A Daughter's Promise

Italy's first woman rabbi tells what drew her back to her father's hometown

- BARBARA AIELLO

I sat in my rocking chair by the window for my morning prayers. Outside, simple homes with terracotta tile roofs perched on a slope dotted with trees. Serrastretta. My family had helped found this village in the mountains of Calabria, in the instep of the boot of Italy. It was my father's hometown. The house I lived in had been in the Aiello-Scalise family for 440 years. Yet, since moving here a few months ago, in the winter of 2006, I had felt so isolated. I hadn't met anyone who had Jewish roots, let alone connected with them over our shared spiritual heritage. I finished my prayers, reminding myself that I was here for my father. And for the promise I'd made him 30 years ago.

I was born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. My parents were Jewish immigrants from Italy. They were marginally involved with a synagogue. Most religious observances, such as lighting the candles for Shabbat on Friday night, were done at home. This was because our family was Bnei Anusim, descendants of people who'd been forced during the Inquisition to convert to Catholicism or to flee and hide their Jewish heritage.

Serrastretta had been founded in the fourteenth century by five Jewish families fleeing persecution in a nearby village. A second wave of Jewish refugees from Spain also settled there. My father's ancestors were part of both groups. Even in this remote mountain town, they converted or observed their faith in secret to avoid discovery, a practice that continued for generations.

The European economic downturn of the 1920s led my father's family to immigrate to America in 1923. My father had been preparing for his bar mitzvah, the initiation ceremony of a boy who has reached the age of 13, but his religious study was cut short to build a new life in Pittsburgh.