A World Without Us: The saga of a jewish family in Italy

Manuela Dviri

A World Without Us

The saga of a Jewish family in Italy

ISBN: 9781326928322

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Table of contents

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Part Five

EPILOGUE

GLOSSARY

Characters and narrators (played by themselves)

Principal locations

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Manuela Dviri

MANUELA DVIRI

A WORLD

WITHOUT US

Originally published as

UN MONDO SENZA NOI

translated from the Italian by

Judith

Dedication:

to Giacomo and Sergio Russi

second English edition, Italy, 2018

Simone Agnetti, Sara Dalena, Claudia Foletti

www.serviziculturali.it

Part One

THE GOOD TIMES

1

Last summer I met my ancestor Jacob Russi.

The sun high in the sky warmed the stones of the beautiful city surrounded by ancient walls and ran through the streets of Ragusa in Dalmatia, between aristocratic palaces and Baroque churches and there he was my ancestor, my Jacob.

He stops for a moment at Onofrio's Fountains, adjusts his coat, then turns on to the polished sidewalk of the main street, the stradun, on his way to the synagogue, hoping there will be enough people to make up a minyan: it requires the presence of at least ten men to initiate the prayer, the tefilà. And at that time there were not so many Jews in Ragusa, maybe two or three hundred, not more. Strangely enough, that was about the same number of Jews there were in my hometown Padua when I grew up there.

This first Russi I met was a very determined, rather stubborn Jewish man: practical, feet firmly on the ground. Born in the eighteenth century, of Spanish origin, his family had probably moved from Turkey to Ragusa (today’s Dubrovnik) just a hundred or so years back, a handful of generations…

And I wonder – what were your dreams, Jacob Russi? What were you looking for? How did you spend your days? What were you thinking on this particular day? Maybe of that debt? Of the money you lent and you're hoping to get back soon?

Because you know, my Jacob certainly handled plenty of money; there are documents to prove it. He wasn’t the only one. For centuries it had become convenient to let Jews get their hands dirty with the dung of the Devil; and if a few of them got rich handling this common filth, so be it.

Jacob was probably quite good at his job because by 1808 (again there are quite a few documents to prove it) he had become very influential in his small community, influential to the point of signing along with three Jewish Deputies a letter addressed to his Excellency the Duke of Ragusa. In the letter, a supplica, he asked for the Jews of this free city to be granted citizenship like all other Jews in the Kingdom of Italy.

The petition was granted. Dubrovnik was after all an open city that welcomed all people, Jews included.

After six years, happy with the result, Jacob picks up his pen again to write a second petition, together with «two humble very worshipful servitori», Deputy Abraham di Salomon Pardo and Deputy Giusè Leon Levi Mandolfo.

Monsieur Jacob was to ask for the help of his Excellency on a really unpleasant matter: the Jews, Jacob wrote, were not allowed to leave home during the three days of Easter, and another three days during Holy Week, at the risk, if they dared, «of being pelted with eggs and stones». (Wouldn't it have been an act of total disrespect for the «killers of Christ» to go out in the streets on the very days commemorating the death and resurrection of the son of God?) Actually, Jacob admitted, the French had liberated them from this injustice and also in all States of Her Majesty the Empress of Austria Jews were now treated as all other citizens, still there were rumors… you never know… and Easter, unfortunately, was approaching. As I said Jacob was a very determined, cautious man.

We do not know what his Excellency's answer was, but for sure Jacob managed to survive the dreaded Easter week, was able to read the haggadah (the story Jews read at Passover) and happily hold the Seder (the Passover dinner) with his family. I find him alive and well as head of that same family, a few years later, in the local registry records.

For the first time I have in front of my eyes his actual signature: Jacob Israel Russi. It was discovered by a cousin of mine in the Jerusalem Museum, at the bottom of the original ketubah from Jacob's wedding to Rachel Pardo. The bride has the same surname – Pardo – as one of the co-signers of the petition, Abraham di Salomon Pardo. Was she a relative, a daughter or sister of Salomon, married to Jacob in order to strengthen ties of faith and family? And how did the ketubah turn up in Israel, almost three hundred years later?

