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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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To Prevent Antisemitism in Schools Like Berkeley, Enforce the Rules Already on the Books
Illustrative: Demonstrators holding a “Stand Up for Internationals” rally on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, in Berkeley, California, US, April 17, 2025. Photo: Carlos Barria via Reuters Connect.
At California’s Berkeley High School (BHS), teachers are interrupting their normally-scheduled classroom lessons to talk about the Iran war.
Given the Berkeley school district’s dismal record on antisemitism, will BHS once again become a venue for Israel-bashing, or even conspiracy theories that Israel manipulated the United States into attacking Iran? If signs of such activity emerge, what can be done to stop it?
Part of the solution — at least at the K-12 level — is simple: state and local governments must ensure that school districts enforce pre-existing constitutional constraints, state educational codes, and school district rules that prohibit indoctrination in the classroom.
Of course, that is not always so easy. One teachers’ group held a teach-in to address the purported causes of the October 7 attack, during which they shared curricular materials such as a guide to “settler colonialism” that defines Hamas as “a resistance movement” and tells students the United States only calls Hamas a terrorist organization because of its “measures against the occupation.”
Materials like these then make their way into BHS classrooms. One history teacher, who reportedly used antisemitic stereotypes in class, showed an anti-Israel video and required her students to respond to the prompt: “To what extent should Israel be considered an Apartheid State?”
When Jewish students complained, the Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD) simply transferred them out of her class. Also at BHS, according to the Brandeis Center complaint, an art teacher reportedly showed the class “violent, pro-Hamas videos.” The teacher also allegedly promoted student walkouts and demonstrations, and projected antisemitic images such as a fist punching through a Star of David. Jewish students were again transferred to a new class, only to find their new teacher wore Free Palestine stickers on her clothing.
What’s especially disturbing about these incidents is that the BUSD already has a policy in place to prevent this kind of ideological offensive material in the classroom. According to BUSD’s “Policy 6144: Controversial Issues,” when a teacher chooses to address such a subject, they should “ensure that all sides of a controversial issue are impartially presented,” and, “The teacher may not use his/her position to forward his/her own historical, religious, political, economic or social bias.”
According to a Supreme Court decision in Garcetti v. Ceballos (2006), such rules are consistent with freedom of speech because, when public employees are carrying out their official duties, their speech does not have the same First Amendment protection as private citizens. State governments have implemented regulations based on this principle.
Texas Educational Code § 28.0022 states that when teachers discuss a controversial topic of public policy, they should “explore that topic objectively and in a manner free from political bias.” Moreover, the code stipulates that teachers cannot assign tasks to students that involve political advocacy.
Similarly, the Florida State Board of Education issued Florida Administrative Code, Rule 6A-10.081, which stipulates that teachers shall not “unreasonably deny a student access to diverse points of view” or “intentionally distort or misrepresent facts concerning an educational matter.”
Yet without enforcement, such policies have little value.
BUSD parents have lodged more than 100 complaints of violations targeting Jewish students. Now, both the US Department of Education and the House of Representatives’ Education and Workforce Committee are investigating antisemitism in the BUSD. Parents have also brought a civil rights lawsuit against the district.
Clearly, school districts across the country should be enforcing policies against propaganda and bigotry in the classroom. But changing the ways of a resistant school district like BUSD is easier said than done. It will entail investigating and then educating the community about existing laws, rules, and codes pertaining to teachers’ speech and conduct. And it will involve persuading parents and students to work with civil rights groups and the local, state, and Federal governments to hold public teachers and administrators accountable.
Our country relies on its schools to endow students with the skills necessary for critical thinking and independent thought. If teachers themselves cannot rise above their prejudices and partisan sentiments, then American schools are not likely to turn out students resistant to conspiracy theories and propaganda.
Naomi Friedman is an Education Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
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Who Owns the Story? Israel Needs Images and Messages That Match the Palestinian Narrative
Protestors in Melbourne unfurl a watermelon banner in solidarity with Palestinian ‘resistance.’ (Photo: Screenshot)
In today’s hyperconnected world, legitimacy is no longer determined solely by history books or diplomatic recognition. It is shaped, distilled, and often distorted in the fast-moving currents of digital culture. Narratives are no longer argued — but they are absorbed, shared, and symbolized. And increasingly, they are decided not by depth, but by clarity and repetition.
For many who support Israel, this presents a growing challenge. The issue is not a lack of historical grounding or factual legitimacy. It is that these truths are not being communicated with the same force, simplicity, and creativity as competing narratives. In a landscape driven by visuals and emotion, complexity alone does not win attention.
At the heart of the matter lies an enduring reality: the Jewish connection to the land of Israel is ancient, continuous, and foundational. It predates modern political frameworks and is rooted in centuries of cultural, religious, and historical presence. This is not a claim constructed in recent decades; it is a defining element of Jewish identity itself.
Yet historical continuity does not automatically translate into contemporary resonance. In the digital arena, meaning is often assigned through symbols that travel faster than context. One of the more curious examples of this phenomenon is the rise of the watermelon as a political emblem.
Today, the image is widely recognized as associated with pro-Palestinian expression. But its origins are neither exclusive nor inherently political. The fruit itself traces back thousands of years to regions of Africa, long before it became entangled in modern symbolism. Its eventual adoption as a visual shorthand was shaped by circumstance, not destiny.
