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Sicily’s Jews have their first rabbi in 500 years. Italy’s Jewish establishment won’t accept them.
CATANIA, Italy (JTA) — Rabbi Gilberto Ventura believes his synagogue has the most beautiful view in the world. Located in the tower of a century-old castle on the slopes of Mt. Etna in the eastern Sicilian city of Catania, the synagogue is wedged between a snow-capped volcano and the sun-kissed Mediterranean sea.
The 49-year-old Brazil-born rabbi also thinks his congregation is one of the most unique in the world. It’s made up mainly of Bnei Anusim — descendants of Jews forced to hide their religious practice and convert to Catholicism after the Spanish Inquisition of 1492. Before that infamous decree, Sicily was home to tens of thousands of Jews.
The synagogue, which was first inaugurated last fall, is the result of decades of grassroots efforts by those descendants in Catania to find each other and forge a sense of community that had been lacking for centuries.
Hiring a full-time rabbi was the last piece of the puzzle, and Ventura, who has a long history of working with communities of Bnei Anusim in Brazil, was a natural candidate. He arrived in Catania in January.
“I really believe that the future Judaism in the world, especially in some places like Italy and, of course, Brazil, is connected to the Bnei Anusim, and the need to embrace the Bnei Anusim,” Ventura said.
But in an ongoing point of frustration, the formal organization representing Italian Jewry, the Union of Italian Jewish Communities (UCEI), does not recognize them as Jews.
“In the case of Catania, this strange Jewish community hasn’t passed all the steps the law requires,” said Giulio Di Segni, the vice president of UCEI.
He was referring to the fact that the community did not seek UCEI’s permission before establishing themselves under the name “Jewish community of Catania.” Per Italian law, UCEI has a monopoly on acknowledging and establishing Jewish communal life in Italy — including authority over who can use the term “Jewish community of” in formal ways.
“UCEI can’t accept this because it is too easy,” he added. “We are not against their synagogue or their way of prayer, but they cannot use the name ‘Jewish community of Catania.’”
The rooftop of the Castello Leucatia, where the community meets, has a large menorah and a view of the Mediterranean. (David I. Klein)
Catania’s Jewish community members told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency a variety of stories about their Jewish backgrounds. Some came from families that always outwardly identified as Jewish. Others identified the source of family traditions practiced by parents and grandparents who — as descendants of Jews who faced persecution for practicing Judaism — still felt the need to hide aspects of their Jewishness from the public eye.
In the midst of questions about their ancestry, the majority of the Jewish community members have undergone Orthodox conversions. But that hasn’t led to their acceptance.
Benito Triolo, president of the Catania Jewish community, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that he first came to Judaism at the age of 40, thanks to the insight of a Jewish friend in Palermo, Sicily’s capital and most populous city. Working together, they established a Charter of Sicilian Jewry, which aimed to identify and highlight the Jewish heritage of neighborhoods across the island.
While working on that project, Triolo came closer to his own Jewish heritage, and after years of study, he completed an Orthodox conversion through a rabbi in Miami 25 years ago.
Another community member, who was born Alessandro Scuderi but today goes by the name of Yoram Nathan, first felt drawn to Judaism as a child watching news of the Six-Day War in 1967. At first, he was laughed at by other members of his family — except his grandmother, who happened to have a tradition of lighting eight candles in early winter and baking flat unleavened bread around Easter time.
Decades of study later, Scuderi also completed a formal conversion to Judaism before an Orthodox rabbinic court, or beit din.
Others had more straightforward backgrounds.
“I was born in a Jewish family,” said David Scibilia, the community’s secretary. “Frankly speaking, we were not hiding or deep in the shadows in this part of the country.”
Scibilia said that his father explained to him that he was a Jew as early as the age of four. Within their own home, they observed holidays and kept Shabbat — no easy task since Italian schools at the time of his childhood in the 1970s had class on Saturdays. He did not eat meat until he was an adult and was able to acquire kosher meat.
He said that his family had maintained their Jewish identity since the days of the Inquisition and married amongst a small group of other similar families.
“I was a Jew, but not part of any community,” Scibilia said. “Just my family was my community.”
An aerial view of the city of Catania shows the Mt. Etna volcano in the background, Jan. 28, 28, 2022. (Fabrizio Villa/Getty Images)
Scibilia explained that once he had a child of his own, he realized he did not want her to have the same lonely Jewish experience. But when he reached out to UCEI, he said he found the proverbial door to organized Jewish life shut. Earning membership in Jewish community organizations across Western Europe involves a strict vetting process, and many groups require applicants to prove their mothers’ Jewishness according to varying standards.
