The ancient Jewish Community of Pitigliano, in Tuscany
In my long experience as a Tour Guide in Florence, I noticed that many American and European Jews are used to visit the Jewish part of town whenever they travel abroad; whether is Rome, Paris or Budapest, they go to synagogues, they seek out local Jews and they frequently make a donation. I believe it’s their way of feeling connected and getting in touch with their roots and also of showing solidarity. Italy offers many wonderful experiences of Jewish Tour: Rome, Venice and Florence just to mention the main and the best known synagogues and Jewish Museums in Italy. One rarely hears about this tiny medieval village in Tuscany, called Pitigliano though, also known as “Piccola Gerusalemme” or Little Jerusalem.
Pitigliano is situated about 105 miles northwest of Rome and is reachable driving up the winding road to the hill town, 1026 feet above sea level; when people first see it, they might be reminded of the real Jerusalem. With its parapets, ceramic tile roofs and multitiered buildings perched on layers of red volcanic tuff stone, this ancient village resembles a sparkling, pint-size Holy City.
Pitigliano, which was originally founded by the Etruscans, was once home to a thriving Jewish population that had settled there in the early part of the 16th c. They came manly from the nearby Lazio region, which bordered the anti-Semitic Roman papal dominions that periodically drove out Jews.
As soon as you walk through the main gate into the old city, the atmosphere brings you back to the Middle Ages, passing the Orsini family palace, a 14th c. fortress, now a museum and the even older church of San Rocco; the remnants of a 17th c. aqueduct built by the Medici family runs through town.
It is well known that the Jews and the Christians of Pitigliano had led a peaceful coexistence. In the 16th century, Count Niccolò Orsini IV, a member of the feudal Orsini family, ruled the village that at that time in history was an independent fief whose inhabitants were mainly peasants. Although the Count was catholic, he thought Jews, mostly bankers and artisans, could help revitalize Pitigliano’s lagging economy. So, while Jews in places like Umbria and Lazio were imprisoned or exiled, in Pitigliano they worked as moneylenders, carpenters, cobblers and tailors.
The good will change somewhat after the Medici family, which was appointed by the Pole, took over this and other independent counties: in 1622, the Jews in Pitigliano were confined to a ghetto, men were required to wear yellow hats and women yellow badges on their slaves. Still, the relationship between Jews and non-Jews was friendly: in 1773, after the Medici died out, the liberal Catholic Habsburg Grand Duke of Tuscany, Pietro Leopoldo officially recognized the Jews of Pitigliano, which meant they could come and go as they wished. In 1799 the ghetto was desegregated and by 1850 there were about 400 Jews in town, roughly 10% of the population. But 11 years later that population began to shrink when the Jews of a unified Italy were granted equal rights and allowed to move freely anywhere in the county: it was the Emancipation period and many of them left for Florence, Rome or elsewhere. By 1938, when the fascist racial laws were applied, only 60 Jews were living in Pitigliano. Some of them, including Mrs Elena Servi, 90 years old and today the last Pitigliano born Jew left, credited their survival during WWII to the Catholic farmers in the valley who protected them from the Germans and the Italian fascists; others hid in caves for months. At the end of the war only about 20/30 Jewish families were left in Pitigliano.
Although services are no longer held held in the neighboring synagogue, it is open for viewing and sometimes weddings and bar/bat mitzvah take place here; the gold and white building with its carved pews, wooden tevà and Aron hakodesh, was restored to its 1589 splendor after the roof collapsed in 1961. The historic ghetto mostly located underground, is a rare evidence of the Jews’ lives during those centuries where visitors can see the mikveh, the wine cellar, the oven for baking matzah and dye-works.
While the Jewish Community here basically does not exist anymore, there is no mistaking the Jewish influence in Pitigliano: “sfratti” – stick-shaped biscuits filled with ground walnuts.honey, nutmeg, orange peel and wrapped in dough – are local delicacy. The word “sfratti” is derived from sfratto, meaning eviction in Italian.
Legend has it that the police would hit the doors of the Jews’ homes with some sticks to force them into the ghetto: the Jews transformed their pain into something edible! (a good place to get some sfratti is the “Panificio” – bakery – del Ghetto, near the Synagogue. Hebrew words have also penetrated the local dialect: gadol, i.e., Hebrew for big, has morphed into “gadollo” in Pitigliano and kasher, a variant of kosher, means loosely, nice or OK. Many houses still have mezuzas.
The Jewish quarter is only a block and the rest of the village is very small; it took no more than a couple of hours to wander the ghetto and the labyrinth of alleys, winding stairways, piazzas and shops in the historic district.
Who knows what’s going to happen to this fascinating place in 20 or 30 years..for sure, “we must preserve the past as long as possible”, never stop to say Elena Servi.
