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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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The post Sicily’s Jews have their first rabbi in 500 years. Italy’s Jewish establishment won’t accept them. appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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US Allies Rebuff Trump’s Request for Support in Strait of Hormuz
A coastguard boat approaches an Indian liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) carrier, Shivalik, as it arrives at Mundra Port via the Strait of Hormuz, amid the US-Israel conflict with Iran, in Gujarat, India, March 16, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Amit Dave
Several US allies said on Monday they had no immediate plans to send ships to unblock the Strait of Hormuz, rebuffing a request by President Donald Trump for military support to keep the vital waterway open.
Trump called on nations to help police the strait after Iran responded to US-Israeli attacks by using drones, missiles, and mines to effectively close the channel for tankers that normally transport a fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas.
Germany, Spain, and Italy were among allies that ruled out participating in any mission in the Gulf, at least for now. Other countries were more circumspect, with Britain and Denmark saying they would consider ways they might help, but emphasizing a need to de-escalate and avoid getting dragged into the war.
“What does … Donald Trump expect a handful or two handfuls of European frigates to do in the Strait of Hormuz that the powerful US Navy cannot do?” German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said in Berlin on Monday, as he downplayed threats by Trump that failing to come to Washington’s aid could have consequences for the NATO alliance.
“This is not our war; we have not started it,” he added.
The conflict has nothing to do with NATO and Germany has no plans to be drawn into it, German government spokesperson Stefan Kornelius said.
“Neither the United States nor Israel consulted us before the war, and … Washington explicitly stated at the outset of the war that European assistance was neither necessary nor desired,” the spokesperson said.
Spain said it would not do anything that could escalate the conflict, while Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini said sending military ships to a war zone would be interpreted as joining the conflict.
“Italy is not at war with anyone and sending military ships in a war zone would mean entering the war,” Salvini told reporters in Milan.
NATO countries, several of whom have been at the sharp end of criticism from Trump in recent months, are wary of angering the White House, and some signaled willingness to help find a solution, even if plans remain vague for now.
EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said the bloc was in talks with the United Nations about replicating a deal that had been used to allow grain to be exported out of Ukraine during its war with Russia.
EU DISCUSSING MANDATE OF RED SEA MISSION
The EU is also discussing whether it could change the mandate of its Middle East naval mission, Aspides, which currently protects ships in the Red Sea from attacks by Yemen’s Houthi rebel group, to include the Strait of Hormuz, Kallas said.
But Greece, which leads the Aspides mission, will limit its participation in the Middle East to the Red Sea, said government spokesman Pavlos Marinakis.
Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer, whose reluctance to help the initial US attacks drew sharp criticism from Trump, said Britain would work with allies on a collective plan to secure freedom of navigation through the strait.
But he said this would not be easy, and he reiterated that the UK would not be drawn into a wider war. Britain has autonomous mine-hunting systems that could be used, Starmer said.
Denmark, traditionally one of the most enthusiastic NATO allies but which has clashed with Trump over his demands that it cede Greenland, said the EU should consider helping reopen the strait even if it didn’t agree with the war.
“Even if we don’t like what’s going on, I think it’s wise to keep an open mind on whether Europe … in some way can contribute, but with a view towards de-escalation,” Danish Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen said.
Dutch Foreign Minister Tom Berendsen said that were NATO to agree any mission in the Gulf it would take time to draw up a framework.
“These are weighty decisions, and any action must be both feasible and impactful. At this moment, no decision is on the table,” Berendsen said on Monday in Brussels.
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Two Brothers Placed Under Investigation in France for Planning Antisemitic Attack
Procession arrives at Place des Terreaux with a banner reading, “Against Antisemitism, for the Republic,” during the march against antisemitism, in Lyon, France, June 25, 2024. Photo: Romain Costaseca / Hans Lucas via Reuters Connect
Two young men have been placed under formal investigation in France for planning a “deadly and antisemitic“ attack, the counterterrorism prosecutor’s office (PNAT) said in a statement on Sunday.