Scibilia’s experience was echoed by Jews outside of the community in Catania and across Italy’s south who talked to JTA — a feeling of neglect or rejection by UCEI for those who fall outside of the norms of Italian Judaism.
UCEI currently recognizes 19 Jewish communities across northern Italy and just one in the south, in Naples, which has jurisdiction over the rest of the southern half of the peninsula and the island of Sicily. The organization recognizes around 28,000 Jews in total across the country.
Scibilia noted that despite his Jewish upbringing, he has multiple certificates of conversion from Orthodox rabbis. The first came from a beit din of American rabbis from who traveled to Syracuse, Sicily, to assess Scibilia and others like him in Sicily. His second comes from the conversion court of the Israeli Chief Rabbinate, which is known for its exacting Orthodox standards.
Both were rejected by Italy’s own Orthodox rabbinate, and he was forced to stand before another rabbinic court in Italy.
“I have at this moment — don’t start to laugh — three documents that prove that I am a Jew, two Ketubah [marriage contracts] for my wedding, and so on, again and again and again,” Scibilia said.
Others’ experiences in the region have been even more fraught, he said.
“The problem in Italy, that if you try to study with any rabbi here, you can study for 20 years, maybe you can die even before you reach the end of the tunnel,” he said. “From my point of view, they are playing with the spirituality of these people.”
In a statement last year, UCEI called the the Catanians “a phantom ‘Jewish community’” and accused them of “misleading the local institutions and deluding believers and sympathizers into adhering to traditional religious rites, never actually recognized or authorized by the Italian rabbinical authority.”
“Between UCEI and the Italian republic is an agreement signed in ‘87,” Di Segni said. “This law means everything about Jewish communities in Italy is through the Union Jewish community in Italy (UCEI).”
Noemi Di Segni, shown in Rome in 2017, is president of the Union of Jewish Communities in Italy. (Stefano Montesi/Corbis via Getty Images)
Triolo said he isn’t too concerned about UCEI’s recognition.
“Ours is a process of refounding old communities that existed as early as 200 and up to 1492,” Triolo said. “Our recognition is already in our history. At that time the UCEI did not exist. We were there and we simply returned!”
No one knows when Jews first arrived in Sicily, but the Talmud tells a story that claims Rabbi Akiva, a well-known early rabbinic sage, visited the island in the early second century and told of a small Jewish community in Syracuse. Some historians believe the Roman writer Caecilius Calactinus — who was born in a town near Messina in the first century B.C.E — to have been of Jewish origin.
All agree that over the course of history, Sicily’s Jews watched as the island was traded between Greeks, Carthaginians, Romans, Arabs, Normans and half a dozen other empires. The narrative has also long been that Jewish life there ended five centuries ago, under Spanish rule.
The Spanish empire’s Jews suffered the same fate as Jews from the Iberian peninsula, who would become known to the world as Sephardim when they were expelled in 1492.
The descendents of Spain — and Sicily — spread throughout the world, establishing communities in North Africa, throughout the Ottoman empire, in the Netherlands and ultimately the British Isles and North America, as it was believed that Judaism faded away in their homelands.
Catania’s Jews disagree, arguing that many Jews practiced their religion over the centuries, in secret.
Triolo and others in the community formally inaugurated their synagogue in October. It was furnished with Torah scrolls donated by the Ohev Sholom synagogue in Washington, D.C.
The synagogue is situated in the tower of the Castello Luecatia, an early 20th-century structure built by a merchant believed to be of Jewish origin. The building was granted to the community by the city’s municipality.
“So they had the people, they had a synagogue, but they needed somebody to teach,” Ventura said.
The community meets in the Castello Luecatia, an early 20th-century structure built by a merchant believed to be of Jewish origin. (David I. Klein)
Ventura, who is Orthodox, may be the island’s first permanent working rabbi in over 500 years, but it’s not his first time working with Bnei Anusim.
Back in his native Brazil, Ventura was the leader of the Synagogue Without Borders, an organization through which he served 15 communities in Brazil’s north that were made up of descendants of Jews who came with the first Portuguese colonists to South America and who ultimately had to hide their identity as the Inquisition spread to the New World.
His work there put him in conflict with Brazil’s Jewish establishment, too. But Ventura is unfazed.
