It happens in Rome. It concerns the world

«We must avoid the temptation to give in to a crude equation, that is “Islam equals evil”». The significance and prospects of the visit of the Chief Rabbi of Rome to the largest mosque in Europe. Riccardo Shmuel Di Segni talks

Interview with Riccardo Di Segni by Giovanni Cubeddu

The Chief Rabbi of Rome Riccardo Shmuel Di Segni and the Secretary of the Islamic Cultural Center of Italy Abdullah Redouane. In the second row, to the right of the Chief Rabbi, Riccardo Pacifici, and left, Victor Magiar, vice-president and councillor respectively of the Culture of the Jewish Community of Rome

It is said in the Talmud that prayer is «serving God with the heart». And the heart, that is also lively intelligence and irony, emerges effortlessly in the way that Riccardo Shmuel Di Segni offers himself to his interlocutor, whoever he might be. For four years the Jewish community of Rome has chosen him as its Chief Rabbi, and so far has had no reason to regret the shrewd way, and at the same time open to the new, with which he has daily done his duty. Like a good parish priest - and the comparison doesn’t bother him – one can find him around the Major Synagogue (while someone from the community stops him to talk about a personal or family problem) or encounter his wit in the statements - sometimes genuinely cutting but never abstract – he makes to the press or at the institutional meetings of which he is natural guest .
It was a pleasure, therefore, to meet him on the day following the visit that the delegation of leaders of Judaism in Rome made on 13 March last to Europe’s largest mosque, in Rome. It had never happened before. To welcome Di Segni were the Secretary of the Islamic Cultural Center of Italy, the Moroccan Abdullah Redouane, and Mario Scialoja, President in Italy of the Moslem World League.
Concrete facts interweave. In the coming months the doors of the synagogue will open, in repayment of the hospitality, to the heads of Italian Islam, and to Benedict XVI, twenty years after Wojtyla’s visit. Riccardo Di Segni will be in the front line.

Chief Rabbi, where did the idea of your official visit to the mosque of Rome come from?
RICCARDO DI SEGNI: The history of this encounter is a long one. The idea was conceived many years ago, not least because Rome now has great symbolic meaning also for Islam, which has the largest mosque in Europe here. It’s natural that in Rome there should be a wholly preferential relation between Judaism and Christianity, for historical reasons. Whereas the lack of dialogue, in Rome, between us and Islam seemed an oddity, an aberration that needed putting right.
It was always my intention to give a demonstration of openness and a wish for encounter that was to take concrete form in a visit to the mosque. Getting there has been very difficult because the Islamic world is variegated, and simplistic tendencies are very often in danger of prevailing, whereby a Jew, tout court, is seen no longer only as representative of the State of Israel, which is obviously wrong in itself, but of a particular government of the State of Israel… An extremely dangerous vicious circle existed, that has in any case conditioned aspects of the Jewish-Islamic encounter.

Above, two moments from the visit of Rabbi Di Segni to the Rome mosque

But you insisted.
DI SEGNI: The various approaches had up till now finished in a dead end. The occasion was provided by the business of the publication in Denmark of the satirical cartoons on the prophet Mohammed. Both personally and as the Jewish community in Rome we immediately showed solidarity, because religious symbols are to be respected and one needs to understand and start out from the sensibilities of others. Certainly we didn’t express solidarity with the violent reactions on the Islamic side, but if for a Moslem the cartoon represents a serious insult, that should be accepted, and that’s it. That brought about the circumstances for a visit to the mosque finally to take place.
And what significance do you attribute to the encounter in the mosque?
DI SEGNI: The encounter took place with some representatives of the Islamic world, not with all the exponents of the Italian Moslem community. The basic message is that we need absolutely to reject simplification and simplistic reduction of Islam to fanatical extremism and terrorism. We therefore need to open our minds, to establish and foster relations with that part of Islam - the majority - that doesn’t identify with it, and that is vital. We must avoid the temptation to give in to a crude equation, that is “Islam equals evil”.
A need that none can understand better from experience than the Jewish community.
DI SEGNI: From the Jewish point of view we understand it perfectly, because generalization is one of the basic mechanisms that unleash anti-Jewish hatred. Generalizing about Judaism and generalizing about Islam are both dangerous mechanisms.
But somebody sets them going.
DI SEGNI: That can be done by an “outside” observer, whereby if the terrorist operates in the name of Allah, then all the believers in Allah are terrorists. Unfortunately they are also “self-declared” representatives of the Islamic faith who try to pass off the generalization as valid.
How did you prepare the exchange of speeches? There was a certain asymmetry: that from the Secretary of the Islamic Cultural Center was wide-ranging and engaging, while that of the Chief Rabbi was more immediate and directed at a concrete objective – help towards integration.
DI SEGNI: That was noted by many observers, and in effect the exchanges deliberately took different themes. Obviously there were clear points where we came together - the rejection of anti-Semitism, of Islamophobia, and the desire to nurture the roots of our ancient relationship, that hasn’t always been necessarily aggressive over the centuries. I spoke in fact of Judaism and Islam as of two “long-time brothers”.
From then on the contents and scope were different. Redouane, the Secretary, preferred a wide-ranging and historical analysis, I chose an approach more focused on the present. That is on integration, that for the Moslems is now absolutely basic, and we Jews have said we are ready to lend our experience to encourage it. There are problems that the Italian Jews have talked about for centuries and partly solved but which the Moslems in Italy have hardly started to deal with… schooling, for example.
Then it was impossible not to say the emperor has no clothes, and face up to the problem of “terrorism in the name of God”. While in the background of our two speeches, merely hinted at given its delicacy, there was the problem of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Rabbi Di Segni at the entrance of the mosque

