An exhibition on Purim, one of the most joyous holidays of the Jewish calendar, focusing
on its leading character, Queen Esther.
Renaissance works of art and precious parchments tell the story of the Biblical heroine
Esther and how she managed to save the Jewish people by foiling the plan laid out by
Haman, counsellor to the King of Persia. It is a timeless story that still teaches us very
much and which has been celebrated for centuries with banquets, masked gatherings,
parties and theatre pieces.
Jacopo del Sellaio’s “Ester davanti ad Assuero”, Esther before Ahasuerus (1475-1480 ca.)
from the Budapest Museum of Fine Arts, and Filippino Lippi’s tempera on panel “Vashti
lascia il palazzo reale” Vashti Leaving the Royal Palace (1475 ca.), on loan from the Horne
Museum in Florence are some of the jewels of the exhibition.
Thanks to our collaboration with the National Library of Israel, the exhibition also includes
the return of the parchment scroll of the Book of Esther to the city of the Estes where it
was made in the 17 th century.

The exhibition also offers a detailed look into local history: from Leghorn to Syracuse, from
Padua to Rome, and a contemporary reinterpretation with very engaging illustrations.
Furthermore, the exhibition also offers interactive spaces where children and adults can
participate and enjoy creative moments.
The exhibition is curated by Amedeo Spagnoletto, Olga Melasecchi and Marina Caffiero
with the collaboration of Sharon Reichel.

The exhibition has been organised in cooperation with the Museo Ebraico di Roma (the Jewish Museum of Rome). MEIS partners are: the Ministry of Culture, the Region Emilia-Romagna, the City (Municipality) of Ferrara and UCEI, the Union of Italian Jewish Communities. Supporting member: the Intesa Sanpaolo Bank. The exhibition is under the patronage of the Municipality of Ferrara, the Jewish Community of Ferrara and of the Embassy of Israel in Italy, with the contribution of the Guglielmo De Lévy Foundation, the Hera Group, Tper, Fondazione Palio Città di Ferrara ETS, Dimedia and Avis

Is it possible to showcase an entire century in just one exhibition?

Mario Toscano and Vittorio Bo believe so and have curated an exhibition divided into seven sections which offer a detailed overview of the twentieth century through the history, art and everyday life of Italian Jews.
A project which shows how this minority integrated into Italian society and their sense of national belonging who, went through a tortuous process which involved first the acquisition of citizenship, then the loss and finally the reacquisition of their rights.

The exhibition explores the period from the end of the 19th century after the destruction of the ghettos to the dawn of the new millennium, focusing on questions of importance for contemporary Judaism. It also deals with the Shoah: the tragic blow of the racial laws of 1938, the Jewish persecution and deportation.

The exhibition is enriched with contemporary artworks; photographs from public and private archives; historical documents and family objects. The many stories collected will make you discover and rediscover important Italian Jews from the art of Olga and Corinna Modigliani to the canvases of Corrado Cagli, to Antonietta Raphaël Mafai, Rudolf Levy and Emanuele Luzzati. Visitors will also have the opportunity to view the contents featured in the multi-touch table, a multimedia tool which offers access to in-depth studies, original documents and first editions, and contributes to completing the picture of the cultural history of the 20th century.

The exhibition Return to Ferrara. The universe of Leo Contini Lampronti, curated by Hava
Contini and Yael Sonnino-Levy, is a path leading to the discovery of an eclectic, ironic and highly
imaginative artist.
Leo Contini Lampronti was born in Nice in 1939. Although the family was originally from Ferrara,
he moved to Tel Aviv after his degree in nuclear engineering. In Israel he explored and
experimented several forms and techniques, devoting himself entirely to art, comparing languages,
words, and worlds.
His production ranges from drawings, Judaica (Jewish ritual objects), sculptures, paintings, original
creations – including tototomies, anasculptures and ARKS. The lasting bond with a physical and
metaphysical Ferrara, his parents’ city, re-lives in his canvases in a happy and original manner
maintaining his mysterious appeal, lingering through time.
The MEIS exhibition honours the artist who died in 2020 and whose story is a piece of the 20th
century history of Italian Jewry.