Destiny sometimes takes strange turns. Let's take a look at the Pardos of Dubrovnik at the time: they are certainly among the ancestors of cousins Anna Vera Sullam, my dearest childhood friend, and Serena Liuzzi, who lives in Kfar Saba, here in Israel. So my friendship with Anna Vera and Serena, born from a friendship between our fathers, is far more ancient than I thought, going back almost three centuries. I do not know exactly how it started and I'm not even going to try and figure it out, but we're almost family.

Stories of family and households… names, links, papers… little pieces of an ancient history and of relationships… how long have they traveled and are still traveling in time and space?

Amazing… when you think you have discovered everything and learnt the whole story you realize that you're only just starting.

2

I was born on 13th January 1949 and I died on 26th February 1998.

Then I was born again, different. Maybe stronger, maybe even better.

Life since then taught me to look forward, always and only forward. Like on a one-way street. No going back.

Until fate brought me together with my ancestors, starting with that lovely Jacob Russi in his coat, strolling along in the Croatian sun.

And everything changed again.

June 2014.

I had just returned to Israel, proud to have been part of the delegation to the historical meeting at the Vatican with Pope Francis, along with Israeli President Shimon Peres and Palestinian President Abu Mazen, when another of our Middle East infernos started. Again.

At the beginning I took it easy.

Unfortunately I have by now gotten used to these seasonal conflicts which tend to erupt and blow over in the summer; once in Gaza, once with Lebanese Hezbollah in the North. They last a couple of weeks, no more than a month.

I have even gotten used to the rockets that Hamas has been aiming at Tel Aviv, after the shock of the first time in 2012.

This time it was different. For those who lived in the South life became hell; a never-ending run to shelters or to protected areas – as they are called – marked by the shrieking, almost howling alarms, repeating the same toneless message: you have fifteen seconds to get to the shelter before the explosion.

A strange silence fell over the country between one alarm and the next, interrupted only by the constant television babbling of former generals, former colonels, former Chiefs of Staff, former politicians and former ministers.

Slowly the tourists began to disappear from town, then the streets started to empty out, and the cafes, the markets, and even the restaurants; if you caught an alarm while you were away from home, you had a full minute and a half to run for shelter inside the first building you could find. A good opportunity to make conversation with complete strangers.

Still, from the large beautiful windows of my Tel Aviv home, this was at first a deluxe war.

Feeling sure that nothing would happen to me and that the rockets would all be intercepted, like clay pigeons, by the sophisticated defense system invented by an Israeli engineer, I found myself spending most of my days on the sofa in the living room, near the only wall in the house not made of plasterboard which became my protected area to save me from Gaza's missiles. My children, who in their brand-new homes have state of the art safe rooms, made great fun of me. On the other hand, when dear Mr. Cohen, the well-known architect, had planned our white Bauhaus building in the 1940s, in his optimism he had not thought of providing us with an air raid/missile shelter, or similar.

By the way who knows when Mr. Cohen arrived first in Israel, and how?

And thinking of it, how had he managed to escape from Germany? Perhaps, after all, he was not that optimistic, or he would have stayed at home and our building would have been built by someone else.

If… if… if…

It is now forty-six years, four wars, two intifadas and two military operations since I came to live in Israel. Since then I went through difficult moments: running to the shelter with babies in my arms; sirens; terrorist attacks; months at home waiting for a husband called up on army reservist duty (he came back from the Yom Kippur war after six months away. I had been here in Israel only five years and had two small children).

I don't like wars. I am disobedient by nature, and patriotism, which the eighteenth century British writer Samuel Johnson termed the last refuge of a scoundrel, scares me: I am not that moved when the media tells us the Front Line embraces the Home Front, the Home Front embraces the Soldiers and the Soldiers embrace everybody. Wars make me sick, don’t make me embrace anybody at all.

