About Italy...

Home to many of the world's greatest works of art, architecture and gastronomy, Italy elates, inspires and moves like no other. Cultivated during the times of the Roman Empire and birthplace of the Renaissance, this European virtuoso groans under the weight of its cultural cachet: here you’ll find essence of Michelangelo's David and Sistine Chapel frescoes, Botticelli's Birth of Venus and Primavera and da Vinci's The Last Supper. Italy boasts more Unesco World Heritage cultural sites than any other country on Earth. Should you walk in the footsteps of ancient Romans in Pompeii, revel in Ravenna's glittering Byzantine treasures or get breathless over Giotto's revolutionary frescoes in Padua? It's a cultural conundrum as thrilling as it is overwhelming Inimitable Style.

The history of the Jews in Italy spans more than two thousand years. One of the Roman Empire’s most bloody wars was the “Jewish War” in which Jews in Israel rose up against Roman power – and were crushed. Roman forces destroyed the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem and massacred many of Jerusalem’s Jews in 70 CE, and the final Jewish resistance was overcome at Masada four years later. So Jews have lived in Italy since ancient times. The very first Jews in Italy were sent by Judah Maccabee, the leader of the Jews in the Hanukkah story. In seeking allies for the Jewish fight against the evil Syrian-Greek King Antiochus Epiphanes, Judah Maccabee sent a delegation to the Roman Senate, where they secured agreement for a “special relationship” between the Jews of Israel and the emerging Roman Empire – and established the first Jewish settlement in Italy, in the 2nd Century BCE. And thus the Jews built over a dozen synagogues and many Jewish cemeteries and established vibrant Jewish communities in other Italian cities such as Ferrara, Milan and Taranto. Today, Italian Jews have their own unique prayer traditions – neither Ashkenazi (European) nor Sephardi (Spanish or Middle Eastern).