The suspects, a 22-year-old engineering student and an unemployed 20-year-old who are brothers, were arrested last Tuesday after police found a semi-automatic firearm, a bottle of acid and an ISIS flag in their car during a roadside police stop near a prison in northern France, PNAT said. It gave no details about the nature of the planned attack or its target.
The two are being investigated on charges of criminal terrorist conspiracy and possessing a weapon in connection with a terrorist undertaking, and have been placed in pre-trial detention. The PNAT did not release the suspects’ full identities.
Concerns about possible attacks against Jewish communities around the world have risen following US and Israeli attacks on Iran and a subsequent response from Tehran.
A gunman crashed his truck into a Detroit-area synagogue on Thursday, while in Europe an explosion caused minor damage to a Jewish school in Amsterdam on Saturday and another explosion caused a fire at a synagogue in Belgium on Monday.
The French interior ministry reinforced security around Jewish places of worship in early March.
The French authorities said jihadist propaganda was found on the suspects’ digital devices and one of the brothers had filmed a video pledging allegiance to ISIS.
Governments and human rights advocates have noted a rise in antisemitism since the 2023 Hamas attack and Israel’s war on Gaza.
France‘s human rights commission, the CNCDH, has said antisemitic acts in France tend to increase after Israeli army operations in Palestinian territories. Antisemitic acts surged to a record high after the 2023 Hamas attack, but fell 16% in 2025 compared with the year before. However, they remained well above pre-2023 levels.
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This initiative is helping Israeli war survivors heal through art – and is making therapy cool
Tomer Peretz opened the door to his unassuming gallery in Chelsea, draped in a studded black shawl and sporting cartoonishly large – but very cool – sneakers. It was the day after the biggest snowstorm in recent NYC history, and the shoes were, of course, the most practical option for an LA-based Israeli with limited snow experience.
The 8 Project gallery opened in New York this winter, but it is only one piece of a larger initiative. The program, founded by Peretz, brings Oct. 7 survivors, bereaved siblings, Israeli soldiers coping with PTSD, and others affected by the war to Los Angeles for a two-month therapeutic art residency. Participants spend hours each day creating art while also undergoing therapy and mentorship. Now, Peretz has brought the residency program and its accompanying art gallery, which is open only for private events, to New York City.
Upon entering the 8 Project gallery in downtown Manhattan, the first painting one is greeted with is Peretz’s own, a group of Israeli soldiers huddled together, accompanied by the spirits of their fallen comrades represented by icy-white hands painted on the heads of the living. In a city where torn-down hostage posters became almost a fixture of the streets during the Gaza war, the gallery feels both out of place and deeply intentional.
Peretz receives applicants for his therapeutic residency program through rehabilitation hospitals in Israel and via social media. The only real requirement, he says, is a passion for art.
“They don’t have to have technical skills,” he told me. “Art is our toolbox to get through their soul. If they can sit every day and create, they’re already qualified.”
Peretz flies incoming residents to Los Angeles and covers their living expenses so they can focus entirely on healing.
Peretz was a volunteer with ZAKA, the Israeli humanitarian organization that specializes in recovering human remains after terror attacks. In the immediate aftermath of Oct. 7, he helped identify bodies at the sites of the attacks.
Once he returned to his home in LA, where he had been working as a painter for years, he found he could no longer approach his work in the same way. “I realized that everything I had been doing in my life had no real purpose,” he said. “We artists, we think we are so important. But if the work doesn’t do something, it’s just fucking art.”
He began working with artists informally and gradually developed what would become the 8 Project Residency. “I couldn’t create anything besides creating with people who were affected by the war. I cared about nothing else.”
Part of the appeal for residents, he says, is the cool-factor of the program. “People get attracted to cool, fun people.” Unlike traditional therapy — “a boring therapist and psychiatrist in a room,” as he put it — the program offers something different. “We literally brought something completely new, as far as therapy and healing, that is really, really fun.”
Shaked Salton, a former 8 Project resident whose best friend was killed on Oct. 7 and who served as a sergeant in the IDF’s search and rescue unit, told me on Zoom from her new home in LA that she struggled to find motivation after the war. The residency program helped her to find it. “Every day, I needed to wake up in the morning. For someone who’s been through a war, it can be tough.” But in the program, “there is no way you’re not coming to the studio.”