Sad and preoccupied, I managed to postpone not once, not twice, but three times, my departure for Italy, which I had planned long before and had been looking forward to all winter. But in the end I had to leave. In a very bad mood, somehow against my own will, I left for Italy. I had already paid the ticket and I felt it would be a waste to throw it away. I have always been a practical person, too practical, maybe.

In Italy, the dazzling sun of Tel Aviv was replaced by a flat grey sky, almost autumnal. Meanwhile the army had mobilized reservists, and had moved towards Gaza. Not long after, we began to get the names of the first Israeli fatalities.

And to hear many, many, too many dead Palestinians.

In Italy I felt terribly alone and out of place, almost a stranger. I felt awful. I didn't sleep at night. I could only feel pain. For their unfamiliar faces and for our familiar faces.

Once I got to sleep I dreamed of the tunnels discovered by Israeli soldiers: they went from Gaza all the way to the other side, to the living rooms and bedrooms of the people living in Kibbutzim near the border. Inside the tunnels they had found uniforms of the IDF, Israel Defense Forces, and then arms, sleeping pills, even motorcycles. The enemy, this confused and faceless entity, had created an underground world, a somber parallel reality from where to start a well-organized offensive to kidnap and kill civilians, soldiers, men, women and children.

I spent the days and most of the nights looking for updates from Israel, tapping the screen of my cell phone. But however smart my phone was, at one point it gave up and stopped working. The battery would not charge. Perhaps it could not take it any more either.

I was terrified by the idea of losing all my phone contacts, and felt totally cut off. Alone. Unable to talk to anyone.

Each motorbike that whizzed by, sounded to me like the howl of the air raid sirens.

Then I found a life saver. A black box, smaller than a book, bigger than a pack of cigarettes. An external hard disk drive from my computer, which I had left and forgotten months before in a drawer of the house in Padua, in one of my endless wanderings.

The term hard disk drive is technically correct but too cold and inadequate in my case because there was something warm inside: a museum of memorabilia, an album of faces, a trip into the past. Memory or rather the sum of memories, of lives, of faces, sad and happy: under the black plastic casing were hundreds of photos, pages and pages of diaries, letters, transcripts of talks. Documents spread out like clothes in the sun hanging on the threads of my, our life, our lives.

There were the stories I had collected during the long and peaceful winter that had preceded that difficult summer. There was this story. I dipped in and my heart found peace. The memory of my grandparents, great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents, my father and my mother, their uncles and cousins, friends and comrades in adventure and misfortune seemed to come right out of that box to keep me company and give me comfort in the most distressing moments of that summer and of my life.

3

We are people who don't give up, I told myself. Masters of survival. They didn't know if they would make it, but they did not surrender. The threads that hold up our past, however thin, were strong. Stories, surfacing from the plastic box. Stories, arising from everyday life .

Among the ancestors of my beloved Jacob Russi of Dubrovnik there was David Russo, a shochet and bodek, the ritual butcher who slaughtered animals in accordance with the rules of strict Jewish Kashrut (for those who don't want to look this up in the glossary Kashrut sets out the rules regarding what one is allowed to eat and what is forbidden). They say that David was the one who changed the family surname to Russi to differentiate himself from one Baruchia Russo, a Turkish false Messiah, follower of the more famous Shabtai Zvi, a very popular mystic in the 18th century, a century famous for strange messianic characters.

And speaking of false Messiahs, and of the sick fascination they can exert, this summer one of them turned up in Israel, determined to fight with the IDF against Hamas. At Tel Aviv airport passport control an officer thanked him kindly and denied him entry. Undaunted, he went back to Rome, where he had the great idea of decapitating a badante, a woman caregiver.

False Messiahs are always dangerous.

Back to Jacob. In the annals of Ragusa, my Jacob was registered a few years later as Giacomo Russi, which sounded more modern and integrated: no longer shochet and bodek like David, no more animals for the slaughter, but merchant, living in the Dalmatian city with his wife Rakelle Pardo – the Rachel of the ketubah – and their children. The firstborn, of course, was named David. Among the Russi family these are the names we find: Jacob and David.

As far as we know my ancestor did not write any more petitions.