In Brazil, he founded synagogues and summer camps and built mikvahs and yeshivas across the country’s north. Since 2015, he has facilitated the conversion of hundreds of Bnei Anusim, bringing them back into the fold of mainstream Orthodox Judaism.
“I am a teacher since I was 21 years old,” he said. “Now I am 49, along with my wife. It’s one of the things we love to do, and know how to do. To teach Jewish philosophy, to teach Torah, to teach Tanakh, to teach the story of the Jews in Brazil, and now we are starting to teach the story of the Jews in Italy, the story of the Inquisition etcetera.”
In Castello Leucatia, he leads Shabbat services with the energy of a gospel preacher, pausing between prayers to explain a verse, teach a new tune, welcome latecomers, or simply to allow the congregation to talk.
Catania community members are shown at a recent gathering. (David I. Klein)
“This is what’s most important,” he remarked during one such lull on a recent Friday night. “That they get to talk and be a community.”
Ventura had organized a Shabbat event for other Jews across Italy — from Naples to Turin — who shared his belief that the future of Judaism was in communities like the one in Catania.
“Our point of view of Judaism is that we have to be a part of society, we don’t have to insulate ourselves, we believe that Judaism has a lot to contribute to society,” Ventura said. “In Brazil, we have a lot of connections with people from the periphery, in the favela and other communities, immigrants, Indians, etcetera. So that is something we want to establish here, to teach the people a Judaism that brings good things to the wider society.”
Ventura isn’t the only one working with such communities in southern Italy. Across the Strait of Messina, Jewish life has also been on the rise in Calabria — the toe of Italy’s boot — thanks to an American-born rabbi named Barbara Aiello.
Aiello, though raised in Pittsburgh, is of Calabrian descent. She returned to the land of her ancestors in the early 2000s and began working with the Bnei Anusim there, ultimately establishing a synagogue called Ner Tamid del Sud, meaning “eternal light of the south.”
“Until now, nobody took care of Judaism in the south of Italy,” Scibilia said while looking out at the Mediterranean from the terrace of Castello Leucatia.
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Iran Prepares Counterproposal as Trump Weighs Strikes
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks with members of the media on board Air Force One en route to Palm Beach, Florida, U.S., January 31, 2026. REUTERS/Nathan Howard
Iran’s foreign minister said on Friday he expected to have a draft counterproposal ready within days following nuclear talks with the United States this week, while US President Donald Trump said he was considering limited military strikes.
Two US officials told Reuters that US military planning on Iran had reached an advanced stage, with options including targeting individuals as part of an attack and even pursuing leadership change in Tehran, if ordered by Trump.
Trump on Thursday gave Tehran a deadline of 10 to 15 days to make a deal to resolve their longstanding nuclear dispute or face “really bad things” amid a US military buildup in the Middle East that has fueled fears of a wider war.
THREATS OF ATTACK FOLLOW CRACKDOWN ON MASS PROTESTS
Asked on Friday if he was considering a limited strike to pressure Iran into a deal, Trump told reporters at the White House: “I guess I can say I am considering” it. Asked later about Iran at a White House press conference, Trump added: “They better negotiate a fair deal.”
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said after indirect discussions in Geneva this week with Trump’s Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner that the sides had reached an understanding on main “guiding principles,” but that did not mean a deal was imminent.
Araqchi, in an interview on MS NOW, said he had a draft counterproposal that could be ready in the next two or three days for top Iranian officials to review, with more U.S.-Iran talks possible in a week or so.
Military action would complicate efforts to reach a deal, he added.
After the US and Israel bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities and some military sites in June, Trump again began threatening strikes in January as Tehran crushed widespread protests with deadly force.
Referring to the crackdown on Friday, Trump said there was a difference between the people of Iran and the country’s leadership. He asserted that “32,000 people were killed over a relatively short period of time,” figures that could not immediately be verified.
“It’s a very, very, very sad situation,” Trump said, adding that his threats to strike Iran had led the leadership to abandon plans for mass hangings two weeks ago.
“They were going to hang 837 people. And I gave them the word, if you hang one person, even one person, that you’re going to be hit right then and there,” he said.
The US-based group HRANA, which monitors the human rights situation in Iran, has recorded 7,114 verified deaths and says it has another 11,700 under review.
Hours after Trump’s statements on the death toll, Araqchi said that the Iranian government has already published a “comprehensive list” of all 3,117 killed in the unrest.
“If anyone doubts the accuracy of our data, please speak with evidence,” he posted on X.
