBTQ float over refusal to call Gaza war ‘genocide’

Organizers of Rome’s annual Pride parade have barred Italy’s only Jewish LGBTQIA+ organization from marching with a float at this year’s June 20 parade, although they are still allowed to participate in the march itself.

In a statement that came out Monday, Roma Pride said Keshet Italia had failed to endorse its political manifesto, which characterized Israel’s military campaign in Gaza as a genocide. It also accused the organization of making an “unacceptable lexical distinction,” by refusing to use the word “genocide” to describe Israel’s military campaign in Gaza in the aftermath of the Hamas Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel.

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Italian Jews worry and wait as Giorgia Meloni, far-right leader, prepares to take power

Italian Jews worry and wait as Giorgia Meloni, far-right leader, prepares to take power

(JTA) — The success of Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party in Italy’s national election last week means the country is poised to have its most right-wing government since World War II, when Italy was Hitler’s staunchest ally in Europe.

The prospect has unnerved many Italian Jews, even as several of their leaders appear to be taking a wait-and-see approach to Meloni’s leadership, refraining from making public statements about the results.

“Faced with the prospect of a prime minister that is affiliated with a party that ideologically is the heir of the Italian Social Movement, a good part of Italian Jews are concerned,” David Fiorentini, president of Italy’s Jewish Youth group, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Click here to read the full article.

Leading mayoral candidate in Rome apologizes for Holocaust comments decried as antisemitic

Leading mayoral candidate in Rome apologizes for Holocaust comments decried as antisemitic

(JTA) — A leading candidate for mayor in Rome has apologized to the Jewish community over an article he wrote last year in which he suggested that victims of mass murders other than the Holocaust gain less attention because they “didn’t own banks.”

Jewish community leaders and others had decried the comments by Enrico Michetti, a radio host who is the center-right coalition’s candidate in the Oct. 17 and 18 mayoral election. He received more than 30% of votes in the election’s first round earlier this month, more than any other candidate.

“Each year, 40 Holocaust-related movies are shot, trips and cultural initiatives of all sorts are financed to commemorate that horrible persecution, and up to here, I have nothing to say,” Michetti wrote on the website of the radio station where he is a host. “But I wonder, why the same pity and the same consideration are not given to the dead killed in the foibe massacres [of Italians by Yugoslav Partisans], in the refugee camps, and in the mass murders that still take place in the world?”

Among the answers he offered: “Perhaps because they did not own banks, perhaps because they did not belong to lobbies capable of deciding the destinies of the planet.” Continue reading here.

LGBTQ students sue Yeshiva University for discrimination

LGBTQ students sue Yeshiva University for discrimination

NEW YORK (JTA) — A group of students and alumni is suing Yeshiva University for discrimination, claiming that the university violated New York City’s human rights law when it refused to recognize an LGBTQ student club.

The lawsuit was filed Tuesday in New York County Supreme Court.

Over the last few years, the students repeatedly lobbied the university’s administration to formally recognize a Gay-Straight Alliance club. The university, a prominent Modern Orthodox institution, has grappled with how to reconcile a traditional interpretation of Jewish law, which does not allow homosexual relations, with its engagement with the secular world. Continue reading here.