I am writing this while sitting in a small café in Rome’s old Jewish Ghetto. My wife Betty and I have been in Rome for a few days, staying in a small apartment a few blocks from the Campo di Fiori. It’s an excellent location for walking to many of the sites and sights we have on our “to see” list and a good place to catch a bus to almost anywhere else in the city.
Our first stop was the Grand Synagogue of Rome (Temple Maggiore) and the Jewish Museum. There are actually twelve synagogues in Rome, but there is only one in what is called “the Jewish Ghetto.” An interesting footnote about the Jewish community in Rome: You don’t join a particular synagogue; rather, all Jews in Rome donate money to a community fund that supports community institutions. This fund in turn contributes money to each synagogue.
Temple Maggiore’s basement houses The Jewish Museum of Rome, which holds a vast collection of extraordinary artifacts from the long rich tradition of Roman Jewish life. In the second century BCE, Jews came as traders from the Middle East. After the Roman Empire’s conquest of Jerusalem in 70 CE, they arrived as slaves. Post-1492, they fled Spain and Sicily to escape the Inquisition. This immigration was later augmented by Jews from central and eastern Europe, and even from north Africa.
They gathered in what is now called the Jewish Ghetto, a small four- or five-square-block area along the Tiber River. No buildings of the original ghetto survive, but the geographical boundary remains the same. As I glance out the café window, I can see a thriving community of restaurants, many serving Israeli dishes and traditional Roman Jewish food. My wife and I were anxious to taste the carciofi alla Romana, a small fried artichoke. (Delicious!)
Nearby are cafés and lots of shops that sell all types of Jewish memorabilia, and a busy Jewish day school. Walking back towards our apartment, we once again entered the Campo di Fiori and found a brass plaque in the middle of the piazza that commemorates the Inquisition’s confiscation of every copy of the Talmud in Italy. The search took about nine days. On Rosh Hashanah, in 1553, these and many other Jewish books were burned in the Campo di Fiori.
We will be in Rome for more than three weeks. We have a long list of places we’ve wanted to see for years and have never had the time to investigate. Our apartment has Wi-Fi, a roomy kitchen, and a small balcony. In September and October the weather is not as hot as in the summer months. This is a great way to spend a vacation if you are willing to walk a bit and perhaps get on the wrong bus from time to time. For us, spending time in the Jewish Ghetto, attending Friday and Saturday services in the Grand Synagogue of Rome, getting to experience some of the rich history of Jews of Rome, is only part of the joy.