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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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Trump’s new White House ballroom architect is a Jewish immigrant who has advocated for refugees
(JTA) — After parting ways with the first architect hired to carry out his vision for the White House’s East Wing, President Donald Trump has picked a replacement — turning to a firm run by prominent Jewish architect who once called on Trump to keep the country’s doors open to refugees and immigrants.
Shalom Baranes was born soon after his parents fled Libya amid antisemitic sentiment there, coming to the United States as a child with the help of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, now known as HIAS. He rose to prominence as an architect in Washington, D.C., where he has designed both private and government buildings, including the Pentagon, that trend toward the modern.
The White House confirmed on Friday that it had chosen his firm, Shalom Baranes Associates, to continue the East Wing project, centered around the ballroom that Trump wishes to construct. Trump clashed with the first architect on the job over the ballroom’s size.
“Shalom is an accomplished architect whose work has shaped the architectural identity of our nation’s capital for decades, and his experience will be a great asset to the completion of this project,” a White House spokesman, Davis Ingle, said in a statement on Friday.
The firm did not immediately publicly confirm its attachment to the project, and Baranes did not reply to a Jewish Telegraphic Agency request for comment.
Baranes’ selection stands out in an administration that has typically favored partisan and ideological loyalists. Baranes is a repeated donor to Democratic candidates who has openly advocated against one of Trump’s signature policies, his efforts to limit refugee admissions.
In 2017, two months into Trump’s first term, Baranes penned an op-ed for the Washington Post about the new president’s travel ban. Trump had declared a ban on migrants from seven mostly Muslim countries and refugees from around the world soon after taking office, igniting wide opposition including from Jewish groups.
“The anti-immigrant sentiment I feel today is nothing new to me,” he wrote. “When my Jewish parents arrived in the United States just a few years after fleeing persecution in an Arab regime, it was as difficult for them to be accepted here as it is for Muslims now.”
Baranes laid out his criticism gingerly while saying he hoped the travel ban would be short-lived.
“As I watch the news and see families struggling to leave their countries and escape tyranny, I wonder who among them will make it to our shores and become part of the next generation of researchers, teachers, inventors, real estate developers and, yes, architects,” he wrote. “My hope is that the Trump administration will take actions to ensure that the travel ban is indeed temporary, so that good, hard-working individuals fleeing tyranny can find a new home as I did — and that each of them will be given the same opportunity to help build this great nation that I had.”
Among the Jewish groups to lobby against Trump’s travel ban was HIAS, the organization that had helped Baranes and his family come to the United States. HIAS declined to comment on his selection as White House architect but said through a spokesperson that the organization was working to respond to Trump’s crackdown on refugees, which the president renewed last week after an Afghan refugee shot and killed a member of the National Guard in Washington.
To those who are familiar with Baranes’ style, he is a surprising pick for more than just because of his personal politics. His designs typically trend toward the modern, not the gilded classical style that Trump favors. He also has said he prefers to think carefully before tackling a project — an impossibility when it comes to the White House ballroom, which is already mid-construction.
“You have to wonder why he would risk a stellar career and near pristine reputation for a project that could possibly end up in disaster. He could be publicly fired and castigated by the developer-in-chief or ostracized among his colleagues and clients,” wrote Douglas Freuhling, the editor in chief of the Washington Business Journal, on Friday.
But Fruehling noted that a successful build at the White House — one that balances Trump’s tastes with the gravitas of the White House — would be a defining capstone for any architect’s career. “He may just be the perfect architect for the job. For his sake, I hope it turns out that way,” he wrote of Baranes.
Baranes’ portfolio includes multiple synagogue renovations. He donated his services to restore the interior of Sixth & I, the Jewish center in downtown Washington, D.C., when it was reconstructed just over two decades ago.
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It’s time to reconsider what we know about Jewish birthing rituals
For all living things, birth is our introduction to the world. So it’s a fitting theme for the first exhibit in the Museum at Eldridge Street’s new initiative, “Opening Doors to Intercultural Understanding.”
