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Piedmont's Jewish Heritage
In collaboration with ITALYITALY Magazine

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

"If an architect's ambition and ego had not been bigger than his clients' budget, Turin might have had the most extraordinary synagogue in the world." So wrote synagogue historian Carol Herselle Krinsky in her book Synagogues of Europe. The building in question is what is now called the Mole Antonelliana - the tallest columnar, masonry-framed building in Europe, whose steep, four-sided dome and soaring spire are today a symbol of Turin, the industrial city that is the capital of Italy's northwest Piedmont region.

In fact, the towering structure, begun in the 1860s, was originally designed to be a "cathedral synagogue" whose imposing size and lavish design would have celebrated the freedom and prosperity of Turin's newly emancipated Jews. Alas, the ambitious project nearly bankrupted the Jewish community, which ended up selling the building to the city in 1877 before it was completed.

A less ambitious but still ornate synagogue with four turrets topped by onion domes was built in the early 1880s. It was heavily bombed during World War II but was reconstructed in 1949 and still serves the lively, 1,000-member local Jewish community.

Few other parts of Italy provide such a varied and spectacular array of Jewish heritage sites than does Piedmont, the northwest corner of the country along the French border, nestled between the Alps and the Mediterranean Sea.

Turin is just one of a score of towns and cities where extraordinary examples of Jewish heritage illustrate the sweep of Jewish history in the region - from the Middle Ages, through the Risorgimento struggle for Italian unity, through World War II and the Holocaust, to the present day.

They include former ghetto areas and evocative Jewish cemeteries, but the real Jewish jewels are the splendidly ornate synagogues scattered around the region.

"The synagogues bear special witness to the centuries-old presence of Jews in Piedmont - to memory and faith, but also to complex and multi-layered events; heritage to transmit to the future," writes Giulio Disegni, who recently edited a series of booklets on Jewish heritage in Piedmont.

"Big or small, imposing or hidden away on the top floor of simple houses," he writes, "they constitute a truly unique map tracing the deeds and events of a people that has never stopped fighting for its existence."

Jewish history in Piedmont can be traced back to the 5th century, but it was only in the 14th century, with the arrival of Jews expelled from France, that Jews began settling there permanently. These refugees brought with them their own ancient French ritual style, which persisted into modern times, particularly in the communities of Asti, Fossano and Moncalvo.

A number of Piedmontese Jewish communities were established in the 15th century - including that in Turin, where Jews were formally allowed to settle in 1424. One of the first Jews allowed to live there was Elias Alamanni, a former physician to the Duke of Burgundy.

Historically, much of Piedmont was ruled by the House of Savoy. Jews were segregated from Christians as early as 1430, and formal ghettos were established in Turin and elsewhere in the 17th and 18th centuries.

In many places, Jews were forced to pay special taxes, wear special identifying badges and submit to other severe restrictions. But ghetto life was still less restrictive than in other parts of Italy. Jews could practice a variety of professions, and there was frequent interaction between Jews and their Christian neighbors.

Jews in Piedmont were swept up in the turbulent events of the 19th century that began with the conquests of Napoleon and led to Italian unification. Piedmont was the cradle of the Risorgimento movement, and many Jews were active in the struggle, linking their own aspirations for freedom to those of other Italians. In 1848, Savoy King Carlo Alberto issued the landmark Edict of Emancipation that granted Jews full civil rights.

As historian Cecil Roth wrote: "Everywhere the news was greeted with jubilation, among non-Jews as well as among Jews; for it was not an artificial act of naturalization, but a formal recognition of the ineluctable fact that the Italian Jews were children of the country in the fullest sense, no less than any of their neighbors."

Synagogue projects such as those in Turin and the imposing Great Temple in Vercelli, built in the 1870s, bear witness to the optimistic aspirations of newly emancipated Italian Jews.

At the time the Vercelli synagogue was built, the town had a growing Jewish community of about 600 people. But thanks to the assimilation and freedom of movement enabled by emancipation, the Jewish community dwindled rapidly and by 1931 amounted to only 295 people.

The synagogue, built in the Moorish style with a striped facade and elaborate interior, fell into total decay. Today only a few dozen Jews live in Vercelli, and the grandiose building - though now under restoration - stands as a monument to the changing course of history.