The exhibition covers two thousand years of history, offering projects, designs, documents and objects, architectural features, rituals and social features of both synagogues and Jewish cemeteries in Italy.

Case di vita. Synagogues and Cemeteries in Italy – curated by Andrea Morpurgo and Amedeo Spagnoletto – is an exhibition where the history of cities and people meet, seen through architectural design and projects, household objects, benefiting from precious loans and documents from the State Archives and Jewish Communities. The exhibition will be held from April 20 to September 17, 2023, atthe National Museum of Italian Judaism and the Shoah-MEIS in Ferrara.

The exhibition has been awarded the President of the Republic’s Medal, a prestigious recognition and is also supported by the Ministry of Culture, one of the founding partners of MEIS. Participating bodies and authorities include the Region Emilia-Romagna, the City of Ferrara and the Union of Italian Jewish Communities. The exhibitionisalsosponsored by the Intesa Sanpaolo Bank.

Patrons include the Foundation for Jewish Heritage in Italy and the Jewish Community of Ferrara with the support of the Guglielmo De Lévy Foundation, TPER, Hera, CoopAlleanza 3.0, AVIS and the Bottari Lattes Foundation. The exhibition is a new in-depth approach to architecture, rites and social features of Jewish synagogues and cemeteries as well as discussing the relationship between holy places, their evolution and changes taking place in the two thousand years of history of Italian Judaism.

“Once again, we are back with a theme which is very dear to our museum: the notion of house and home” – explains Amedeo Spagnoletto, Director and curator. “Synagogues are not only or prayers, in fact they are community houses. The title of the exhibition also enshrines the name of cemeteries in the Jewish world, Battè Chaim, which is to say, Houses of Life. Although they are not the same and differ, these two spaces, synagogues, and cemeteries, have harboured the lives, the stories, histories, and identities from thousands of years. Unlike private dwellings, they were spaces where self-representation shifted from a single person’s to the community’s and hence, according to the Jewish tradition, live for ever”.

The hall retraces a path that bears witness to the most complex and the happiest moment of the presence of Jews in Italy, seen through the eyes of history of architecture. Curator Andrea Morpurgo adds: “When dealing with Jewish architecture – and specifically synagogues and cemeteries – we are dealing with identity spaces, able to recreate a fascinating story where memories and stories interface, part and parcel of the history of our country”.

These buildings were used for worship and study, from the ancient synagogue in Ostia Antica to the mediaeval ones in Southern Italy dismantled in the 15th century to the hidden ones in the16th century ghettos: the exhibition retraces the various steps of the evolution of Jewish places of worship through drawings, documents, andextraordinary objects.

Exhibits include a late 15th century mahazor(prayer book) from the Emilia Romagna area, shown for the first time, the Vercelli Aron ha-Qodesh, the Holy Ark or chamber for the scrolls of the Torah made in piedmont in the 17^th century, at the time of the ghettos. The designs for the big architectural competitions for the new monumental synagogues in the centre of the main Italian cities after the unification of the country. Materials come from city archives and Jewish Communities, the most famous being the Turin Mole Antonelliana originally built as a Jewish temple.

The history of Jewish cemeteries in Italy is overly complex and troubled: their evolution is a key to understand the relationship between Italian Jewry and those in power in the various periods of time. From the ancient Jewish catacombs in Rome and Venosa, to the fields or ortacci (the bad vegetable gardens) outside the city walls in the Middle Ages: Jewish rites always intrigued society, so much so that in 1720 Alessandro Magnasco, one of the main exponents of the fantastic and grotesque style, painted a Jewish Funeral currently displayed in the  Musée d’art et d’historie du Judaïsme now permanently at the Louvre, that granted the loan for the exhibition.

