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New rabbi hopes to revive Turin’s shrinking Jewish population
This article was produced as part of JTA’s Teen Journalism Fellowship, a program that works with teens across the world to report on issues that impact their lives.
TURIN (JTA) — The ancient Jewish community of Turin, in northern Italy, located in the multi-ethnic neighborhood San Salvario, isn’t hard to find. Visitors just need to point their nose upward and look for the domes of the 140-year-old synagogue.
What is hard to find is young people to fill the pews.
Most of Italy’s 30,000 Jews live in Rome and Milan. Smaller communities, like the one in Turin, struggle to survive. Since 1989, new enrollments in Turin’s Jewish community have steadily dropped. In 2001 there were fewer than 1,000, according to the institution’s archives. Today, membership stands at 748, of whom only 19% are under 30 years of age.
Those over 65 represent 55% of Turin’s Jewish residents, according to the community secretariat. There are only 21 Jewish people under 18 in Turin. Worldwide the Jewish population is growing, with a total of almost 15 million Jews.
Former community leader Giuseppe Segre is putting his hope in the next chief rabbi of Turin, Ariel Finzi. Since Finzi took office in September, he has set educating young Jews in Turin as a top goal.
Rabbi Ariel Finzi and his wife Tiziana. (Courtesy of Ariel Finzi)
Born and raised in Turin, he moved to Israel where he studied advanced programming. He earned a degree in engineering from the Technion in Haifa and eventually found his way to IBM. He completed his rabbinical studies in Turin and then moved to Naples, where he became the chief rabbi seven years ago. As the son of a former Hebrew school teacher, Finzi, 62, said he wants to teach young people about Torah.
At his inauguration, Finzi called the situation in Turin a “demographic crisis,” He said the current situation “derives in turn from a crisis of our personal and collective Jewish identity, which we will have to try to face with courage and sincerity together with our young and very young,” he said to a group of 300 attendees.
In an interview with JTA he reiterated that young people have always been a priority for him. “I have only recently arrived, but I have always had a great passion for teaching Judaism to the youngest,” he said. “We need to look for a common language.”
Finzi wants to organize private lessons with young people, to talk to them personally and understand their problems with Judaism. He plans to arrange for young people to lead prayers in the synagogue in order to stimulate their active participation.
Turin is the birthplace of one of the world’s most famous Jews: Primo Levi, Holocaust survivor and author of “If This is a Man” (titled “Survival in Auschwitz” in the United States). The city also played a key role in the struggle against Nazism in World War II through the Partisan Resistance, for which the city as a whole was awarded a gold medal for military valor in 1959.
Young Jewish Turinese are worried they are involved in a problem that is too serious for them to solve.“I have few Jewish friends with whom I can go to synagogue and celebrate Jewish holidays, and this certainly saddens and bores me,” said David Foa, 12.
Rabbi Ariel Finzi, center, in the synagogue of Turin, Italy. (https://moked.it/)
However, for Filippo Tedeschi, 27, who now lives in Florence, his time in Turin strengthened his connection to Judaism because he was one of the few Jewish teens. “I knew I had many friends with whom I shared differences,” he said. “I was in a certain respect different from them, but I always believed that belonging to a minority was a value that should be defended.”
The disappearance of young people is due to two main factors: a very low birth rate in most of Europe and the recent emigration to Israel by young people looking for more promising job prospects.
Young people in Turin rarely engage in Jewish activities, beyond attending services on special occasions like Pesach, Kippur or Purim with their relatives. Turin Jewish leaders are trying to figure out what the life of this community may be in the coming years.
“To counteract the absence of young people, it is essential to try to establish a safer channel of communication with them,” said Segre, the former president of the community. He also suggested stimulating teen’s membership in Jewish youth movements such as Hashomer Hatzair or the Union of Young Italian Jews.
The problem is that there are still very few young people, and even if they attended assiduously the situation would hardly change. But Finzi has already seen some improvements. “At Simchat Torah there were a lot of young people in the synagogue, and a Shabbaton has already been organized here in Turin,” he said.
To bring young people back together, the community is also trying to organize fun activities. Rabbi Finzi is helping to organize a soccer game in a few weeks to be played in the Valentino Park near the community.