The most magnificent synagogue in Piedmont is a far older building, the synagogue of Casale Monferrato. It was originally built in 1595 in the heart of the old Jewish ghetto, but over the following two centuries it was enlarged, redesigned and redecorated in a sumptuous rococo style.

The opulent decor boasts huge gilded chandeliers, and white, cobalt and gold-colored walls on which Hebrew inscriptions are framed by gilded stucco work. The ark, where the scrolls of the Torah are kept, features fluted Corinthian columns and an elaborately carved decorated frieze and cornice.

The bimah, or platform from which the Torah is read during religious services, is place directly in front of the ark, and the entire liturgical area is screened by an elaborate wrought iron grille.

The Jewish community of Casale reached its peak in the 19th century, when it numbered some 850 members, many of them prosperous bankers and merchants. As in Vercelli, however, the irreversible process of migration and assimilation took its toll, and today the community numbers little more than two dozen people.

In 1969, after a full-scale restoration carried out by the State, the synagogue was declared a national monument and opened to the public as a Jewish museum.

Here are displayed priceless Jewish ritual objects, books, textiles, photographs, and everyday items. Sections of the museum are devoted to Jewish festivals and life cycle celebrations.

The silver ritual objects and richly embroidered textiles, including Torah coverings and curtains for the ark, are particularly impressive. Also of note is the fascinating collection of historical documents and other material from the Jewish community archives.

This material, including maps, letters, proclamations, wedding contracts and legal documents dating back to the 16th century, sheds revealing light on how Jews lived - and how they were forced to live by local authorities.

Traces of the ghetto remain, too - and in via Alessandro it is possible to see the place where the gates of the ghetto were once affixed.

A much smaller Jewish museum is located in the synagogue in Asti. Asti was one of the oldest Jewish settlements in Piedmont, but after emancipation, the local Jews embraced a more secular lifestyle and assimilated into the Italian mainstream.

As part of this trend, the synagogue was completely restructured in 1889 to make it more similar to a Catholic church, with Corinthian columns lining a nave-like sanctuary. Another sign of assimilation is the presence of a columbarium for funeral urns in the Jewish cemetery, which contradicts traditional Jewish burial practice.

Only a few dozen Jews lived in Asti on the eve of World War II. In 1943, 30 were deported to Nazi death camps; only three of them survived, and today there is no longer a Jewish community in the town. Few if any Jews live today, either, in the towns of Biella, Carmagnola, Cherasco, Cuneo, Ivrea, Mondovi and Saluzzo, but all had vital Jewish communities dating back to the Middle Ages. All, too, still boast charming and often splendidly ornate synagogues hidden behind the anonymous facades of normal-looking residential buildings in the heart of their historic ghettos.

These synagogues have richly carved Baroque and rococo arks and bimahs featuring lavish gilding, twisted columns and elaborately sculpted open canopies and other decorative elements.

Built before the Jews were emancipated, these sanctuaries are often very small and are usually found on an upper floor -- to provide both security and light for worshippers.

The recently restored synagogue in Carmagnola, for example, is on the top floor of an 18th-century building that from the outside looks like a normal residence. It is entered via a spiral staircase that leads into a vestibule which in turn leads directly into the prayer hall or, up another staircase, into the women's gallery, which is screened off from the sanctuary by a wooden grate.

The sanctuary itself is a square room lit by seven big windows that are surmounted by stucco ornaments and separated by stucco decorations framing Hebrew inscriptions.

The octagonal bimah, set in the center of the room, dates back to 1766. It is a splendid confection of carved, painted and richly gilded wood that features an elaborate canopy supported by slim, twisted columns.

At the eastern wall, the ark, set off by a wrought-iron grille, is also richly carved and gilded and surmounted by a canopy. Delicate intaglios on its doors portray Jewish symbols, including the seven-branched menorah candelabra, the Temple of Jerusalem and the Ten Commandments.

The late 18th-century synagogue in Mondovi is another gem, a tiny square room on the second floor of what was a Jewish home, lit by five hanging crystal chandeliers and centered on an ornate octagonal bimah and a gilded ark featuring a sculpted menorah.

Whether imposing monuments to emancipation or sumptuously decorated hidden prayer rooms, Piedmont's synagogues bear witness to a turbulent past.

And in addition to their extraordinary beauty, writes Giulio Disegni, they exert "a fascination that combines spirituality and art, faith and harmony, in a totality that is difficult to sunder."

ItalyItaly Magazine
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