The multiyear project is centered around three themes: sacred space, sacred community and sacred time. First Light is inspired by sacred time, which focuses on lifecycle events and holidays in the Jewish calendar. The museum staff worked with curator Warren Klein, the director and curator at Herbert & Eileen Bernard Museum of Judaica, to come up with the idea for an exhibit on birth.
“Of course, there’s a universal resonance there,” Amanda Gordon, the museum’s director of public engagement, said. “But really First Light is all about examining Jewish birth traditions and different observance practices, how they’ve evolved, but also different kinds of aesthetic craftsmanship ideas.”
Visitors are first greeted with contemporary paintings from artists Tobi Kahn and Mark Podwal that depict the significance of birth both personally and biblically. Kahn’s abstract painting evokes one of his children’s sonograms through its textured exploration of rounded shapes. This is juxtaposed with Podwal’s depiction of Pharaoh’s daughter finding Moses in the Nile, using a classic Egyptian style to depict the female face looming over baby Moses, almost protectively. Further along in the exhibit are older examples of birth-related rituals both in art and in historic objects.
“These rotating exhibitions,” Gordon said. “They give us a chance to showcase not only cultures outside of Ashkenazi Jewish culture, but also contemporary work. So to have, you know, Tobi’s work and Mark Podwal’s work here in conversation with these pieces from the 19th and 18th century.”
One of the first photographs in the exhibit is of a two-seater bench; one seat is for the sandek, who holds the baby during the bris, and the other is for Elijah the Prophet.
Klein explained that Elijah is imagined to be at every circumcision ceremony, and some communities reserve a seat for him, much like how many families save him a glass of wine during a Passover seder.
“It’s hard to kind of pinpoint where the custom was created,” Klein said. “Across the board, Ashkenazi and Sephardic communities will have a chair reserved for Elijah.”
The exhibit also explores lesser-known traditions; though most people think that Jewish birthing customs are limited to “circumcision or bris milah and that’s it,” Klein said. “It’s truly not.”
For example, there is Pidyon haben, the redemption of the first born son, a tradition that dates back to the days of the high priest, when Israelites had to offer their firstborn sons as priestly assistants. In the era of rabbinic Judaism, the redemption became more symbolic, and families would offer coins on a platter to “purchase” their child back from the rabbi. In the exhibition, a photo of an ornate silver platter filled with coins illustrates the practice.
Although the exhibit could house only a limited number of physical objects, it displays a wide range of customs. There’s a decorative amulet case from the 19th century that once held a prayer to protect its holder from Lilith, a demon — or, according to some stories, Adam’s first wife before Eve — thought to harm the mother and child during labor or right after birth. One glass case hosts a printed prayer book for a German mohel, or ritual circumciser, dated to 1744. What makes this facsimile particularly interesting, Klein explained, is its depiction of women, who are usually not seen in the visual images of the bris.
Klein wanted to make sure women were more represented in this exhibit than they usually are in discussions of Jewish birthing customs. One photograph shows a girl’s baby naming in 20th-century Morocco and another depicts the outfit worn by a female baby at a Greek ceremony.
The exhibit also features a wimpel, a long piece of cloth used to tie the Torah scroll. Traditionally, wimpels are made from the cloth that swaddled a baby during his bris, and are decorated with prayers for the boy to grow strong, learn Torah and get married.
“These then would be deposited or used in the synagogue, maybe on his bar mitzvah, maybe on special occasions, and then given to the synagogue almost as a census that this person was a part of the community,” Klein said. “There would be communities that had truly thousands of these.”
“Unfortunately, this is a custom that almost died out after the Holocaust,” Klein said. “There was a resurgence in the 20th century and certain communities still practice it. But it is very rare to find.”
Both Gordon and Klein expressed hope that visitors of all backgrounds would gain something from the exhibit.