Now, she told me, she’s more connected to her feelings. “I paint better,” she told me. “I came to think more creatively. My brain was blocked.”
Sahar Haba, another former resident who now works as a mentor for the project, also serves as the self-ordained de facto DJ at the gallery. As residents worked on their art in the gallery’s back room, Haba played everything from Billy Joel’s “New York State of Mind,” to techno and Israeli Mizrahi music.
Haba served 15 years in the IDF and experienced the death of several of his friends on Oct. 7 and during the war, including American Hersh Goldberg Polin, whom he met through their shared love for the Israeli soccer team, Hapoel Jerusalem. He adores fashion, evidenced not only by the sneakers and jerseys he designed, displayed throughout the gallery, but also by his decidedly funky graphic socks.
During his residency, Peretz encouraged him to lead art workshops.
“Most of the time, the healing process is like, ‘Let’s talk about you, what do you need?’” Haba said. “Here I had the chance to do it the opposite way — to be the guide.”
Haba led art workshops for Nova survivors, soldiers, families and couples who were affected by the war.
One of the most striking paintings at the 8 Project Gallery is a portrait Peretz painted of Andrei Kozlov, a freed hostage and former 8 Project resident. In the piece, half of Kozlov’s face is incomplete, streaked with black and red contours that suggest the rest of his features.
The painting hung across from where I was conducting interviews that afternoon, so his face had been staring back at me from the gallery wall for much of the day. Unexpectedly, the real Kozlov walked in and introduced himself to me — before joking that I must be interviewing Peretz for a clerk position.
Kozlov became an 8 Project resident a mere five months after he was freed from captivity in Gaza. Now, he lives in New York and spends hours a day working on his art.
Haba showed me a pair of boots he had designed during the war, covered in a collage of hostage posters and featuring a QR code linking to the Bring Them Home website on the tongue of the shoe. He showed his creation to Kozlov, joking that the QR code no longer worked before pulling him into a bear hug.
In the center of the gallery stands a giant tree that Peretz explained was sculpted out of the body bags ZAKA used to collect human remains. References to ZAKA appear throughout the exhibit. In a small side room, a video created by one of the residents is played, which shows ZAKA volunteers sitting in the ruins of the kibbutzim in Israel that were ravaged by the Oct. 7 attacks. The volunteers were instructed to sit in silence for an hour and stare into the camera, resulting in a deeply unsettling film that felt almost too intimate to watch.
Peretz has a self-professed “radical” perspective on healing. “I do not like when therapists or psychiatrists like to dig too much about the past,” he said. “I’m all about shaking the hand of the devil that was with you that day. But once you shake the devil’s hand, OK, let’s move on.”
That’s why the second half of the program is dedicated to helping residents plan for their future. “It’s all about how do we become hungry to wake up tomorrow morning?” said Peretz. “So if I’m going to speak about the past all day, I will not be hungry to wake up tomorrow.”
That concept is where the 8 Project got its name from. “God created the world in 6 days,” said Peretz. “On the 7th day, we got some rest, and on the 8th day, we started to live.” After residents leave the program, Peretz hopes that they, too, can start to live.
Peretz has remained in touch with all of his past residents. “Some of them are going to school. Some of them are building relationships. Some of them are building a career.” He said all have continued to pursue their passion for art.
The gallery is open for private events, and while staff say they have had several people walk into the gallery who are not connected to Judaism or the war in any way, they are not Peretz’s target audience.
“I like that we’re not open for the public, I don’t think we are for the public.” He explained, “I’m not interested to tell my story at all. I don’t want to tell the Jewish story. I’m not trying to get more fans for the Jewish people through this exhibit.”
“I’m not for everyone,” he added. I care only about my brothers and sisters who created this, and the next people who are gonna create more, and that’s it.”
Still, Peretz believes the project’s presence in New York matters.
“New York needs this more than any other city. I realized that the Jewish people in New York are so traumatized, and they need that connection so badly,” he said. “A lot of us, Jewish people in the diaspora, got lost. We need that connection. We want to get the hug.”
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