Jewish Culture

Tradizioni & Ricette

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 […]

The exhibition Return to Ferrara. The universe of Leo Contini Lampronti, curated by HavaContini and Yael Sonnino-Levy, is a path leading to the discovery of an eclectic, ironic and highlyimaginative 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 […]

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 […]

Two thousand and two hundred years of Jewish history and culture in twenty-four minutes.  This is the multimedia show Through the Eyes of the Italian Jews, realized by Giovanni Carrada (author and curator) and Manuela Fugenzi (iconographic research).  A complex, rigorous project, the result of months of research and fine-tuning, this show provides a popular investigation […]

On January 17 2020, the National Museum of Italian Judaism and the Shoah-MEIS opened a permanent multimedia path entitled “1938: humanity denied”, curated by Paco Lanciano and Giovanni Grasso. This initiative was promoted by the Presidency of the Italian Republic with the contribution of the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research-Miur and the support of Intesa Sanpaolo. Strongly supported by the President of Italy Sergio Mattarella, the exhibition was unveiled in 2018 at the Quirinale — on the occasion of the eightieth anniversary of the promulgation of the racial laws — and is the first part of the MEIS exhibition dedicated to the Shoah. Through the use of multimedia installations that gathers vintage images, films and documents, “1938: humanity denied” creates an immersive experience that brings the visitor into contact with the drama of the racial laws, social ostracisim, Nazi-Fascist persecution and extermination. At MEIS, the path conceived of by the two curators is expanded with a site-specific installation by the internationally renowned Israeli artist Dani Karavan, created to remember the Italian experience of the Shoah. Already the author of several international works — Sinti and Roma memorial in Berlin, Way of Human Rights in Nuremberg, Homage to Walter Benjamin in Portbou and Way of Peace in the Negev —Karavan was the protagonist of the MEIS exhibition entitled “The Garden that doesn’t exist”.

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.