Dormant for five centuries, Jewish life in Italy’s far south is stirring | Hacker News Reader

Dormant for five centuries, Jewish life in Italy’s far south is stirring

economist.com

77 pointsmastazi10 comments

My parents are from Sicily and we only recently found out that our ancestry is Ashkenazi. In fact, my family is even from a town right outside Siracusa which makes this article all the more interesting.

Although I know very little of my ancestors that would date back to the time of mandatory conversion to Catholicism, I do know that many of my family's traditions and dialect words blend together Greek, Egyptian, Jewish (passover traditions!) I'm always amazed over the rapid transformation s and upheavals people from that part of the world must have experienced.

I am always amazed by this history. And by how one's Jewish identity could have been lost should an ancestor have decided to assimilate during a difficult point in history. Quite amazing stuff! Thanks for sharing!

Btw, Jews of Rome are their own separate population. They are neither Ashkenazi nor Sephardic. They trace back to the Jews brought to Rome by Roman Empire 2,000 years ago.

I was under the impression that Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews derived from that population in Rome? Did the Ashkenazi come directly from Palestine to the Rhine valley?

Some Ashkenazim trace ancestry to Lucca (according to various accounts, they were invited to what's today Germany by Charlemagne). However, there are ancient Jewish tombstones discovered in Cologne for instance, which predate that by hundreds of years. Either way, Sephardim had a separate migration path.

I think you are right.

This is a good if somewhat technical book on this: Legacy: A Genetic History of the Jewish People https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008MWL9HG/

Quote:

The Jewish community of Rome is among the oldest, historically continuous Jewish populations. Jews resided in Rome during the Roman Empire and were brought to Rome by the Emperor Titus, following the suppression of the Bar Kochba rebellion and the destruction of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem in 70 C.E. Spanish Jews came to Rome during the Inquisition and, paradoxically, were shielded from the hostility of their Roman Jewish neighbors by the Pope. Over time, the Sephardic and Roman Jewish communities co-mingled. Jews from Rome crossed the Alps to populate the Rhine Valley and establish Ashkenazim. So Rome has been a crossroads for Jews from different communities during their histories.

[...] Many members of the Roman Jewish community were fond of telling us that they were neither Sephardic nor Ashkenazi. Our study from that time demonstrated that the Roman Jews had a low frequency of disease mutations that were found in both Ashkenazi and Sephardic populations, supporting the notion that they may have been a progenitor population for Ashkenazi Jews and that they had Sephardic roots.

Was some there specific language in Sicily or other Italian Jewish communities, like Ladino in Spain?

Apparently Ladino was used as a trade language throughout the Mediterranean/Adriatic, and Wikipedia lists it as being "native" to Italy [1]. There also are regional Judeo-Italian dialects, including two from Corfu [2].

My internal map of Italy isn't very good, but given the 'size' of the populations that must speak or have spoken these dialects, I'd guess there was a dialect specific to Sicily.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judaeo-Spanish [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judeo-Italian_languages#Dialec...

I think you misread the origin of the Judaeo-Spanish ladino. From the wikipedia page [1] :

"This Judaeo-Spanish ladino should not be confused with the ladino or Ladin language spoken in part of North-Eastern Italy, which is closely related with the rumantsch-ladin of Swiss Grisons (it is disputed whether or not they form a common Rhaeto-Romance language) and has nothing to do with either Jews or Spanish beyond being, like Spanish, a Romance language, a property they share with French, Italian, Portuguese and Romanian."

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judaeo-Spanish

Judeo-Italian is a group of Italian dialects. [1]

[1] http://www.jochnowitz.net/Essays/Judeo-Italian.html

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