Elio Toaff

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Elio Toaff (2007)

Elio Toaff (born April 30, 1915 in Livorno ; died April 19, 2015 in Rome ) was the Grand Rabbi of Rome and one of the most important post-war Jewish figures in Italy .

Life

Toaff's birthplace is Livorno . His father was Alfredo Sabato Toaff (1880–1963), a rabbi and teacher of ancient languages ​​and from 1931 to the year of his death president of the Assemblea dei Rabbini d'Italia . His mother was Alice Jarach (1879–1973). Toaff studied law in Pisa because his father had reservations about his son's rabbinical career. His supervisor was the lawyer Lorenzo Mossa , who enabled him to graduate in commercial law in 1939 despite the Italian race laws of 1938 introduced by the fascist regime . In the Handbuch des Antisemitismus, Wolfgang Benz quotes Toaff's assessment that before 1938 there was virtually no noticeable anti-Semitism in Italy, and that the corresponding changes were all the more traumatic. In an interview with Italian journalist Nicola Caracciolo published in English in 1995 , Toaff said: “I have to say that if the Italians had been anti-Semitic, you would not be able to speak to me today because there would be no more Jews here. [...] On the other hand, the Italians have always recognized Jews as citizens they live with, whom they only saw as different because of their customs and religion. ”Toaff succeeded in doing a master's thesis on the Jewish trading companies in Palestine to complete his studies. At the same time Toaff studied at the Rabbinical Seminary in Livorno.

In 1941 he became a rabbi in Ancona , where he narrowly escaped capture by German troops in 1943 and was able to evacuate the Jewish community to Bari with local help. He joined the partisans in Tuscany in 1943 . He was captured and already sentenced to death and forced to dig his own grave, but was still able to escape.

From 1946 to 1951 he was a rabbi in Venice and taught Hebrew at the University of Venice . As the goal of his life he saw the assertion and spread of Judaism, as a living (or life) system and as still current teaching, against the turbulence and adversity of his time. Heinz-Joachim Fischer does not see forced suffering in him, but active teaching and community work as a guiding star.

Grand Rabbi in Rome

From 1951 to 2002 he was the chief rabbi of Rome and shaped the traditional but scattered and insecure community of Jews in Rome for decades after the Second World War . His main concern was the rebuilding of Jewish schools and the consolidation of the Jewish education system in Rome. During this period Toaff became the central figure of Italian Jewry . With the boxer and street fighter Pacifico Di Consiglio (known as Moretto) he founded a self-defense organization, remaining in the foreground as a spiritual leader and liaison to the religious and theological elite of Rome. The German view of the behavior of Pope Pius XII, influenced by Rolf Hochhuth's Der Stellvertreter , among others . during the German occupation, according to Nadine Ritzer, it was not taken over by Italian Holocaust survivors and rabbis. Elio Toaff remembered Pius XII when he died in 1963. the "compassionate kindness and generosity of the Pope during the unfortunate years of persecution and terror".

The Italian culture of remembrance changed significantly during Toaff's tenure. It was not until the 1990s that the public perceived the National Socialist extermination policy as specifically directed against the Jews. In Italy, among other things, the Vatican proclamation  We Remember: Reflecting on the Shoah 1998  such as the beatification process for  Pius XII  and the canonization of  Edith Stein in  1998 became of public interest, critical voices from the Jewish community were increasingly perceived as specifically Jewish. Toaff and the journalist and community representative Tullia Zevi saw in We Remember  an important step, which younger members of the Jewish community commented rather cautiously.

After the Palestinian attack on the Great Synagogue of Rome in 1982, Moretto intensified the pressure on anti-Semites and sympathizers of the terrorists. The Jewish community, which also gathered in the Tempio dei Giovani on the Tiber Island and created a new and attractive Jewish quarter, responded with commitment. Toaff covered and supported, among other things, high-profile actions by Roman Jews against neo-fascist groups in Rome in the 1990s and also against the occasionally feared termination of the legal proceedings against Erich Priebke . Toaff's work also includes the refusal of the funeral prayer for Benjamin Murmelstein , the controversial rabbi of the Jewish community of Vienna and the elder of Jews in the Theresienstadt ghetto , whom he had buried on the edge of the Jewish cemetery.

The generation shaped by Moretto and Toaff also took over the political leadership of the community after 2000, including Riccardo Pacifici , a grandson of Riccardo Reuven Pacifici . She responded with demonstrations and actions in cooperation with the non-Jewish community to the murder of three Israeli youths in 2014 and the attack on the Jewish Museum of Belgium in 2014 .

