Venice and the Israeli reality

Given the dramatic political situation in the Middle East, the Jewish Community of Venice has initiated cultural programs aimed at raising awareness of Israel’s culture and history. To this end, a course on modern and contemporary Israeli literature, taught by Dr. Davide Cutrì was launched in March 2024. A series of five lectures curated by Prof. Claudio Vercelli, a distinguished historian of 20th-century contemporary European and Israeli Jewish history, began on the the 9th of May. The course, which is open to the city, aims to disseminate knowledge of Israel’s history outside the community in order to counter simplistic readings of current events and instead invite reflection on the complexity of a history that starts from afar.

The lectures examine macro-areas of Israel’s history, starting with current events and the events of October 7th, 2023, then proceeding backwards to focus, in subsequent appointments, on the roots of the opposition between the Arab world, Muslim societies and the State of Israel, the emergence of a Jewish national political community, questions of Israel’s legitimization and delegitimization, and the linguistic, historical and political debate around the term ‘Zionism.

During the first  lecture the events of last October 7th-10th were analyzed, focusing mainly on the geography of southern Israel, the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula.

Studying the evolution of the political instability in Gaza from 2005 to the present, as well as that of the West Bank over the past 20 years, was crucial to understanding and isolating the political agents active in the territory in question, but especially to defining the origin of the brutal attacks in early October, as well as the subsequent Israeli response to the aggression.

The wide influx of outside audience-about forty people at the first lecture-marked the success of the initiative. If public approval is confirmed for the subsequent lectures as well, other cultural activities related to Jewish knowledge open to all may be considered.

After all, the Community, in cooperation with Opera Laboratori Fiorentini, is already organizing for the second year courses on Judaism aimed at the city’s tour guides, and this too with an enthusiastically  wide crowd  of attendees – about eighty people.