The Jewish Community of Ferrara
Ferrara
A city in north central Italy, Emilia Romagna region.
Jews lived in Ferrara from the Middle Ages. An inscription dating from Roman times and a document from 1088 may relate to local Jewish life.
The community prospered from the 13th throughout the 15th century. This was primarily due to the dukes of Este who explicitly declared themselves the "Protectors of the Jews". In 1451 they refused to expel the Jews according to a papal decree. The policy of giving refuge to persecuted Jews, especially those who could prove useful, was continued by all the other dukes of Este.
In 1481 Ercoli I authorized Samuel Meli of Rome to buy a mansion for use as a synagogue. It is still in use. At that time Abraham Farrissol, the geographer, lived in Ferrara, as well as Abraham Sarfati, teacher of Hebrew at the University of Ferrara, and the printer Abraham b. Chayyim the Dyer (Dei Tintori) of Pesaro.
The town welcomed Jewish refugees from Spain in 1492, the crypto-Jews in 1524 - allowing them to return to the Jewish faith , from Germany in 1530, from the duchy of Milan in 1540, from Naples in 1541 and from the papal state of Bologna in 1569.
In Ferrara there were ten synagogues and many Jewish printing houses. The "Bible of Ferrara" was printed in 1553. However, although the dukes spared their Jews from church oppression, they allowed the Talmud Tora to be burned in 1553. In 1554 the congress of delegates of Jewish communities was held in Ferrara to decide on precautionary measures, including the precensorship of Hebrew books. At that time there were 2000 Jews in Ferrara, among them : Don Samuel Abrabanel, the last leader of Naple’s Jewish community, the crypto-Jew Gracia Nasi, the physician Amatus Lusitanus, Moses and Azriel Alatino, the engineer Abraham Colorni, the poets Jacob Fano and Abraham dei Galicchi Jagel, and the polymath Azaria di Rossi.
In the 15th-16th centuries Ferrara was an important center for Hebrew printing.
In 1598 Ferrara passed under the rule of the papal state. The Este family moved its court to Modena and was followed by many Jews. The 1500 Jews who remained in Ferrara were subjected to new and harsh rules.
They had to wear an identification mark, were not permitted to possess real estate, Jewish doctors were forbidden to attend Christian patients, they were forced to close seven of the ten synagogues, and forced to attend conversional sermons. In 1627, they were forced to live in a ghetto, enclosed by five gates. The ghetto lasted over a century. During the 17th and the first half of the 18th century there were mob attacks on the ghetto and in 1721 blood libel charges caused riots against the ghetto.
At the beginning of the 18th century there were 1,500 Jews in Ferrara.
In 1796, after the French occupation, Jews were granted equal civil rights and in 1797 the ghetto's gates were removed, but in 1826 the Jews were locked again in the ghetto when Ferrara came back under the papal rule.
In 1860, they obtained their full emancipation.
For the next 80 years they became active citizens in the life of the kingdom of Italy, and were appointed to high public offices in town and state affairs.
At the beginning of the 20th century 1300 Jews lived in Ferrara. Renzo Ravenna was the mayor between the two world wars until 1938, when the fascists imposed the race rules. Children had to leave public schools and the adults were forced out of their jobs. Giorgio Bassani recorded these events very effectively in his book "The Garden of the Finzi Contini".
On the eve of Rosh Hashana, September 21, 1941, the first devastation of the synagogue occurred. The fascists desecrated the synagogue and rounded up hundreds of Jews. The Nazis deported two hundred to concentration camps in Germany. Only five returned.
After WW2, the leader of the partisans of the region, Renato Hirsch, became the mayor of Ferrara. A street was named after him as the mayor of the liberation. At that time only 200 Jews were left in Ferrara.
In 2001, there were about 100 Jews living in Ferrara.
In 1997 a Jewish museum was opened in Ferrara near the synagogue and Jewish community center, on the site donated by Sir Samuel Melli in 1481. Documents since 1200 on Jewish community life are kept in this museum. In the building there are also two synagogues: the Scola Fanese, which is used daily and the Ashkenazi Synagogue, which is used on major Jewish holidays. There is a room in this building that houses the Italian rite synagogue. It contains three restored arks from the 18th century.
There was a Jewish cemetery in Ferrara before 1200. It was moved to another site in that year. The present cemetery was opened in 1626 and is located along the old walls of the city.