Role in the Christian-Jewish dialogue

Commemorative plaque on the ruins of the Chiesa del Luogo Pio in Livorno for the prayer for peace on September 24, 1986 by Cardinal Francis Arinze , Rabbi Toaff, Imam Abd Al Wahid Pallavicini and Pastor Davide Melodia

Elio Toaff promoted the Christian-Jewish dialogue and was open to attempts at rapprochement and reconciliation from the Catholic side and was an important contact person. An important basis for this was the Nostra Aetate declaration of 1965, a lasting legacy of the Second Vatican Council . The Holy See recognized Israel in 1984, signed a basic treaty in 1993 and established diplomatic relations with Israel on June 15, 1994. However, this took place strictly at the state (not religious) level, so no highest-ranking representative of the Jewish religion was identified or officially recognized. On April 13, 1986, Toaff received Pope John Paul II in the synagogue of Rome , an important and first symbolic step. According to Georg Weigel, an American Catholic intellectual and biographer of John Paul II, the latter wore the complete insignia , including the pectoral cross, precisely because of the official and symbolic nature of the visit . Toaff had raised concerns beforehand and internally in the sense of We have agreed: He comes dressed as always commented.

On April 7, 1994, a memorial concert to commemorate the Shoah was held in the Sala Nervi in the Vatican on the papal mandate . Elio Toaff took part in the concert alongside the Italian President Oscar Luigi Scalfaro and Pope John Paul II as a guest of honor, in terms of protocol on the same level. The reception of the Pope in the Roman synagogue, as well as the further steps towards political rapprochement between the Holy See and the State of Israel, were also welcomed by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz , an important religious leader and Talmud scholar in Israel. According to Steinsaltz, rapprochement does not mean a solution to the theological questions, and mutual recognition in the religious sense between Christians and Jews is not easy. The Israeli chief rabbis and leading Jewish scholars would have little or no interest in the classic Judeo-Christian conferences . At such events (translation of Der Spiegel) mostly good Christians stand against bad Jews .

As a senior Jewish representative, Toaff took part in the world prayer meetings in Assisi, which were held for the first time on October 27, 1986 at the invitation of John Paul II and which also took place in 1993, 2002 and 2011. These events raise important and fundamental theological questions about the liturgy and the process of common (or parallel) prayer and celebration by Jews, Christians and Muslims.

In 2001, Mayor Walter Veltroni honored him as an honorary citizen of Rome. On April 4, 2005 Toaff paid his last respects to the deceased and laid out Pope. Toaff was the only living person besides Stanisław Dziwisz mentioned in the Pope's will.

family

In 1941 Elio Traf and Lia Luperini, a teacher, married. They had four children together: Ariel, Miriam, Daniel and Gadiel.

One of his sons is the Israeli historian Ariel Toaff , whose controversial theses in the book Passover of the Blood also met the contradiction of Elio Toaff. Elio Toaff died in Rome on April 19, 2015, a few days before his 100th birthday, and was buried in his hometown of Livorno.

Honors

In 2010 the Fondazione Elio Toaff was founded in Rome. Its aim is to protect and preserve the Jewish heritage in Italy. The Museo Ebraico di Roma has dedicated two exhibitions to Toaff. 2010 on the occasion of his 95th birthday and then again in 2015.

Works

  • Perfidi giudei , fratelli maggiori ("Faithless Jews, big brothers.") 1987 (autobiography).
  • Eat ebreo. (“To be a Jew.”) With Alain Elkann, 1994.
  • Il Messia e gli ebrei. (“The Messiah and the Hebrews.”) With Alain Elkann, Bompiani, 1999.