“The absence of young people greatly penalizes our community, which is struggling to adapt with the times,” said Turin’s new rabbi. “This problem is certainly due to an important biological factor, but all of this makes the situation very complex and delicate. The community needs new blood to continue living.”
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German government pledges record $1B in funding for Holocaust survivor home care
The German government has agreed to allocate $1.08 billion in funds for home care for survivors for 2026, marking the largest budget for home care in its history of Holocaust reparations, reflecting the growing needs of an aging survivor population.
The funding, which was secured following negotiations with the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, or Claims Conference, will now enable all Holocaust survivors currently on waitlists for home care to receive it, according to Stuart E. Eizenstat, who leads negotiations on behalf of the Claims Conference.
“We really believe now that, with the largest home care budget in the history of the Claims Conference’s negotiations with Germany, which go back to 1952, that we will be able to cover all those on waiting lists,” Eizenstat said in an interview.
Last year, Germany also set a record for Holocaust reparations, spending $1.5 billion overall. But as the survivor population ages, with the median age now at 87, the need for home care has become the dominant expense.
Nearly all of the Holocaust survivors who are alive today will be dead within 15 years and half will die by 2031, according to a demographic analysis published by the Claims Conference in April.
“As we’re in the last phase now of survivors — in 10 years, half of the survivors, and there’s about 200,000 now, will be gone — so we’re dealing with people in the very last stages of their life and and it’s very rewarding to provide a measure of dignity, both through these payments, but again, through home care,” Eizenstat said.
One difficulty during the negotiations, according to Eizenstat, came from explaining to German officials that although the survivor population has dramatically decreased over the years, the needs among the remaining population are much greater and require additional funding.
“Yes, there are fewer survivors, but those who live into their 80s and into their 90s are by definition in greater need of care,” said Eizenstat. “So even though the numbers are down, the needs are up, and that was a very difficult concept to get across.”
Eizenstat said that of the remaining estimated 200,000 survivors, over 80% of the population in countries that made up the Soviet Union are living below or near the poverty line. In the United States and Israel, around a third are living in or near the poverty line.
“I’m hoping that this can prompt local federations to supplement what we’ve done and to make sure that survivors in their last years don’t live impoverished, that they have a dignity that was denied them when they’re young,” said Eizenstat.
He added that this year’s negotiations had been the “most satisfying” since he began helming the organization’s Negotiations Delegation in 2009 given the distance of current-day Germans from the atrocities and the challenge posed by Germany’s economic crisis.
“These are people who literally weren’t born during the war, or if they were, they were young children, and yet they still feel a moral responsibility,” Eizenstat said. “It belies the notion that there’s Holocaust fatigue in Germany because it’s coming at a time of crushing financial burdens from Ukraine, from the need to stimulate their economy because of slow growth. This really is a combination of what Germany deserves great credit for under difficult circumstances.”
The negotiation also secured funding for a group the Claims Conference referred to as “Righteous Rescuers,” or non-Jewish people who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust.
“It demonstrates that we care deeply about making sure they get all the benefits of the Jewish survivors that they helped save,” said Eizenstat.
The German government also extended its support for Holocaust education programs through 2029, totalling $205 million over the next four years. The Claims Conference first negotiated support for Holocaust education from Germany in 2022.
“The survivors, the eye-witnesses, won’t be here, and we need Holocaust education desperately at a time of rising antisemitism, Holocaust distortion, denial and sheer ignorance,” Eizenstat said.
Eizenstat said he hopes the expanded funding for survivor care and Holocaust education will also carry a broader message about tolerance and empathy.
“I hope that these are the two major things that will draw as lessons and they remind us, at a time of traumatic intolerance in the United States and over the world, against minorities and others, that the real lesson of the Holocaust is to be tolerant of people who are different, to work out your differences and not to stigmatize,” Eizenstat said. “We need to be tolerant. We need to be humane. We need to all work together to solve our problems and not view each other as enemies.”
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Vance downplays ‘little skirmishes’ as Israel bombs in Gaza and Hamas fails to return hostages
(JTA) — Israel carried out a bombing campaign in Gaza on Tuesday in response to what it said was violations of the two-week-old ceasefire by Hamas.
Hamas, meanwhile, rejected the claim that it was behind an attack on Israeli soldiers and said Israel’s bombing was the ceasefire violation.