“It was my hope that, you know, visitors would come in with their traditions or their kind of preconceived notions on what maybe Jewish birth traditions and customs are,” Klein said. “And to also kind of have some ideas to take with them into their own communities.”
The exhibit First Light: Birth in the Jewish Tradition will be on view at the Museum at Eldridge Street until April 26, 2026.
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White House Releases New National Security Strategy Indicating Renewed Focus on Western Hemisphere
US President Donald Trump speaks at the White House in Washington, DC, US, Sept. 25, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
The White House late on Thursday night released its new “National Security Strategy,” indicating a sharp pivot of the nation’s strategic focus toward the Western Hemisphere while recalibrating US engagement with Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.
The 33-page document only mentions Israel and the Middle East briefly, instead focusing closer to home.
“After years of neglect, the United States will reassert and enforce the Monroe Doctrine to restore American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere, and to protect our homeland and our access to key geographies throughout the region,” the strategy states. “We will deny non-Hemispheric competitors the ability to position forces or other threatening capabilities, or to own or control strategically vital assets, in our Hemisphere. This ‘Trump Corollary’ to the Monroe Doctrine is a common-sense and potent restoration of American power and priorities, consistent with American security interests.”
The strategy adds that the Trump administration wants “to ensure that the Western Hemisphere remains reasonably stable and well-governed enough to prevent and discourage mass migration to the
United States; we want a Hemisphere whose governments cooperate with us against narco-terrorists, cartels, and other transnational criminal organizations; we want a Hemisphere that remains free of hostile foreign incursion or ownership of key assets, and that supports critical supply chains; and we want to ensure our continued access to key strategic locations.”
Publication of the strategy came just after the results of a major new defense survey showed that the American public still overwhelmingly supports active US global leadership and robust military strength.
The White House argues in its strategy that more local challenges represent the most urgent threats to US sovereignty and domestic stability. At the same time, the document downplays the view that deep involvement in conflicts abroad advances US interests. While it reaffirms the importance of alliances and deterrence commitments, it rejects the role of Washington as “global policeman,” instead prioritizing a stronger homeland, resilient supply chains, and revitalized domestic industrial capacity. The strategy also calls for major investment in missile-defense capabilities, including a nationwide system sometimes referred to as a “Golden Dome for America,” echoing Israel’s longstanding layered defense architecture.
The White House’s strategy coincides with the release of data from the newly published Reagan National Defense Survey, which finds Americans more supportive of engagement and global leadership than many pundits have suggested. According to the findings, 64 percent of Americans want the US to be more engaged in world affairs, not less, and 87 percent believe maintaining the strongest military in the world is essential. Meanwhile, 71 percent of Americans say global peace is most likely when the US holds clear military superiority. The data also shows strong majorities support defending key allies if attacked, while 68 percent back building a national missile-defense system, reflecting rising concern about long-range threats.
For Israel and the Middle East, the White House strategy signals a recalibrated emphasis on preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon, securing vital maritime chokepoints, and supporting Israel’s long-term security, including cooperation on advanced defense technologies.
Public support for the Jewish state remains strong, though there are indications of waning. Sixty-six percent of Americans view Israel as an ally, a decrease from 72 percent the year prior, according to the Reagan survey.
The survey indicates that 60 percent of Americans approved of the June 2025 US airstrike targeting Iranian nuclear infrastructure, though partisan divides remain prevalent. Enhanced pressure on Tehran, including sanctions and cyber measures, garner even broader bipartisan support.
Experts indicate that for Israel, a long-standing partner deeply affected by US posture in both Europe and the Middle East, the strategy’s emphasis on missile defense, deterrence, and countering Iranian ambitions will be particularly reassuring. However, some analysts argue that the strategy’s overall de-emphasis on the Middle East and apparent desire to be less engaged outside the Western Hemisphere could prove problematic for the Jewish state.