Web links

Commons : Elio Toaff  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Entry on Alfredo Sabato Toaff on rabbini.it.
  2. ↑ http://moked.it/blog/2015/04/21/rav-elio-toaff-1915-2015-un-maestro-e-una-guida-per-tutti/
  3. ↑ Wolfgang Benz (Ed.): Handbook of Antisemitism. Volume 4: Events, Decrees, Controversies. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-598-24076-8 .
  4. ^ Nicola Caracciolo: Uncertain Refuge. Italy and the Jews During the Holocaust . University of Illinois Press 1995, ISBN 978-0-252-06424-1 . Interview with Rabbi Elio Toaff, p. 122
  5. ^ A b Nicola Caracciolo, Florette Rechnitz Koffler, Richard Koffler: Uncertain Refuge: Italy and the Jews During the Holocaust. University of Illinois Press, Champaign (IL) 1995, ISBN 978-0-252-06424-1 .
  6. ↑ Silvano Longhi: The Jews and the Resistance to Fascism in Italy (1943-1945). Litverlag, Münster 2010, ISBN 978-3-643-10887-6 , p. 166 ff.
  7. ↑ a b Elio Toaff died. ( Memento of the original from April 24, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: tachles , April 21, 2015 (accessed April 30, 2015). @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / tachles.ch
  8. ^ A b Heinz-Joachim Fischer: Popes and Jews: the turning point under John Paul II and Benedict XVI. LIT Verlag Münster, 2012, ISBN 978-3-643-11699-4 ( google.com [accessed September 30, 2015]).
  9. ↑ a b Bruce Weber: Elio Toaff, Spiritual Leader of Italian Jews, Dies at 99. In: The New York Times , April 20, 2015 (accessed April 29, 2015).
  10. ↑ a b c d e The Italian Exception: Defeating the Anti-Semites, by Michael A. Ledeen, Focus Quarterly, 2014
  11. ↑ Nadine Ritzer: Alles nur Theater ?: on the reception of Rolf Hochhuth's “Der Stellvertreter” in Switzerland 1963/1964 . Academic Press, Freiburg (Switzerland) 2006, ISBN 978-3-7278-1562-1 , p. 164
  12. ^ A b c Emiliano Perra: Conflicts of Memory: The Reception of Holocaust Films and TV Programs in Italy, 1945 to the Present . Peter Lang, 2010.
  13. ↑ Michael Ledeen: Amid Rising Anti-Semitism in Western Europe, Italian Jews Are Staging a Surprising Revival A strong communal response to a terrorist attack in the 1980s seeded a new generation of dynamic leaders. In: Tablet Magazine, April 25, 2014 (accessed April 30, 2015).
  14. ↑ a b c d e An agony for the church . In: Der Spiegel . tape 15 , 1994 ( spiegel.de [accessed on May 6, 2015]).
  15. ↑ a b Elio Toaff - the nice gentleman next door. ( Memento of July 30, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung , October 17, 2001 (accessed on the homepage of the diocese of Basel).
  16. ↑ George Weigel, What Jews and Christians can-do together , in National Review, April 22, 2015
  17. ↑ Gerald O'Collins: The Second Vatican Council on Other Religions . Oxford University Press, 2013, pp. 175 .
  18. ^ Pope John Paul Attends First Vatican Concert That Memorializes Holocaust: Religion: Pontiff looks on as concentration camp survivors light candles. American leads orchestra. In: Los Angeles Times . 1994, ISSN  0458-3035 ( latimes.com [accessed May 6, 2015]).
  19. ↑ http://www.holocaustchronicle.org/StaticPages/HolocaustScans/HiRes/1947/19470008000113. In: www.holocaustchronicle.org. Retrieved May 6, 2015 .
  20. ^ A b André Ritter: Side by side or with each other before the One God? A study on the question of how Jews, Christians and Muslims pray and celebrate together. Waxmann Verlag, 2010, ISBN 3-8309-7249-0 .
  21. ↑ Eric J. Greenberg: Roman Rabbi Mentioned in Pope's Will. In: The Jewish Daily Forward . April 15, 2005 (accessed April 29, 2015).
  22. ↑ http://www.ctr.it/pdf_news.php?id=1042&table=news
  23. ↑ Orazio La Rocca: L'incontro , La Repubblica, February 8, 2005.
  24. ↑ Elio Toaff - Obituary. In: The Daily Telegraph , April 29, 2015 (accessed April 30, 2015).
  25. ^ Laura Montanari: A Livorno i funerali di Elio Toaff. Il figlio Ariel: "Voleva tornare dai suoi avi". In: La Repubblica , April 20, 2015 (Italian, accessed April 30, 2015).
  26. ↑ http://www.arezzoweb.it/2010/nasce-a-roma-la-fondazione-elio-toaff-32261.html
  27. ↑ http://www.liberoquotidiano.it/news/cronaca/11712871/roma-sotheby-s-asta-di-beneficenza-per-fondazione-toaff-2.html
  28. ↑ http://www.ilsole24ore.com/art/SoleOnLine4/Tempo%20libero%20e%20Cultura/2010/05/museo-ebraico-mostra-rabbino-toaff.shtml?uuid=719ea6c0-56bf-11df-a6ca-2846584c0201&DocRulesView = Libero
  29. ↑ http://www.famigliacristiana.it/articolo/toaff-100-anni-di-vita-in-mostra.aspx
personal data
SURNAME Toaff, Elio
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian Grand Rabbi
DATE OF BIRTH April 30, 1915
PLACE OF BIRTH Livorno
DATE OF DEATH April 19, 2015
Place of death Rome