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Europe 2007 2008 Monday, December 10, 2007  The
Jews of Florence constructed a beautiful Moorish style synagogue between
1874 and 1882; today it serves a community of about a thousand people.
Throughout Italy, synagogues, before “emancipation,” in 1870, could not
occupy standalone buildings. The synagogues of the ghettos, as in Venice,
generally occupied the upper floors of an existing building. The Florence
synagogue is special in that it has its own standalone building in a very
nice green setting. The synagogue houses a small Jewish museum on the second
and third floors. To enter the synagogue and to visit the museum, I had to
go through an interesting security glass doorway. After storing my backpack
in a locker, I entered a most unusual security passage that looks like a
large bottle. The way it works is that first a narrow glass door rotates
open on one side of the bottle to let one person into the glass vestibule.
The first door closes and you find yourself inside a glass cylinder. Then,
when the security guards are satisfied, another narrow glass door, on the
other side of the bottle, opens to let you into the ticketing area. Wow! The synagogue intrigued me because the Moorish architectural design is actually based on the design of the Hagia Sophia mosque in Istanbul. The four great arched vestibules on the sides of the Florence synagogue support the great central dome just as the arched vestibules of the Hagia Sophia support its central dome. The exterior stone of the synagogue is beautiful travertine marble (beige colored) and pink pomato marble arranged horizontally in layers, but the interior woodwork is elaborately painted in dark red and dark earth colors. The most striking features of the exterior are the large blue central dome and the two smaller onion-shaped side domes. The domes are blue due to the oxidized copper construction. It seemed to me that the interior of the synagogue is a mishmash of styles inside. For example, as in orthodox synagogues, the bimah, the reading lectern, is in the center, and the Torah is housed in the Ark on the front wall. The Ark here has black marble columns on each side, and the doors of the Ark have scars inflicted by fascist bayonets. Also, in the orthodox style, the women’s gallery on the second floor overlooks the congregation. However, in a very nonorthodox style, the synagogue has a beautiful organ, and a raised pulpit like you might see in a Catholic church! I tried to get an explanation, but the young attendant sort of shrugged his shoulders and told me “this is how it is in Italy.” After touring the synagogue and the museum, I went down the street to Ruth’s Kosher Vegetarian restaurant for lunch to have a very nice meal. Unexpectedly, I spent about two hours in the restaurant talking to fellow diners. I had enjoyable conversations and learned some things from the other people in the restaurant. A mother and daughter from Tampa, Florida, were spending a few days in Italy. The daughter is a graduate student at Oxford; her mother works for the St. Petersburg Times newspaper. They came for a short visit and the two are touring a few places in Italy. The daughter is working on an advanced degree in environmental science at Oxford; she told me that her interest is in global warming and marketing. I found our discussion a coincidence considering the Nobel Peace prize presentations today to Al Gore and the UN scientists. An Israeli, Ph.D. in neurology, was having lunch prior to attending a conference. He came to the museum to research the history of Matzo in the archives. He showed me the copies of documents he found that tell the story of a shortage of Matzo during the Second World War, and document various Italian Jewish communities aiding each other. It always amazes me at what people are interested in. I would never have guessed that someone would seriously study matzo, but in the context of Jewish history, it makes sense. I spoke to a the third group of people from Liverpool, England; this group included a man, his wife and the wife’s mother. They told me about the Holocaust Memorial Day that will be commemorated in Liverpool on 27 January, and they told me that Liverpool has been designated the Culture Capital City of Europe for 2008. The wife serves on the Liverpool city council. There are some very interesting people traveling, and I have really enjoyed my conversation with many so many during my trip. Wednesday, December 12, 2007  Florence
is located in the north-central part of Tuscany, and I am using the city as
a base from which to visit places in the region. Yesterday, I went to Pisa,
today I went to Lucca, and in the next few days, I plan to visit Assisi,
Livorno and Siena.Yesterday’s trip took about an hour to get to Pisa; I guess I had to go there to see the leaning tower. Within the partially walled city, the cathedral, called the “duomo,” sits in a large park-like setting; the cathedral’s leaning bell tower and baptistery also occupy the space. A portion of the old city wall runs along the backside of the park; the wall stands behind the duomo, and on the opposite street facing the complex, about fifty souvenir stalls back up to the buildings. Italian engineers have stabilized the leaning tower, and they believe its four-meter lean off vertical should last a long time. Today, it took about two hours to get to Lucca, a medieval walled town that fortunately suffered little or no damage over the centuries. Lucca has several beautiful churches and bell towers; I climbed about 250 steps to the top of the tower of the Palazzio Guinigi for a spectacular view of the city and the surrounding Tuscan countryside and the snow capped Apuane Alps in the distance. I also walked along the top of the city wall and got to peek into the Palazzio Pfanner, a palace named after its owner, Felix Pfanner, the Austrian who brought the art of beer brewing to Italy! Finally, walking back to the train station, I passed a bakery that had large fancy chocolate and white cakes in their window display. The owner of the bakery called them “patentina decoritavo,” and they are only made during the Christmas holidays. Friday, December 14, 2007 The Medici palaces in the old city contain many of the great treasurers of Firenze. However, in addition to their palaces, the Medici’s built country villas that are not very far from the old city center. Yesterday, I visited two of the Medici villas, La Petraia and Castello. A local public bus let me off close to the villas, but I still had to walk about a mile uphill. In the villa La Petraia, a young tour guide explained the various works of art and the furnishings. I saw an amazing watercolor painting of the waterfront in Florence; the painting is a panorama about eight meters long. During the Second World War, the retreating Germans went through the villa shooting and destroying things. The watercolor had been shot up, but you could not tell the painting had ever been damaged; the restoration is incredible. The gardens of both villas contain formal geometric boxwood plants and fountains. An elderly countess, the last of the Medici’s, willed the family’s art and property to the city of Florence.  Early
this morning, I took an early train out of Florence to see Assisi. It took a
couple of hours to get to Assisi, but the town is about two miles from the
train station, and, of course, it’s uphill! On my travels, I have seen
hundreds of churches and sights of great religious importance, but Assisi
may be the most emotionally moving place that I have visited. The 13th
century Basilica of San Francesco literally glows in the sunlight. A brick
pathway leads up the mountain; many of the bricks are inscribed with the
names of people from all over the world. Saint Francis lived in Assisi. In the world’s great religions, there are people who have renounced wealth and power to serve a higher spiritual purpose. In Judaism, Moses, although not born to wealth, lived as a prince in the Pharaoh’s household, and probably could have ruled Egypt. Also born into wealthy family, the Buda rejected worldly possessions to follow a life of great spirituality. The Buda’s father even tried to keep his young son from seeing people living in poverty or suffering from diseases. 