And his eldest son David (or Davide) went on to marry Stella Levi Mandolfo, who had the same surname of that other Deputy who signed the petition: in Ragusa, as I said, the Jews were not many, and marriages were arranged between them. In 1821 Stella gave birth to another Jacob, who as an adult will land up in Ancona.

And that Jacob in turn will have a son and will call him David.

And all these Jacobs and Davids which make up the Russi tribe's past, are also part of me: they are a quarter of myself and my past, branches and roots and leaves of the tree from which, at some point, I will grow.

The enterprising Jacob, son of David, son of Jacob, son of David, is always looking forward. And up there, over the rooftops and streets of Dubrovnik, the sea opens up. And beyond the sea there is Italy, and in Italy there is the beautiful city of Ancona. Certain that he will find new markets for his commerce, Jacob crosses over and ends up along with his father in the Doric city. At first father and son become members of an ancient pharmaceutical company established by a Papal Bull (no less) «G. Collamarini and Co.», which later became «The Successors to G. Collamarini and Co.», then «The Russi Society and Co., Ancona», the «Successors to G. Collamarini and Co.» and finally, in 1891, a new company called simply «Russi & Co.»

Jacob will take over as owner on the death of his father.

With a grim air and a huge nose like a caricature of the so-called breverante, the misspelled name that in certain Italian regions was given to the everlasting Wandering Jew, penetrating eyes under well-defined dark eyebrows, an austere look, here is Jacob in a portrait on the wall of many of my cousins’ houses.

That’s the way I get to meet this Jacob, my great-great-grandfather. I imagine him elegantly dressed according to the fashion of the mid nineteenth century (he was born in 1821) in sturdy clothing, simply cut and practical, starched square-necked shirts.

I look at him in that old pencil portrait drawn by an unknown hand. Once in Ancona, he marries the young Enrichetta Seppilli, from a very good Jewish Ancona family, and that probably helps him fit in with the local Jewish community. From this marriage five children will be born. David (known as Davide), Vito, who died at only one year old, and then the three girls, Rachele, Bianca and Sara.

Jacob was a prudent and clever man who laid the foundations of the company and taught his son the business. And behind the pencil strokes of such an uninviting frown, Jacob must have been a good and kind man and capable of great love and affection, because there's so much tenderness in the names of his daughters, and especially in the diminutives that ran in the family: Rachelina, Bianchina and Sarina.

If Jacob in the coat is the leader of the 19th century Russis, Davide born in Ancona will kick off the saga of the Russi clan in the 20th century. And just to make some order in this flood of ancestors and in their often identical names, this Davide is my mother's grandfather, my own maternal great-grandfather.

4

In Italy the days passed slowly.

I strolled restlessly around my refuge, between present and past, wondering if in that past there were signs of the future.

But I always came back, almost inevitably, to Gaza. To Gaza where Hamas rockets set off, intending to kill. The Gaza that I had known, the places I had seen when the Israeli army had ripped out the settlers who had lived there.

In the long summer nights I was accompanied by the distant echo of their protests at the time: insulting, weeping, despairing, imploring, pleading, screaming. It was the summer of 2005, that year Israel had made the unilateral decision to dismantle the settlements built there. I remembered the village of Shirat Ha Yam (song of the sea), a surreal, enchanted place, blessed by nature and breathtakingly beautiful, just seventeen settler cabins on the beach. I wonder what happened there during this long summer of 2014. Who lives there now? Are the seventeen cabins still there?

And what does destiny hold for the unfortunate inhabitants of Gaza, caught between Egypt, Israel and Hamas, without hope and without a future?

I had only one wish: that the horror be over. And instead, the number of deaths continued to rise in Gaza, and so did the despair of the residents of southern Israel hammered by rockets. Meanwhile, at the same time, the ferments of war were growing everywhere in the world: in Syria, in Ukraine, in Iraq, in Libya, and the boatloads of refugees, often swallowed up by the sea, trying to cross over to Europe in far more desperate conditions than that of Jacob Russi at the time. They reminded me of other refugees from other times and other ships... of people persecuted then for religious reasons. The world seemed to be going crazy: civilian casualties, destruction of homes and holy places, the economic crisis, all ended up in a swamp from which we still seem unable to extract ourselves.

