The problem arises from the fact that this photo was posted only on this blog, in February 2011, and it was never sent to anybody. How did it end up in the newspaper slideshow for the 50 years of the new synagogue of Livorno? A simple slip-up? An anonymous sender of someone else's pictures?
The facade of the old synagogue of Livorno, destroyed during Allied air raids in the Second World War.
The tebah, the pulpit from where the Torah was read. Part of the balauster was salvaged and was used for the same purpose in the new synagogue.
The Torah ark, which contained the Torah scrolls of the synagogue.
A frontal view of the tebah, you may compare it with this 1850 painting by Solomon Hart.
The old synagogue was destroyed in the Second World War, but some of its balusters survive in the tebah of the new one.
Yellow grille shutter, “Via Mentana”.
The clock of the Cathedral.
Awning of the bar “Giubbe Rosse” (Red Coats), “Piazza Grande”.
The windows of the Synagogue.
A window seen from an opening of the porticoes in “Via Cairoli”.
This Sunday the Synagogue of Livorno was open to the public for the European Day of Jewish Culture.
The band of our “Accademia Navale” played the national anthem and the European anthem, based on Friedrich Schiller's Ode to Joy from the final movement of Beethoven's 9th Symphony.
A concert was held by the Chorus of the Great Synagogue of Rome in honor of Rome's chief rabbi emeritus, the Livornese Elio Toaff. In background the exquisite baroque Aron Kodesh (Torah ark), a 1708 masterpiece from the Synagogue of Pesaro.
The chorus was lead by the maestro Claudio Di Segni, a tenor and a teacher at the “Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia”.
At the end of the concert the chorus and the soloist sang a version of the “Hatikvah”.
This is the Montefiore Windmill, which is not in Livorno but in Yemin Moshe, an old neighborhood in Jerusalem. The windmill was funded by the British Jewish philanthropist Moses Montefiore, who devoted his life to promoting industry, education and health in the Holy Land.
We have seen in several posts the area around “Piazza Cavour”.
It takes its name from the Cairoli brothers (Benedetto, Ernesto, Luigi, Enrico, Giovanni) who fought and fell in the wars for the Italian unification. Benedetto, the only surviving brother, became a respected politician and statesman.
Before 1784 the street was called “Via delle Quattro Cantonate degli Ebrei” (Street of the Four Corners of the Jews) because, at the time, most of the Jewish families lived in the area at the intersection with “Via del Tempio” (Temple Street), leading to the Old Synagogue. The above picture is taken just from that point, “Via del Tempio” is the street on the left, now leading to the new Synagogue, while in the middle we see the apse of our Cathedral.
From the apse of the Cathedral looking back to “Piazza Cavour”.
The first synagogue in Livorno was built around 1606 between the Cathedral and the Fosso Reale, then enlarged and embellished in various stages until 1789.
The temple suffered heavy damages during the last war, so the jewish community of Livorno decided to build a new synagogue rather than restore the old one.
The new synagogue was built in 1962 in the same place, in a square now named after Elijah Benamozegh. The jewish architect Angelo Di Castro (blacklisted under the fascist racial laws) designed a tentlike building, following the outlines of the original Tabernacle.
Elio Toaff, Chief Rabbi of Rome for fifty years, was born in Livorno in 1915 and is probably the most famous son of this community in recent times.
