History of the Jews in Calabria
However, legends state that many Jewish captive slaves were brought to Calabria after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in the year 70.
[2] Other legends state that it was the Hellenized Jews from Egypt who introduced the Etrog to Calabria during the time of Magna Graecia.
[7] The first dated mentioning of Jewish communities in Calabria were by Roman officials in the service of the Western Emperor Honorius in the year 398.
[12][13] Another popular legend states that after the Sack of Rome in 410, Gothic general Alaric carried his booty, including the Temple Treasure of Jerusalem, South with him on his way to Africa.
[14][15] In the year 925, an army of Fatimite Muslims, led by Ja'far ibn Ubaid, invaded Calabria which devastated the Jewish population.
In fact, unlike many of the Jewish communities of Western Europe, the Jews of Calabria largely escaped the atrocities associated with that period.
[22] After several centuries of relative peace and prosperity under the rule of the Kingdom of Naples, the persecution of the Calabrian Jews started in 1288 with accusations of blood libel.
[23] Under Charles II of Anjou with the assistance of the friars of the Dominican Order, the decline of the Calabrian Jewish communities began.
During this time many Calabrian Jews and their wealth began to move to other Jewish communities of France and Northern Italy.
In 1348, during the years of the Black Death, a Jew by the name of Agimet of Geneva, confessed under torture to poisoning the wells of Calabria among other places.
Some historians ponder the connection between Garton's pioneering mass production revolution of Hebrew books and the raise of Ashkenazi prominence in religious scholarship.
[28] A short-lived revival of the Calabrian Jewish communities began after Sephardic Jews fleeing the Spanish expulsion arrived in 1492.
Despite their conversion to Catholicism, many converted Jews of Calabria were regularly discriminated against and were forced to live as second class citizens.
Many Jewish scholars, such as Rabbi Hayyim ben Joseph Vital and descendants of the Isaac Abarbanel were known to have come from or resided in Calabria.
[44][45][46] Also, the 15th-century Christian Hebraist, Agathius Guidacerius, a well regarded Greek and Hebrew grammatical expert was born in the Calabrian town of Rocca-Coragio.
During World War II, Italian Dictator, Benito Mussolini built the internment camp of Ferramonti di Tarsia near the Calabrian town of Cosenza.
The Ner Tamid del Sud Synagogue in the town of Serrastretta, a European member congregation of Reconstructionist Judaism, serves the regional Jewish community.
For example, the lighting of Friday evening candles, avoiding pork and shellfish, or meat mixed with dairy products.
[56] In 2007, Israeli land developer, David Appel, announced his plans to create one of the world's largest vacation/gambling resorts in the Calabrian town of Crotone.
One is Alitalia[59] and the other being El Al.[60] As all of the original Jews of the southern Italian area, which was at some time part of the Byzantine Empire the Jewish community of Calabria was consisted of Romaniote Jews[61] which had close ties to the Greek-speaking communities of the mainland Greece and of Constantinople[62] and later to the Ottoman Empire.
[67] Despite Mosaic prohibitions against astrology, this occult art was popular with the Jews of Southern Italy, including Calabria, during the Byzantine era.