Even a new disease appeared: Ebola.

Then we began to see, multiplied a thousand fold by the Net, the first heads cut off by men dressed in black, with their faces covered, apparently belonging to an organization whose precise name we didn't even know. Digital images of medieval barbarity perpetrated by a so-called Islamic State.

They started talking about World War III, and new, strange and most reluctant alliances began forming in an insidious panic, and we started asking ourselves the dangerous and sinister question: «Is the enemy of my enemy my friend?»

Meanwhile in Gaza and in Israel the war continued. Some accused us Israelis of not dying enough, while on the other side they were dying like flies. Over-protected by technology, they said. But frankly I can do without dying, not for the time being, not, at least, voluntarily. I don't feel guilty still being here and living in a country that has the good fortune to have managed, at least this time, to protect its citizens.

I think of a friend from Padua whom I met in Via Manin by chance. And I remember his question a few minutes after greeting me: «But (it always starts with a but) tell me, why do you kill Palestinian children?» and I seemed to read in his thoughts that a world without us, after all, would not be such a bad thing. And everyone and everything would be so much easier. Islamic State? Well, we can't get upset about everything; Obama or Putin, or God-knows-who – let them worry about that. Not me….

«What, you're not boycotting?» a friend was asked, while she was devouring a monstrous Israeli mango.

I felt trapped. Alone and away from home I couldn't find peace.

I couldn't live.

5

So I ran away and took refuge in memories. I dreamed of other times, more tranquil and serene, at least so it seemed to me from my point of view, from the here and now. I had another look at the beautiful ketubah of Sarina Russi, sister of grandfather Davide, daughter of Jacob.

Umberto I reigned in Rome and the day was October 9 1880, «at eight of the afternoon», according to the precious document which had somehow come down to me intact, when the agreement was signed for the marriage (this was the ketubah, a written agreement that even today the mother of the bride takes home to keep, since among other things it indicates how the wife should be compensated in case of divorce) between the groom Emilio Tedesco [son] «of the living Signor Raffaele» and the bride Sara Russi (Sarina) [daughter] «of the living Jacob». The location of the signature is via Podesti, Ancona, where the Russi family's house was located. Here, in front of the notary Paolinetti and witness signor Giacomo Almagià, Jacob Russi son of the deceased Davide, merchant born in Ragusa, accorded the bride, his daughter Sarina, a dowry of 40,000 lire, «of which 3,200 in clothing and linen effects and 800 in gold and precious objects», while the remaining 36,000 lire – which according to my calculations would be about 200,000 euros, but let us not forget that purchase power was much higher – were 'actual cash' that the spouse would receive in two payments over three years «in legal currency in effect».

As for the groom, the contract states that «he must offer his father-in-law as a guarantee of this amount a suitable investment, either by the acquisition of a property or by an extensively guaranteed mortgage loan».

Yes, these were the good times. Safe, steady times. Safe investments and steady profits, even if not completely guaranteed.

It's hot in Israel, the air is full of invigorating energy. I'm going to see a descendant of Sarina who lives here, in Israel, in a retirement home not far from the Weizmann Institute of Science, named after Chaim Weizmann, the first President of Israel.

Silvana Banon paints and sews; she is lively and pleasant. We take coffee together and she accompanies me into the past. She tells me about her grandfather Emilio Tedesco, husband of Sarina Russi. Emilio ran a pharmacy and so would have been part of the business which the Russis and their circle of relatives were involved in, with excellent results, throughout most of the nineteenth century. It is likely that he would have invested his wife's dowry, as required by the marriage contract, in pomades and laxatives – but would have also sold excellent carbonated drinks, the sort which «hey, they don't make them like that anymore». For sure he went on to set up a confectionery firm in Bologna, which continued to thrive until the day of Shame. Emilio departed this world in 1910, leaving an inheritance equally divided between his sons and his one daughter, Alba, mother of Silvana.

