Our drive supposedly took us through one of the prettiest drives ever, because the towering Alps are supposedly everywhere your eye can see. Despite our many travels and numerous times in Europe where we should have seen the Alps by now, every time we have come here it has either been pouring rain, overcast, foggy, or low clouds. We have seen the Austrian Alps and parts of the Italian Alps, but have never seen the Swiss Alps. And today, we kept that record alive. From the moment we began our drive in Zurich until we entered Italy just south of Lugano, it was pouring rain and while you could catch glimpses of some high mountains, we can honestly say that we still have never seen the Swiss Alps.
We headed south thru the Gottard Tunnel, a 17 km. long tunnel that is an amazing engineering feat, straight as an arrow and very boring, which brings you to the south end of the Alps and Lugano. As soon as we entered Italy, the rains stopped, the sky cleared and the sun emerged. Oh well, we hope that on the way back in two weeks from now, we will finally realize the elusive dream of seeing Hashem's amazing Alps.
We followed the directions to the western side of Milan, to a residential area dotted with numerous kosher stores and restaurants. Almost all of Milan's kosher options are located in a concentrated area and we headed to Carmel dairy restaurant for a late lunch.
We had a light lunch consisting of a hearty vegetable soup, a salad with fried mozzarella, cheese cake and cappuccino and we shared everything. The ladies who ran the restaurant were very helpful in explaining to us the location of all the other kosher places in the area, as well as the hours of operation. It seems that most of the restaurants close between 2:30 and 7 PM, so luckily we arrived at 2 PM and ate. We went up the road to Kosher Paradise and then to Eretz, where we stocked up on kosher supplies for the next two days of travel.
Of the two, Eretz definitely had a wider variety of options and literally anything needed by a kosher traveler could be found here.
We now headed to the small town of Alessandria, about a 45 minute drive from Milan, and the area of Piedmont which would be our base for the next two days and our hotel just outside of Alessandria, the Hotel Diamente.
When we began planning this trip, we were going to limit our journey to the Lake District and Venice, inspired by our friends Josh and Liz Gordon, who were there last year and raved about the absolute beauty of the region.
Then as I began researching the region, I came across the existence of a group of synagogues in the area of Torino (Turin), which is in the Piedmont area of Italy.
Piedmont is one of the 20 regions of Italy, and its largest city and capital is Turin. Piedmont is latin for “in the foot of the mountains”, with the Alps just to the north of the region. It is surrounded on three sides by the Alps and it borders Switzerland to the north and France to the west.
Early Jewish settlement in the region dates back hundreds of years and in the 1500's there was a large influx of Jews to the area from France. And while there was no real concentration in one large city, there emerged dozens of small communities consisting of 100 to 900 Jews dotting the region.
In many of these communities they established the basics of a community; a shul, an old age home, Talmud Torah etc. The laws at that time restricted Jews from many professions and from owning property and therefore many became money lenders, a position that Jews were good at and an avocation forbidden to Catholics. This was a mutually beneficial arrangement.
Over time, Jews became successful but because they were restricted in owning possessions, they kept a very low profile and therefore their synagogues were hidden in residential like settings and usually on the top floor of a building because of the Halacha that one should not live atop a shul.
Eventually many of these small communities disappeared or dwindled as a result of relocation, assimilation and the Shoah and what remained was a small number of beautiful abandoned synagogues. A number of organizations, including the Jewish community of Turin, began acquiring and restoring these gems and now with the right connections and arrangements, you can visit and marvel at the beauty of these shuls.
After mapping out a driving route for a two day tour of the shuls, I contacted most of those shuls to no avail. The registry of email addresses is either out of date or there are poor communication skills in those shuls. We finally contacted the Jewish Community of Turin, who, unbeknown yet to us, was the central address of about 12 of the group of 16 shuls in 13 different communities. At the same time we contacted an amazing couple, David and Rebecca Leibowitz, who have a touring company and offer Jewish themed tours in the area.
We received great responses from both and when the Leibowitzes realized that we only wanted the synagogues, they graciously suggested that we proceed with the official offices of the Turin community.
That was what brought us Monday night to Piedmont and we caught a good night's sleep and prepared for Tuesday's full day tour of five shuls in the region with Baruch Lampronti of the Turin community. I will tell you, since I am writing this on Thursday, that Tuesday and Wednesday's shul hopping left us awestruck by the dedication and devotion of these small clusters of Jews in decorating and maintaining their shuls, but also saddened by the knowledge that these holy places are now nothing more than museums with few Jewish visitors.
What was most upsetting (and you will read about this in an upcoming fascinating post of our visit Wednesday to Biella) is that the world's oldest kosher Torah scroll written around the time of the Rambam in the early 1200's now sits in a bank vault in Vercelli Italy, never seeing the light of day and never being used for its intended purpose.
More to come of our great day with Baruch Lampronti on Tuesday.
All the best
Fran and David
Great post... Looking forward to more updates!
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