Isaac Hezekiah Ben Samuel Lampronti
(Personality)Isaac Hezekiah Ben Samuel Lampronti (1679-1756) Rabbi, scholar and physician.
Born in Ferrara, Italy, he was a pupil of some of the great rabbinical authorities of his time and also studied philosophy and medicine in the university of Padua. In 1701, he began to teach in the Ferrara school of the Italian Jewish community and later also in the Sephardi school. He insisted that the humanities be taught alongside traditional Jewish subjects. In 1718, Lampronti was ordained rabbi and from 1743 was senior rabbi and head of the Ferrara yeshiva. All this time, he practiced medicine with an outstanding reputation, and did not charge those who could not afford it. He is famous for his Pahad Yitzhak, an extensive halakhic encyclopedia - so comprehensive that one edition consisted of 120 volumes. Each article is an exhaustive dissertation on its subject.
Felice Ravenna
(Personality)פליצ'ה ראוונה שימש כציר לקונגרסים ציוניים, החל בקונגרס השלישי (1899), והיה חבר בוועד הפועל הציוני הגדול וככזה – איש אמונו של הרצל באיטליה. במשך כארבעים שנה היה ראוונה דמות בולטת ביהדות איטליה. ב-1920 ירש פליצ'ה ראוונה את מקום אביו בנשיאות הקהילה היהודית בפרארה ובמועצת איגוד הקהילות; הוא כיהן כסגן נשיא האיגוד בתקופת נשיאותו של אנג'לו סרני. עם פרסום "חוק הקהילות היהודיות באיטליה" (1930) מוּנה פליצ'ה ראוונה לנציב ממונה מטעם הממשלה בוועד החדש וב-1933 נבחר לנשיאה של רשות זו, תפקיד שמילא עד יום מותו. מכל פעילותו היהודית הארוכה והמגוונת, ביקורו של תיאודור הרצל בביתו שבפרארה בשנת 1904 ומסעו עם הרצל לרומא לפגישה עם האפיפיור ועם מלך איטליה ויטוריו עמנואלה 3 בינואר 1904, היו ללא ספק מציוני הדרך החשובים בחייו.
Abraham Ben Daniel
(Personality)Abraham Ben Daniel (1511-1578), poet, born in Modena, Italy, he worked from 1530 as a tutor for Jewish families in various cities in Italy. Later he became a rabbi in Ferrara. Abraham Ben Daniel wrote numerous poems which range in subject from autobiography to historical events, including works honoring family and friends. He wrote most of his poems in Hebrew and a few in Aramaic. In 1533 he collected his liturgical and religious poems in a book entitled Sefer Hayashar. A second, larger collection, entitled Sefer Hayalkut, is lost. He died in Ferrara, Italy.
Wedding party at the Ravenna family home, Ferrara, Italy, 1922
(Photos)to celebrate the wedding of their daughter Gabriela
and Mario Falco, Ferrara, Italy, 1922
(The Oster Visual Documentation Center, Beit Hatfutsot,
courtesy of Valeria Padovano)
Valeria Padovano (ne'e Ravenna) who gave the photos to Beit Hatfutsot, was Gabriela's sister. The bride does not appear in the photo. The woman sitting 5th on the right is Germana Ravenna, Gabriela and Valeria's sister. During World War II Germana and her mother were in hidding in Italy. They were caught and later perished in Auschwitz. On the same side of the table, 2nd from right, is Enrico Ravenna, brother of Gabriela and Valeria. During the War he managed to get entry visas to Argentina for his family and thus they were saved. The groom Mario Falco is the man sitting on the far end at the head of the table on the right
The curtains on the widows are now part of a tablecloth in the house of Gabriel Ravenna-Falco granddaughter
Vittore Colorni
(Personality)Vittore Colorni (1912-2005), historian and jurist, born in New York, USA. He graduated in law at the University of Bologna, Italy, in 1933. Colorni was descended from a family originally from Colorno near Parma, Italy. One of his ancestors, Simone de Maya (Meyer), was living in Colorno in 1477. The family subsequently moved to Mantua in the sixteenth century.
Colorni was a lecturer on the history of Italian law at the University of Ferrara and in 1956 he was awarded a professorship. Between 1969 and 1971 he was dean of the Faculty of Law. His speciality was the study of the history of medieval law. In 1945 he published his major work Legge ebraica e legge locali ["Jewish law and Local Law"]. In it he traced the special status of the Jews and how far Jewish law was recognized in Italy, describing the history of Jewish courts in the medieval Italian states.
