
Dormant for five centuries, Jewish life in Italy’s far south is stirring - mastazi
http://www.economist.com/blogs/erasmus/2017/02/jewish-revival-sicily
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gozmike
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.

~~~
akoster
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!

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gleb
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.

~~~
sveme
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?

~~~
gleb
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/](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.

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

~~~
oregondan
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](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judaeo-Spanish) [2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judeo-
Italian_languages#Dialec...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judeo-
Italian_languages#Dialects)

~~~
nfc
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](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judaeo-Spanish)

