Shemini Atzeret/Simchat Torah 5776
Shemini Atzeret is a joyous holyday. But for Italian Jews is, also, the anniversary of the murderous attack to the synagogue in Rome in 1982. The Palestinian terrorists chose Shemini Atzeret because they knew that on that day the synagogue was packed with children. They killed one (Stefano Gaj Tache, 2 yrs old); and seriously wounded many.
As per the killers, they escaped. Lost in the fogs of the Cold War.
Only one has been identified: he died a few years ago, in Libya. Almost certainly the terrorists have enjoyed protection from some secret service; the pro-Arab faction of the Italian Foreign Minister, probably. This means that an Italian Jew has been killed by the Italian State, a few decades after the Shoah. I am sure that all the murderers have met their destiny: they belonged to some internal faction of the PLO. Who knows what happened to them afterwards. The Cold War is over.
What I cannot forget, and really I have a problem to forgive, is the hateful Antisemitic atmosphere that the media and the Left have created, after the massacre in Sabra e Chatila, in the months leading up to the terrorist attack. Despite loud and vocal condemnation of the massacre perpetrated in Lebanon, in Italy synagogues were defaced with graffiti. Threatening letters were sent to Rabbis and Jewish teachers. And how can anyone forget that empty coffin left in front of the synagogue, during a rally of the Trade Unions. After few weeks, it has been filled. Thank you, comrades. The first victim of antisemitism in Italy after the Holocaust was not a victim of Fascist antisemitism.
Who did it? Who protected the person who did it? Why can’t we know, now, who got the shameful idea? Why nobody from the Left, or from the Trade Unions, ever, ever, step ahead to apologise?
I personally lean of the Left. I certainly care about social justice. But I will never try to persuade anyone to change their political affiliation in name of Judaism. That is because our spiritual tradition is too rich to be confined to one faction only. That is exactly what we celebrate on Simchat Torah, embracing physically the whole Torah, with all its richness, its symbols, its contradictions (there are, and many, listen to the Rabbi).
But my personal, individual, relation with that kind of Left, roughly Marxist, Socialist or whatever, could not blossom because of what happened on that day. I have been part of the Radical Party, another kind of Left, so peculiarly Italian that is difficult to explain. Let’s say it’s more a heretic kind of Left, not a Marxist one. Anyway now, that Party also seems to be over.
It was Stefano Gaj Tache’, 2 years old. I silently remember his name, each year, during the Yizkor of Simchat Torah/Shemini Atzeret. It could have been one of my sons, and ever since no one of the comrades have found the courage to step ahead and to apologise for that evil white coffin, formerly empty.
Chag Sameach anyway, to the Jews on the Left and to those of the Right. And to the many who were in the Radical Party.