The 1772 funeral column of Yehudah Leon Briel can also be seen in the exhibition. He was one of the most famous masters of Italian Judaism between the 17th and 18th centuries. Mantua was one of the cradles of Jewish cultural, artistic, and religious life. Another item on display is the precious bronze clad seat thatthe banker and Senator Ugo Pisa commissioned to the sculptor Mario Quadrelli in 1887 for the Jewish Section of Milan’s Monumental Cemetery.

Dario Disegni, President of MEIS, said that he hoped visitors could discover Italian cities in a new light thanks to the exhibition, appreciating their beauty, unknown to most, thus leading to a new appreciation discovering a piece of one’s history that is closer than one may have thought.

Case di vita. Synagogues and Cemeteries in Italy is more than just an exhibition: it is completed by a programme of initiatives involving all the City of Ferrara.  Exceptionally, and thanks to the cooperation with the city’s Jewish Community, it will be possible to visit Ferrara’s three synagogues – the German, Italian and the Fano rites, currently not open to the public, and to be found inside the building in via Mazzini that Ser Melli gave the Jews of Ferrara at the end of the 15^th century. MEIS will also give you the opportunity to visit the Jewish cemetery of via delle Vigne, locus amoenus with its unique atmosphere, captured by Giorgio Bassani in the timeless garden of the Finzi-Contini’s.

The exhibition also has a catalogue in Italian and English, published by Sagep with essays by architectural historians, Hebraists, and archaeologists. They touch with topics such as the development of the role of women in Synagogues, the presence of synagogues and Jewish cemeteries in Italian movies, as well as offering in depth discussions on cemeteries in the early Middle Ages and a review of post Holocaust Italian synagogues.

Sukkot is one of the main festivals of the Jewish Calendar: it celebrates the survival of the Jewish people in the desert thanks to help from Heaven. The huts (sukkot, sukkah in the singular) symbolize the precarious nature of life and also the strong bonds with the rhythms of the land, environmental sustainability and the central role of water. The exhibition illustrates the traditional, religious and artistic sides of the festival and to its close link with nature. It is a new path through the Museum, an invitation to young and adult visitors to participate actively interacting with what they see and hear thus enriching the meaning of the exhibition.

 

For the first time, 10 decorated wooden panels depicting biblical scenes will be on display. They were made for a Venetian sukkah in the late 18th or 19th century and are owned by the Abbey of Praglia. They are works of art of extraordinary values that survived despite their ephemeral nature and which were not accessible by the public till now.

However, a special feature of this exhibition project was the desire to supplement the itinerary with objects that bear witness to everyday Jewish life, such as the door of the Aron Ha-Qodesh, the sacred gilded carved wooden ark from one of the synagogues in the ghetto of Turin — donated in 1884 by the local Jewish Community to the Municipal Museum of Turin — or testimonies of personal commitment, represented for example by the trunk of Matilde Levi, a Red Cross nurse in Viterbo. This is the thinking underlying the exhibition, and the museum as a whole: the melding of a rigorous historical approach with significant references to art, contributions of a sociological nature, even of an individual and highly personal dimension, of great relevance even today.

Across the centuries, we reach the Unification of Italy and the First World War, the final date of the period analyzed. This gives us a clear picture of the various crossroads encountered in forming the Jewish identity, experienced in Italy. We see the Jews emerge from the ghettos to participate actively — and with great conviction — in the history of the country as it takes its founding steps, to then be locked “inside” once more under fascism, a period of horror in which they were deprived of their rights.

The exhibition is realized with the support of Intesa Sanpaolo, The David Berg Foundation, Guglielmo De Lévy Foundation, TPER and under the patronage of the Italian Ministry of Culture, the Emilia-Romagna Region, the Municipality of Ferrara, the Union of Italian Jewish Communities and the Jewish Community of Ferrara. Special thanks go to Fondazione CDEC and the late Ambassador Giulio Prigioni.

With “Ebrei, una storia italiana” (Jews, an Italian story), the MEIS recounts the experience of Italian Judaism, describing how it formed and developed along the Peninsula — from ancient Roman times to the Renaissance — and how it engineered its own identity, unique even when compared to other places in the Diaspora.