Rather than dismissing or avoiding widely circulated symbols, there is an opportunity to engage with them differently — and to embed them with alternative narratives. The goal is not to negate others, but to assert presence within the same visual language.
Currently, one of the obstacles facing pro-Israel advocacy is not a lack of material, but a lack of cohesion. Messaging often emerges reactively, responding to trends rather than shaping them. Meanwhile, opposing narratives benefit from clarity, emotional appeal, and visual uniformity.
That imbalance can be addressed by approaching communication not only as a matter of accuracy, but of strategy.
Facts remain essential — but in a digital environment, they must be paired with compelling storytelling and recognizable imagery. A well-crafted symbol can reach audiences that a detailed explanation never will.
Reframing something as simple as a watermelon is not about the object itself. It is about demonstrating that meaning is not fixed, and that narratives are not surrendered unless they are abandoned. Because ultimately, the question is not just who holds the stronger argument. It is who communicates it in a way that resonates.
To shape understanding, one must also shape the story.
Sabine Sterk is the CEO of Time To Stand Up For Israel.
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I’m a UMich Student: All Countries Are Welcome — Except Israel
Law enforcement clash with pro-Hamas demonstrators at the University of Michigan on Aug. 28, 2024. Photo: Brendan Gutenschwager/X
Tea time is my favorite part of each week. As the tea chair for the historic Martha Cook Building, an all-women’s dorm at the University of Michigan in operation since 1915, I have the joy of planning and hosting our weekly Friday teas.
Out of all our building traditions, International Tea is one of the most popular. Martha Cook residents (affectionately nicknamed “Cookies”) sign up to represent a country, and host a table offering information and a cultural snack. Friends are invited, foods from across the world are tasted, and on-campus cultural groups perform.
As I did last year, I signed up to represent Israel. I’m a Jewish student who is heavily involved in the pro-Israel community on campus, so naturally, Israel is the country I chose to showcase. The Monday before International Tea, the flags from each country went up. I smiled as I passed the Israeli flag on my way out of the building.
When I came back from the day’s classes, the Israeli flag was gone. I notified the Martha Cook House Board.
Fast forward to that Friday: the day of International Tea. After our weekly House Board meeting concluded, a representative from MHousing called me into another room.
“I just wanted to let you know before you set up for tea that someone has defaced your board.”
That morning, I was already worried that my Israel board (a tri-fold that each participant makes, celebrating the country’s culture) had been set up too early, since I had a feeling that someone might do something like that.
“What did they write?” I asked, “Free Palestine? Genocide? Apartheid?”
“No, they wrote, ‘Notable resident: Epstein.’”
That was not what I expected. Jeffrey Epstein has nothing to do with Israel. But that’s the logic now: lump together anything even remotely perceived as related to Judaism and pin the guilt on the Jewish State. On today’s campus, every grievance is interconnected — except, apparently, the one about Jews being targeted.
Police reports had already been filed for both the flag theft and the vandalism. This was just the icing on the cake for a week that had included both the official passing of a BDS resolution in our student government and the election of a new student body president who ran with the slogan, “Free laundry, free Palestine.” I would not be surprised if these anti-Israel “successes” emboldened the actions of the Martha Cook flag thief and vandal.
When I chose to represent Israel, I chose to represent a culture. I made no comment on the government nor any conflict. The reaction to the Israeli flag simply being displayed and the vandalism on my board are indicative of what campus has been like.
Since I first stepped on campus in August of 2023, I have found myself in an environment that emphasizes feelings over facts and political correctness over discussion. Even before the October 7th attacks, the campus culture was one in which it was taboo to push back on anything that did not fall into the popular narratives. The aftermath of October 7th pushed this to the next level.
Before Israel even responded to Hamas’ attack, protesters were calling Israel genocidal and advocating for the destruction of the country “from the river to the sea.” Thousands of students with no prior knowledge of Middle Eastern history or connection to the conflict began hopping on the anti-Israel bandwagon and marching around as “social justice” warriors.
The 2023-24 school year was the most divided, hostile environment I have experienced. When my friends or I tried to have conversations with people who were tagging along with the anti-Israel groups, we were either turned away, ignored, or had anti-Zionist buzzwords yelled at us. No one engaged with what we were actually saying. They just repeated slogans.
As campus calmed down, the performative activists largely moved on to trendier issues. But the small, dedicated group of anti-Israel agitators remains an active and insidious force.
There will always be those who are against us. What matters is that we, the Jewish community and our allies, stand up for the truth and for what is right. We must keep ourselves educated on the conflict. We must continue to host pro-Israel programming. We must have conversations when we can, respectfully engaging with those who disagree with us. We must do all of this while attending classes, keeping up with our studies, and cheering on our amazing Michigan sports teams (Go Blue!).
In a time when the future looks uncertain, I remain hopeful. Despite all of the hate directed at the Jewish community, I look around and see young, strong Jewish leaders stepping up and making a difference. We strive to be a light among the nations, and we are not going anywhere.
Addison Stone is a junior at the University of Michigan studying War & Conflict Studies and Theatre. She serves on the boards of Students Supporting Israel, Wolverine for Israel, and Michigan Israel Public Affairs Committee.