Of the words that the senior Moslem representative addressed to you, and through you to the whole of Judaism, what did you personally most appreciate? What opening?
DI SEGNI: I sincerely appreciated what Redouane said to us on more than one point. But above all on a subject that to an outsider might seem trivial, and that instead in the Moslem universe isn’t at all taken for granted: the reference to the suffering of the Jewish people, to the Shoah. For some Islamic fringe groups it’s taboo even to pronounce the word. And hearing it said in the mosque, in Rome, was no small thing.
Is there any special meaning to you having met in Italy, in Rome?
DI SEGNI: If we were to brag about the bell’Italia feature of the occasion and leave it at that, all we’d be doing was patting ourselves on the back, in pathetic fashion as well. In fact I’ve been stunned at the way an Italian happening has had such a strong impact on the rest of the world. The news of the visit has bounced from New York to the Maldives, it’s resounded in the Arabic world... Apparently Italy has a symbolic value in itself. And then, despite its numerical insignificance, when Italian Judaism does something the outcome is very audible.
Now the main point is to make the most of it, exploit it for good. Because at this point what took place might have a catching effect. It’s an odd thing that meetings of this kind have already taken place in Florence two or three times with hardly anybody taking note. If it happens in Rome, instead… Now let’s make the most of it. Again I say I’ve been stunned by the scale of response, I had no expectation of it…
But how to make the most of it? How to bank the hopes aroused by the encounter?
DI SEGNI: I see it from the great many letters that I’ve received. I’ve also received some remarkably polemical ones. Including those from some members of the Jewish community warning me to put no trust in the happening. They only bring out the negative aspects, that do exist, of the visit, they stress “what was lacking” in the encounter... But likewise I’ve had letters that have amazed me because they demonstrate that there’s been an effect on the very way people think. And I’ve also received some from Moslems… There are those who after the visit have come to see that it’s not obligatory to view us as opposing blocs, Jews and Moslems or in general among believers. It’s because of aberrant political events that a barrier of hostility is created, total, reciprocal, of ever more obsessive closure, whereby the enemy is identified in the other, whoever he is and whatever he does. That’s the dangerous generalization we’ve already talked about. Episodes like our encounter in the mosque make one suspect that that’s not how it is. There’s a something new in thinking, in asking a question where it wasn’t being asked.
When will you welcome the Moslem delegation to the Major Synagogue of Rome?
DI SEGNI: There’s still no set date, but there’s no difficulty on our side. And I must acknowledge the courage that the leaders of the Rome mosque showed by opening the door to us. They’re not in as easy and free a position as they’d like.
According to the Jewish calendar the encounter took place on the eve of Purim, the feast in recollection of the salvation of the Jewish people from destruction at the hands of the Persian king Xerxes, thanks to the intercession of Queen Esther, a Jewess. Things are going differently with the Persians of today.
DI SEGNI: One of the basic messages of Purim is that nothing happens by chance. It stresses that men lay their plans, but divine providence sends them all awry.
The eve of Purim requires fasting for us Jews, so we had to come to an arrangement with the administrators of the mosque that they wouldn’t offer us even a glass of water, otherwise it would have caused embarrassment. The date had been chosen by the masters of the house. If the visit had coincided with the day of Purim itself, we couldn’t have accepted, but on the eve, yes.

