Located within the Aspromonte National Park, San Giorgio Morgeto is one of Calabria’s most picturesque villages. Like many towns across the region, it has a significant Jewish past, shaped in part by the forced expulsion of its Jewish inhabitants at the beginning of the 16th century.
The “Percorso della Iudeca” (Iudeca Route), inaugurated on 16 September 2026 with a commemorative walk and the unveiling of new information panels, seeks to preserve and promote this history, traces of which can still be found in local customs and traditions.
Following the inaugural walk, a conference entitled “Ahavah: Common Roots” explored the importance of research and the preservation of cultural heritage as “tools for knowledge and dialogue”. A public lighting of a Hanukkiah is also planned for December, marking the Jewish Festival of Lights.
“At a time when Jewish memory in Italy often risks being associated solely with the tragedy of the Holocaust, initiatives like this remind us of something fundamental: the Jewish presence in southern Italy has a history spanning more than a thousand years,” said Giulio Disegni, coordinator of the UCEI Jewish Southern Italy Project. “It is a history of exchange, integration and mutual contribution, as well as expulsion and suffering. It deserves to be studied, told and known in its entirety, not only through its darkest moments.”
Disegni said the opening of the route “has a meaning that goes far beyond the borders of this municipality”, helping to reconstruct a map of Jewish life in southern Italy that has long received less attention than Jewish heritage in the centre and north of the country.
“We see this initiative as the beginning of a journey,” said San Giorgio Morgeto Mayor Salvatore Valerioti. “This is also why we created an information booklet on the history of the Jewish community in San Giorgio Morgeto, to help people understand how some of its traditions continue to live on in our community.”
According to the booklet, which draws on the research of Professor Cesare Colafemmina, one of the leading scholars of Judaism in southern Italy who died in 2012, life in the Giudecca was “deeply integrated” into the local economy through a “dense network” of craft and agricultural activities.
Michele Fazari has been a driving force behind the project. “There have been no Jews in San Giorgio for more than 500 years, yet some of our distinctive customs and habits still have Jewish roots,” he said, citing the practice of covering mirrors during mourning and spending seven days in close proximity to the family of the deceased, reminiscent of the Jewish tradition of shivah.
“But Judaism is above all about life, and that is why we want to celebrate it at Hanukkah with the final lighting: the moment of greatest light.”