He wrote many articles on the history of the Jewish community of Mantua, and in particular its methods of self-government and the judiciary. As a result of this research Colorni developed a theory about the expansion of small Jewish communities in the north and Po valley of Italy. There were two migrations, one originating from the city of Rome in order to seek out new markets for the activity of money lenders and traders, and a second stream of immigration of German-born Ashkenazi Jews who were often trying to escape the frequent and periodic persecution of the Jews in Central Europe.
Giorgio Bassani
(Personality)Giorgio Bassani (1916-2000), author, born in Bologna, Italy. He was brought up in Ferrara where most of his fiction is set. He got his degree in Italian literature at the university of Bologna, but the antisemitic Fascist laws cut him off from general Italian society and he taught at the Jewish school in Ferrara and participated in anti-Fascist activities for which he was arrested and only released after the fall of Mussolini. He then moved to Rome. He wrote poems, stories and novels, many of them set in the Jewish community. His best-known works are The Garden of the Finzi-Continis and The Gold-Rimmed Spectacles.
Abraham Farissol
(Personality)Abraham ben Mordecai Farissol, known as Abrahamus Peritsol in Latin (c.1451-1525/28), geographer, scribe, and polemicist, best known as the first author to describe the newly discovered American continent in Hebrew, born in Avignon, France (then part of the Papal state). Working as a scribe, he moved to Mantova in Italy in 1468 where he was employed by Rabbi Judah ben Jehiel aka Judah Messer Leon (c.1420/25-c.1498), and then to Ferrara in 1478, where he also served as a cantor. Farrisol is a typical example of a Jewish scholar who managed to combine traditional Jewish knowledge with the new world of Renaissance culture. His Iggeret Orḥot Olam (“Epistle of the Paths of the World”, 1524, later translated into Latin as Tractatus Itinerum Mundi), a geographical and cosmographic work, is the first Hebrew work that refers to the European geographical discoveries at the end of the 15th century and early 16th century, including the sea route to India pioneered by the Portuguese and the American continent. Farissol presents in one work details about native American populations along with reports about the situation of Jewish communities in various parts of the world as well as calculations about the probable location of the Garden of Eden and the Ten Lost Tribes. As a scribe he copied numerous manuscripts, but also composed Magen Avraham (also known as Vikkuaḥ ha-Dat), a polemical work against Christianity and Islam, Pirḥei Shoshannim, a short Torah commentary, commentaries to the Book of Job and the Ecclesiastes, and published two prayer books for Jewish women in which he inserted the blessing "Blessed are You Lord our God, Master of the Universe, for You made me a woman and not a man" (בָּאַ״יֶ אֶמֶ״הָ שְׁעַשִׂיתַנִי אִשָׁה וְלֹא אִישׁ). As a translator, Farrisol translated into Hebrew the Logic of Aristotle and various texts by Porphyry of Tyre, a 3rd century Greek philosopher.
Guglielmo Ebreo da Pesaro
(Personality)Guglielmo Ebreo da Pesaro (also known as Giovanni Ambrosio) (c.1420-?), ballet master, theorist, composer, and choreographer, born in Pesaro, Italy. He began his artistic career around 1433. He trained under Domenico da Piacenza and worked at the court of Alessandro Sforza in Pesaro, as well as other courts in Camerino, Urbino, Ferrara, Ravenna, Milan, Imola, Padua, Mantua, and Naples. He was often called to create, prepare, or perform dances at important Italian court parties, and he became famous for his talent. In 1463, he finished his treatise on the art of dance, De praticaseu arte tripudii vulgare opusculum, which he dedicated to Galeazzo Maria Sforza, son of the Duke of Milan. He converted to the Catholic religion some time between 1463 to 1465, changing his name to Giovanni Ambrosio, and married a Christian woman from Pesaro. A son named Pierpaolo was born from the marriage, who later followed in his father's footsteps. Giovanni Ambrosio continued to work at various Italian courts, including that of Federico da Montefeltro in Urbino, until his death in 1473. Giovanni's last important engagements as a choreographer were in Naples in 1474 and in Pesaro in 1475. He tried several times to obtain stable jobs in other courts, such as that of the Sforza in Milan or that of the Medici in Florence, but was unsuccessful. In 1481, he was the ballet master of Isabella d'Este in Ferrara. The place and date of his death are unknown.