St. Francis was also born into a wealthy merchant family, and although not
an ascetic, he did renounce his wealth and put on humble robes to pursue his
spiritual path. He also rejected military service, and seems to have been a
religious pacifist. Of course, his lifestyle attracted other people who came
to call themselves “Frati Minori,” Friars Minor, and later became the
Franciscans who pledge themselves to a life of “poverty, chastity, and
obedience.” Their greeting is “Pax et Bonum,” Peace and Goodwill.I especially noted the similarity to American Indian traditional ideas in St. Francis writing. In his Canticle of the Creatures, St. Francis praises God for “sister moon” and “brother wind.” Perhaps the most interesting stories of St. Francis concern his love of the natural world, its creatures and plants. One of those stories describes a scene in which St. Francis preaches to a flock of birds that silently listen to his sermon. The town of Assisi is a gem with old narrow stone streets and buildings. There are many churches in Assisi, but I could not see them all in one day. However, the Basilica of San Francesco held my attention and fascination for hours. The basilica is actually two churches, an upper and a lower church. The lower church also has a stairway that leads down into the crypt containing the tomb of St. Francis. I sat for some time contemplating the cave like setting and the stone altar that contains the tomb. The upper church contains the great artwork of the basilica. A series of twenty-eight famous frescoes paintings circle the walls depicting the stories of the life of St. Francis, and inspirational wood and stoneworks by artists from all over Europe make the church exceptional. The basilica was badly damaged during an earthquake in 1997, but the restoration work has been extraordinary. For example, frescoes had broken off the walls and the fragments scattered on the ground. Artisans had to put tiny pieces together to restore the frescoes, and by one estimate, there were more than three hundred thousand fragments! Monday, December 17, 2007 I visited the seaport city, Livorno, yesterday, but there was not much interesting to me there. I saw the canals, and they have mislabeled the area “little Venice.” I say mislabeled because the Livorno canal area looks nothing like Venice. The central market is a huge historic structure, but it was closed. There’s also a modern synagogue in the city. The synagogue sits on the site of the ancient synagogue. During the Second World War, Livorno, because of its importance as a seaport, suffered almost total destruction from bombing. Leonardo DaVinci lived part of his life in Florence and part in Milan. Not many people have ever lived who could match Leonardo’s remarkable genius as an artist, architect, engineer, and scientist. In a small gallery here in Florence, they had a fine video showing Leonardo’s life and work. He documented many of his thoughts in small notebooks writing on both the right and left pages simultaneously with his right and left hand. He wrote backwards, i.e., from right to left, with his left hand on the left pages! He interspersed drawings and sketches on the pages of his manuscripts. When he died, he willed his manuscripts and possessions to one of his helpers, but over the centuries, people from all over the world have purchased individual items. For example, a thirty-eight-page manuscript cam to be known as the Leicester Codex because a wealthy Englishman named Leicester bought it. Not too long ago, Bill Gates bought the Leicester Codex, and according to the video, paid thirty million dollars!  Today,
I toured Siena, another of Tuscany’s storybook towns. Early on, Firenze and
Siena battled for supremacy in Tuscany, but Firenze won. The old part of
Siena contains several magnificent churches; I visited the Duomo, cathedral,
and the Basilica of Santa Caterina. The Duomo in Siena looks like the Duomo
in Firenze because of the multicolored marble exterior. The Basilica of
Santa Caterina, however, looks completely different; built of red brick, the
exterior of the basilica is simple, but immensely large. Inside the
basilica, a great vaulted timbered ceiling roofs a vast open space. Several
chapels occupy nooks inside, and have beautiful stained glass windows and
magnificent altars. Santa Caterina was one of the earliest female scholars
and leaders in the Catholic Church in Italy. The center of Siena is called
the Piazza Campo, a large open sloping brick plaza with the Palazzo Publico
on one side. The Palazzo has a tower that I climbed for an impressive view
of the city and the surrounding countryside. At the opposite side of the
piazza sits a rectangular fountain. On the sides of the fountain, two ornate
spigots have running water and signs saying the water is drinkable. I will stay in Florence a few more days, then head to Rome to end my trip to Italy. I should be in Rome over Christmas, and perhaps, I’ll join the crowds at the Vatican to hear the Pope deliver his annual message. Philip Sternberg Scoutmaster, Troop 1131 |