Benedict XVI with Rabbi Di Segni, and, right, the President of the Jewish Community of Rome Leone Paserman, at the audience of 16 January 2006

For us, however, the date had a symbolic value. For the Jews the book of Esther is “in code”, of course. It must be read and studied according to the allusions it contains, it’s a wise recomposition of quotations and previous biblical events. For us Purim is so important because first of all it reminds the Jewish people of the abiding risk of annihilation.
The Jewish diaspora reached Rome before Christianity and for two thousand years it has co-existed with the Christian faith. Has that relationship suggested anything in terms of a fresh attitude toward Islam?
DI SEGNI: Obviously the relation that exists between Judaism and Christianity is very different from that which exists between Judaism and Islam, for structural reasons, for inward relations between the religions and for historical reasons. We know that a parallelism between the two processes is hard to identify, not least because when Christians and Moslems address the Jews, each reasons according to its own categories. The Christians often ask Jews – sometimes causing embarrassment – to join in ceremonies, to pray together and so on. A Moslem would not ask that of a Jew, because of a different conception of what religion is. Furthermore, beginning with Vatican Council II, Judaism and Christianity have developed very important lines of communication, made great steps forward in dialogue thanks to notable and variegated doctrinal explorations. With Islam we are still at the beginning. Maybe there’s need to follow the same course as with the Christianity, or maybe not, and different gestures, are needed, or not, because we’re on different planes.
What there is instead in Rome – and it’s important – is a certain climate, and we’re all working on it, each for his own part. This is characteristic of Rome: the climate favorable to encounter. Rome is a most beautiful place where certain roots can ripen and give fertile fruit.

«In fact I’ve been stunned at the way an Italian happening has had such a strong impact on the rest of the world…Now the main point is to make the most of it, exploit it for good. Because at this point what took place might have a catching effect»

Twenty years have gone by since a pope entered the synagogue of Rome for the first time. While waiting for Benedict XVI also to visit you, on 16 January last you had an audience with the Pope. Pope Benedict told you that in Rome and in the world, need presses us to unite “in concrete initiatives of solidarity, of tzedek (justice) and of tzedekah (charity) ”. What did you think of the proposal?
DI SEGNI: As for that, I was gladdened by those expressions and by other aspects of the Pope’s speech on that occasion. Because they are, in some way, the proof of the sensitivity of the Church in the moment of dialogue, at least in these recent years. If the Jewish side, for example, sets out indicators, says what things can be done together and what cannot be a subject of discussion between us… we notice that the other side takes heed. Solidarity, justice and charity have always been our requirements, and to hear them repeated by the Pope means that in the Church there is willingness to listen, and that this our dialogue is not two deaf people talking at each other, on the contrary.
Let us come back to the Jewish community of Rome. What is its most characteristic feature?
DI SEGNI: I think the main thing is its having been in Rome from before the arrival of the Christians, and never having gone away. That has given an absolutely original tone to our presence here. There have been a series of occasions, of historical phases that have shaped this special, Roman mindset. Today – I also said it in the mosque – our community is no longer made up only of authentic Romans, established for twenty centuries, but also of Jews from Libya, who are truly a vital part of us. Thus, we Roman Jews are totally immersed in the heart of Christianity and at the same time we have a strong component of people which has totally experienced Islam, with little relation with Christianity.
Among our delegation to the mosque there were many Libyan Jews, who started talking Arabic with the Moslems, joking… it was the nicest moment of the visit.
Let’s finish with Purim, which is also a feast in which charity is given to the poor and the children put on fancy dress.
DI SEGNI: There is a salvific idea in it. The children are our future and our hope. We are in perennial movement, we carry a discourse through all the generations, which is continuity. In Judaism the family is fundamental as the core through which religion is passed on and lived, and there is a permanent concern to educate the child, that is the center of the family. Judaism aims to perpetuate itself, and it can only do it through the new generations.
Here’s a point, there is a Hassidic saying that reminds us that we must be like children in the three things they have: they are happy, they are always in movement and when they want something, they do everything to get it.

(Thanks to Father
Gianmario Pagano)