The Jews in Italy

Although most of us think of Italy as the cradle of Catholicism, in fact, the oldest Jewish community in the world is in Rome. Jews have been in Italy since the second century B.C., arriving from settlements in Palestine when Judah Maccabeus formed an alliance with Rome. After the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in A.D. 70, more Jews came to the city, many as prisoners of war. A relief on the Arch of Titus in the Colosseum depicts the carrying away of the menorah from the Temple. (For years, no Jew would ever walk under this arch. In 1947, when the United Nations announced the formation of the Jewish state of Israel, Roman Jews met at the Forum to celebrate and dance under the arch.) At the end of the first century, some thirty thousand Jews lived in Rome, settled around Trastevere and the Isola Tiburina.