Italy’s Far Right Is on the March

This fall marks 80 years since Fascist Italy passed the racist laws that reduced Italian Jews to second-class citizens. Overnight, children like my grandparents were barred from attending public schools and many of their parents from performing their jobs. In the following years, almost 8,000 Italians of Jewish descent were killed in the Nazi death camps.

Eight decades later, the Jewish population in Italy has shrunk, but it thrives. There are several Jewish day schools, kosher restaurants, and active synagogues spread all the way from Turin to Naples. Jewish culture and history are also flourishing: Public institutions are paying for a software-assisted translation of the Babylonian Talmud and the annual European Day of Jewish Culture involves the participation of nearly 90 cities across the country. And yet, thousands of Benito Mussolini’s nostalgics still visit the fascist dictator’s burial place to pay homage, and pigs’ heads are left at synagogues before Holocaust Memorial Day.

Enter the new government. 

The Algorithms Translating Talmud

Nearly 500 years after the Babylonian Talmud was printed in full for the first time in Venice, the same text is being printed once again in Italy, this time accompanied by an unprecedented Italian translation. The true innovation is not the translation itself, but the language parsing algorithms developed by a small, state-funded start-up company that were essential to this ambitious project.

Opening door to migrants, some Italians defy government line

ROME (AP) — Italy has made headlines as a hard place for migrants recently, with racist attacks against blacks on its soil and a new government closing Italian ports to people rescued in the Mediterranean Sea.

But not all Italians are on board, and some are even reaching out to migrants.

Barbara di Clemente, a 79-year-old grandmother, opened her heart and home to Moriba Mamadou Diarra from Mali, hosting him at her two-bedroom apartment in Rome for the past four months. The 18-year-old says he fled his country because there, his “rights had been denied” and he couldn’t study and build a better future for himself.

3 kids heading on summer vacations among Italy bridge dead

ROME (AP) — Authorities in Italy, France and Albania have confirmed their citizens are among the 39 victims of Tuesday’s highway bridge collapse in Genoa. They include three children, traveling with their respective families on summer holidays. Here are some of their stories.

Uproar after Italian minister wants to end anti-racism law

ROME (AP) — An Italian minister is facing broad condemnation after calling for the abolition of an anti-racism law, with key members of the government including the prime minister distancing themselves from the statements.

Family Minister Lorenzo Fontana, of the far-right League party, on Friday called for abolishing a 1993 law condemning racist violence, hatred and discrimination, saying “globalists” were using it to “disguise their anti-Italian racism as anti-Fascism.”

The president of Italy’s Union of Jewish Communities, Noemi Di Segni criticized the minister’s words, saying the law should be enforced and defended.