It's a pity that there wasn't the same habit in the Russi family; in this they were more old-fashioned. In our maternal tribe, only the males inherited; but females did not do too badly, because they usually married well and got generous dowries. As for my paternal tribe, alas there wasn't a lot, at least to start with, to inherit. They weren't even a tribe, the Vitali Norsas, in the numerical sense.

We pour another cup of coffee, huddled close to each other in Silvana’s mini apartment at the rest home, and I shall discover from our conversation that her life would again cross with that of my parents and my dear ones, in a fascinating twist to the story.

Jacob of Ancona may have worn something more fashionable than a frock coat. He did not earn his living by lending money, like his grandfather and namesake, but became rich by hard work and thanks to a specialty that he probably brought back from Dalmatia: ginseng. From being a broker and merchant he had become what we would call today a pharmaceutical industrialist.

In a Jewish newspaper of 1887 he is remembered affectionately, as an excellent person, a leading light, known for his good Jewish sentiments, and a capable entrepreneur, well integrated into the social life of Ancona. In fact, even though he would never have boasted about it, he was known in the city for his humanity and generosity, often inviting the less fortunate to his table. Because, you know, despite the famed wealth of the Jews, masters of the world, in those days – and we are speaking only of Ancona – there were 240 poor Jews receiving assistance from various Jewish institutions in the city. The philanthropy of great-great-grandfather Jacob certainly conformed to the precept of Jewish fellowship but was also a way of introducing himself into the community of which he was now a part, as well as demonstrating the prosperity and solidity of his family. A way to let both Jews and Gentiles know, slowly but surely, that he had made it.

Still, for me and for his many descendants he remains little more than a shadow, a name at the top of the family tree. A very distant character whose life we can only try to imagine, in another century, therefore in another world. That’s why it was an unexpected delight for me, dilettante investigator digging into history, to find a clue as to Jacob's character among the papers preserved by one of my cousins: a beautiful letter on exquisite paper embellished in gold, addressed to grandfather Davide, son of Jacob, and sent from Jerusalem on 15 Elul 5648 (the Hebrew calendar date, corresponding to 15th July, 1888) by one Rabbi Sasson, lamenting the hardships and health problems which had reduced him to poverty; «knowing your esteemed house», he writes ruefully «and your Zadik [saintly] father who was always so kind to me, and knowing your rahman [ merciful] heart I hereby implore you to make a mitzvah [good deed] at this time, by coming to my assistance with nedavà [ charity]», in return for which he «your devoted servant forever, Rabbi Sasson», will offer prayers and invocations to «the holy God» not to be sparing with His blessings to the family of his benefactor. Other tiny cards, stored in a drawer of mementos by another cousin, are evidence of the offerings to the poor that my great-great-grandfather made every Saturday, after reading the weekly passage from the Torah, the sacred Jewish text in its traditional scrolls.

Holding those cards in my hand is really moving, I must confess. May your memory be blessed, Jacob, you were a pious and merciful man, as confirmed by the words of the shnorrer Sasson in Jerusalem, who evidently knew you well and appreciated your generosity.

I am reluctant to relegate to a footnote the meaning of shnorrer, a wonderful word in Yiddish, the language that was saved from the lost world of Jewry in Central Europe, dissolved and crushed by the Nazis.

But since I am in urgent need of a smile, I shall try to explain it with a joke. An example of the Jewish humor that made Woody Allen's fortune.

Two twin brothers periodically come and beg from Baron Rothschild, who never fails to have his Butler deliver them two envelopes, each containing a hundred francs. One sad day one of the twins gets ill and dies, but the other does not fail to appear at the usual time for his regular handout. The Butler delivers a single envelope, with his hundred francs. The shnorrer, resentful, protests: «Excuse me, young man, where are the hundred francs for my brother?». And the Butler, with the appropriate and well known courtesy of Baron Rothschild's staff: Forgive Me, Sir, but the Baron and ourselves understand that your brother has died. And the shnorrer: You understand? You understand?! Listen, young man, for the record: my brother's heir is me, not Baron Rothschild!.

The shnorrer from the shtetl, the