With Elections Just Weeks Away, Italy’s Jews Find Little Comfort On the Left and the Right Alike

In January, just a few weeks away from the forthcoming parliamentary elections in Italy, a candidate from the Northern League party visited a local radio station for an interview. When asked about the issue of immigration, the candidate said: “We must choose if our ethnicity, the white race, our society, should continue existing or if it should be erased. It’s not a matter of xenophobia or racism,” he continued. “We can’t accept everyone.”

It’s 2018. About 80 years have passed since World War II. You’d think Italian politicians have learned a lesson from their predecessors, but apparently they have not.

A Recently Desecrated Synagogue Was Once Home to a Lower East Side Villain

At 5pm on a cold Friday evening, a couple dozen men, most wearing black suits, walk towards a red brick, four-story building near Clinton Street on East Broadway. On the facade next to the entrance, large, dark-red and white marks suggest painted-over graffiti. The men do not seem to notice. Above them is a painted sign in Yiddish. Some briefly kiss the fingers of their right hand after touching the mezuzah affixed to the doorpost. As they pass through the narrow entrance, they also enter the Shabbat, the holiest day of the week for observant Jews.

The building at 233 East Broadway now houses a couple of small shtiebels, Jewish prayer rooms, much like others in a row of several, tiny Orthodox synagogues along the same block, a remnant of what was once the largest concentration of Jews in the United States.

SoHa non esiste, qui siamo a Harlem: i newyorchesi contro la gentrificazione

Harlem non è solo il nome di un quartiere di New York. È una fetta intera della storia afroamericana negli Stati Uniti, con l’Apollo che sorge orgoglioso sulla centoventicinquesima strada, il Rinascimento di Harlem degli anni venti, la produzione orwelliana del Macbeth. Harlem è protagonista di infinite notti al ritmo di jazz e blues. È stata per decenni palco di rapper, artisti, attivisti politici. E quella storia continua ancora oggi, con gli hamburger del Harlem Shake e l’ultimo cortometraggio di Alicia Keys, incentrato sulla vita del quartiere.