ARAQCHI SAYS DEAL POSSIBLE IN ‘VERY SHORT PERIOD’
Araqchi gave no specific timing as to when Iranians would get their counterproposal to Witkoff and Kushner, but said he believed a diplomatic deal was within reach and could be achieved “in a very short period of time.”
United Nations spokesperson Stephane Dujarric reiterated concerns about heightened rhetoric and increased military activities in the region.
“We encourage both the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran to continue to engage in diplomacy in order to settle the differences,” Dujarric told a regular news briefing at the U.N.
During the Geneva talks, the United States did not seek zero uranium enrichment and Iran did not offer to suspend enrichment, Araqchi told MS NOW, a US cable television news network.
“What we are now talking about is how to make sure that Iran’s nuclear program, including enrichment, is peaceful and would remain peaceful forever,” he said.
He added that technical and political “confidence-building measures” would be enacted to ensure the program would remain peaceful in exchange for action on sanctions, but he gave no further details.
“The president has been clear that Iran cannot have nuclear weapons or the capacity to build them, and that they cannot enrich uranium,” the White House said when asked about Araqchi’s comments.
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Israeli Strikes in Lebanon Kill at Least 10, Including Senior Hezbollah Official
People inspect the damage at the site of an Israeli strike on Friday, in Bednayel, Bekaa valley, Lebanon, February 21, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir
At least 10 people were killed and 50 wounded in Israeli strikes in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, two security sources told Reuters, after the Israeli military said it had targeted Hezbollah sites in the Baalbek area.
The strikes on Friday were among the deadliest reported in eastern Lebanon in recent weeks and risk testing a fragile US-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Shi’ite Islamist group Hezbollah, which has been strained by recurring accusations of violations.
The Israeli military said in a statement that it struck Hezbollah command centers in the Baalbek area, part of eastern Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley.
In a separate statement on Saturday, it said it had “eliminated several terrorists of Hezbollah’s missile array in three different command centers … recently identified as operating to accelerate the organization’s readiness and force build-up processes, while planning fire attacks towards Israel.”
Hezbollah said on Saturday that eight of its fighters, including a commander, Hussein Mohammad Yaghi, were killed in Friday’s strikes in the Bekaa area.
CEASEFIRE BROKERED IN 2024
Israel and Hezbollah agreed to a US-brokered ceasefire in 2024 intended to end more than a year of cross-border exchanges of fire that culminated in Israeli strikes that weakened the Iran-aligned group. Since then, the sides have traded accusations of ceasefire violations.
US and Israeli officials have pressed Lebanese authorities to curb Hezbollah’s arsenal, while Lebanese leaders have warned that broader Israeli strikes could further destabilize the country already battered by political and economic crises.
Separately, the Israeli military said it also struck what it described as a Hamas command center from which militants operated in the Ain al-Hilweh area in southern Lebanon. Ain al-Hilweh is a crowded Palestinian refugee camp near Sidon.
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun condemned the overnight Israeli strikes on the Sidon area and towns in Bekaa as a “new violation” of Lebanon’s sovereignty and a breach of U.N. obligations, urging countries backing regional stability, including the United States, to press for an immediate halt to avert further escalation, the presidency said.
Hamas condemned in a statement the Israeli strike on Ain al-Hilweh and rejected Israeli assertions about the target, saying the site belonged to the camp’s Joint Security Force tasked with maintaining security.
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The ‘Hymietown’ affair degraded Black-Jewish relations. Jesse Jackson wasn’t the real culprit
Conventional wisdom suggests Rev. Jesse Jackson’s infamous, unfortunate, off-the-record, 1984 “Hymietown” comment radically reshaped and further degraded Black-Jewish relations. It’s true. But not for the reasons that one might imagine.
Jackson, then a presidential candidate, initially denied the report, first published in The Washington Post, that he had used the aforementioned slur in a Washington, D.C. airport bar. Two weeks later he reversed course. In an address at synagogue Adath Yeshurun in New Hampshire, he asked to be forgiven.
How much damage to Black-Jewish relations did Jackson’s remark actually do? Some, for sure. But given how wobbly the two communities’ once-vaunted “grand alliance” had become by 1984, the degree of the slur’s impact has, I think, been overstated. Both groups had already built a vast reservoir of mutual mistrust. Among the causes: Jackson’s meetings with Yasser Arafat of the PLO rendered him suspect to Jews, and Jewish opposition to affirmative action struck Blacks as a betrayal. Ditto for the Andrew Young affair of 1979, a takedown of one of the community’s most distinguished public servants.
