Italy's Little Jerusalem

courtesy: Valerio Livgni

Perched high on a tufa cliff...about 80 km south of Pienza...lies the town of Pitigliano.
It's known across Italy as "Little Jerusalem."

 Tufa is a soft rock, easily dug out.




In Pitigliano, residents have dug dozen of caves, large and small, to store their most noted product...

Wine, of course.  What makes Pitigliano's wine different is that it's white, not red.



Not unique, but very unusual for Tuscany.

Our friends Carol Aaron and Bruce Peterson were visiting and drove us down to Pitigliano...to see the other thing that the city is noted for...its Ghetto.





In 1570, the Grand Duke of Tuscany ordered all the Jews in Florence and Siena into ghettos.  Many didn't want to go and fled to Pitigliano where...at first...they could live wherever they wanted.

The Jewish community thrived.  They became very active in the leather trade...opening several tanneries.



A few years later, they were joined by more Jews from Lazio...the area outside Rome...who didn't want to move into the newly-formed Rome ghetto.


One history notes, the Jewish Quarter "became the liveliest rural Jewish center in all Italy."

In 1598, Leone de Sabato built Pitigliano's synagogue.

The Jewish community grew to one third's of the town's population, the highest proportion in all Italy.

This earned Pitigliano the nickname "Italy's Little Jerusalem."

In 1622, the Grand Duke of Tuscany reversed course and ordered the entire Jewish community into a ghetto in a small corner of the town.

For nearly four hundred years, the Jewish community survived and flourished here.

They continued to produce Kosher wine which was stored in this wine cellar...and is still available today.




There was a mikvah.




A Kosher butcher shop.

And of course a Kosher bakery with its special matzah oven.

Two of the town's special delicacies came from this bakery.

Sfratti...a honey and walnut strudel.

And Bolli...an anise-flavored donut.

The irony is today most Pitiglianos still eat sfratti and bolli but have no idea where their treats originated.

This is the interior of the synagogue.


In the 1960's, the tufa cliff supporting this building and a good bit of the medieval city collapsed.  The synagogue was destroyed.


By then, most of the Jews in Pitigliano had moved away.

In 1995, the city fathers rebuilt the synagogue...according to Leone di Sabato's original design...to commemorate the contribution of the Jewish community to the town's history.

Today, there is no resident rabbi.  There are no regularly scheduled religious services.  However, the synagogue is still used.  Jewish families from all over the world come to this little place for weddings and bar mitzvahs, keeping alive the reputation of Pitigliano as Italy's Little Jerusalem.