The two developments, plus Hamas’ continued holding of 13 hostages’ remains, represented the biggest threats yet to the U.S. brokered ceasefire in the two-year-long Gaza war. But U.S. Vice President JD Vance said he remained unconcerned.
“The ceasefire is holding,” Vance told reporters in Washington. “That doesn’t mean that there aren’t going to be little skirmishes here and there.”
Vance traveled to Israel last week as part of a U.S. pressure campaign to preserve the truce and set the region on a path toward a deeper peace. Both Israel and Hamas have tested the terms of the ceasefire.
Hamas has not released the remains of all of hostages as required by the ceasefire and on Monday night returned remains belonging to a murdered Israeli whose body had previously been returned to Israel. Video footage from Gaza appeared to show Hamas placing the remains underground before retrieving them to hand to the Red Cross for transport to Israel — a charade that the Red Cross denounced as “unacceptable” in a statement.
Hamas said it would halt the planned release of another hostage’s remains on Tuesday after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said he ordered “immediate and powerful strikes in Gaza” following a meeting of his security advisors.
The strikes followed an attack on Israeli soldiers in Rafah, a portion of Gaza that remains under Israeli military control.
“The attack on IDF soldiers in Gaza today by the Hamas terror organization crosses a glaring red line to which the IDF will respond with great force,” Foreign Minister Israel Katz said in a statement. “Hamas will pay many times over for attacking the soldiers and for violating the agreement to return the fallen hostages.”
Hamas said it did not carry out the attack and that the airstrikes, which it said killed at least nine people in Gaza, represented a violation of the ceasefire. But it said it remained committed to the truce, which has so far allowed it to reassert control within Gaza. A second phase, required once all hostages are released, calls for Hamas’ disarmament.
Vance said he understood that an Israeli soldier had been attacked. “We expect the Israelis are going to respond, but I think the president’s peace is going to hold despite that,” he said.
The post Vance downplays ‘little skirmishes’ as Israel bombs in Gaza and Hamas fails to return hostages appeared first on The Forward.
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Vance downplays ‘little skirmishes’ as Israel bombs in Gaza and Hamas fails to return hostages
Israel carried out a bombing campaign in Gaza on Tuesday in response to what it said was violations of the two-week-old ceasefire by Hamas.
Hamas, meanwhile, rejected the claim that it was behind an attack on Israeli soldiers and said Israel’s bombing was the ceasefire violation.
The two developments, plus Hamas’ continued holding of 13 hostages’ remains, represented the biggest threats yet to the U.S. brokered ceasefire in the two-year-long Gaza war. But U.S. Vice President JD Vance said he remained unconcerned.
“The ceasefire is holding,” Vance told reporters in Washington. “That doesn’t mean that there aren’t going to be little skirmishes here and there.”
Vance traveled to Israel last week as part of a U.S. pressure campaign to preserve the truce and set the region on a path toward a deeper peace. Both Israel and Hamas have tested the terms of the ceasefire.
Hamas has not released the remains of all of hostages as required by the ceasefire and on Monday night returned remains belonging to a murdered Israeli whose body had previously been returned to Israel. Video footage from Gaza appeared to show Hamas placing the remains underground before retrieving them to hand to the Red Cross for transport to Israel — a charade that the Red Cross denounced as “unacceptable” in a statement.
Hamas said it would halt the planned release of another hostage’s remains on Tuesday after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said he ordered “immediate and powerful strikes in Gaza” following a meeting of his security advisors.
The strikes followed an attack on Israeli soldiers in Rafah, a portion of Gaza that remains under Israeli military control.
“The attack on IDF soldiers in Gaza today by the Hamas terror organization crosses a glaring red line to which the IDF will respond with great force,” Foreign Minister Israel Katz said in a statement. “Hamas will pay many times over for attacking the soldiers and for violating the agreement to return the fallen hostages.”
Hamas said it did not carry out the attack and that the airstrikes, which it said killed at least nine people in Gaza, represented a violation of the ceasefire. But it said it remained committed to the truce, which has so far allowed it to reassert control within Gaza. A second phase, required once all hostages are released, calls for Hamas’ disarmament.
Vance said he understood that an Israeli soldier had been attacked. “We expect the Israelis are going to respond, but I think the president’s peace is going to hold despite that,” he said.
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