What actually changed Black-Jewish relations for the worse was not the “Hymietown” indiscretion, but Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan’s entry into the fray.
On Feb. 25, 1984, 12 days after the slur was first reported and one day before his synagogue apology, Jackson attended a meeting of the Nation of Islam in Chicago. There, Farrakhan told Jews: “If you harm this brother, I warn you in the name of Allah, this will be the last one you harm.”
Farrakhan was just getting started. On March 11, he referred to Hitler “as a very great man.” In June, he described Judaism as a “gutter religion.” By summertime, Jewish organizations were demanding that Jackson, still at that point running for president, fully denounce Farrakhan. Jackson initially resisted that call, instead downgrading the controversial cleric’s status from campaign “surrogate” to “supporter.” Eventually, with his campaign on fire, a besieged Jackson made a complete disavowal.
The long-term repercussions of this episode for the fragile Black-Jewish alliance were immense. The scandal launched Farrakhan — who until that point could have been described, per The New Republic, as “the boss of a fringe Muslim sect” — into national and even international visibility, so much so that Libyan ruler Muamar Gaddafi soon donated to his cause. Perched atop this new platform, Farrakhan set about injecting his group’s unremittingly antisemitic worldview into the cultural mainstream.
Conspiracy theories with lingering influence
The consequences of this ascent are still unfolding today.
For instance, the falsehood that Jews were major players in the African slave trade had little traction before the events of 1984. After them, it became a hot subject in popular and even academic circles. The far-right commentator Candace Owen’s antisemitic espousal of it to her audience of millions is only the most recent manifestation of that trend.
Under Farrakhan, the Nation of Islam argued that “so-called Jews” were imposters who had usurped and appropriated an African religious identity. That trope has recently reappeared in statements by public figures like Nick Cannon, Kyrie Irving, Deshawn Jackson, and Ice Cube — some of whom have since apologized.
It’s not just the Jewish community that has suffered in response. Farrakhan’s emergence also triggered what journalist Marjorie Valburn has called a “litmus test” for Black politicians: A requirement that Black political candidates must publicly denounce Farrakhan, often at the summons of a Jewish leader. The test has been administered countless times, including to former President Barack Obama during his 2008 campaign; numerous Democratic lawmakers in 2018; and Congressman Jamaal Bowman in 2024.
As Cynthia Ozick once observed, a Jew is a person who makes distinctions. Major Jewish organizations who subjected Blacks to the litmus test seemed incapable of doing precisely that. Jackson was clearly not Farrakhan. Truth be told, most Black people who shared Farrakhan’s concerns about economic empowerment were not and are not Farrakhan; they have little interest in his antisemitic obsessions.
In any case, I know of no case where applications of this test helped to improve Black-Jewish relations. Quite the contrary: It bred further resentment and distrust.
A mistaken mythology
As I learned while co-authoring a book about Black-Jewish relations with Terrence L. Johnson, the Black-Jewish alliance was never quite as “feel-good” as its champions have alleged. Even when the groups collaborated toward impressive Civil Rights accomplishments,their encounter was rife with every imaginable tension.
Johnson and I date the alliance from the NAACP’s founding in 1909 to the Six-Day War in 1967. One of our key observations was that inter-group tensions between Blacks and Jews were exacerbated and even driven by intra-group tensions. In other words, pitched battles between Jewish liberals and conservatives, and between Church-based liberals and Black radicals did much to shape — and endanger — the alliance, even when it was racking up victories for civil rights.
The same held true after 1984. Because of the intra-group complexities with which Jackson was dealing — trying to temper the effusions of radicals like Farrakhan while absorbing them into his coalition — his relations with Jews got worse. And tension within the Jewish community about how to respond equally spurred reasonable mistrust on the other side. Many forgave, but others, like then- executive director of the ADL, Nathan Perlmutter, did not: Perlmutter once said that Jackson “could light candles every Friday night and grow side curls, and it still wouldn’t matter. He’s a whore.”
The irony and tragedy is that Jackson was, in fact, one of the leaders in either community who put in the most effort to repair the shattered alliance. He understood its importance, and the risks of its dissolution. He sought to solve collective problems by forging common ground among disparate actors in a mutli-racial, multi-ethnic Rainbow Coalition.
His plan did not come to fruition. But as we mourn his passing, we should ponder his legacy, and revisit his compelling vision.
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