Organising Italian Jewry: Text of New Jewish Communities Law Published in “official Gazette”: Every

The “Official Gazette” publishes to-day the text of the Jewish Communities Law, the approval of which by the Government was announced last October.

Under the law, all Jews living in Italy are compelled to be members of the Jewish Community in the particular area in which they are resident, ceasing to belong to the Jewish Community only through a formal act of conversion to another faith, or a public declaration that they no longer desire to be considered as Jews.

The objects of the Jewish Communities will be to satisfy the religious requirements of the Jewish population of the country and to impart Jewish religious instruction. They are empowered to impose taxation on the members of the Jewish Communities, which will be collected on their behalf by the State revenue officers in the same way as the State taxes, default being punishable in the same way. The Jewish Communities will be represented and administered by elected boards. All Jewish Communities in the Kingdom of Italy and in the Italian colonies will be compulsorily federated into a Federation of Jewish Communities, which will represent the general interests of Italian Jewry and will engage in general, religious and social activities affecting the interests of Judaism, and will maintain contact with the Jewish Communities abroad. The Federation, which will be constituted by election by a Congress of delegates of all the Jewish Communities, will have the power to impose a tax on the Jewish population for the purpose of conducting its activities.

The now law legalises for the first time the juridical and economic status of the Rabbis in Italy, by setting up a Rabbinical Advisory Board of three members, which will advise the Federation of Jewish Communities in Italy on religious and spiritual matters, and will regulate the appointment of Rabbis and the supervision of the Rabbinical Seminaries.

UNIFICATION OF ITALIAN JEWRY AIMED AT CONTINUOUSLY SINCE 1865 AT LAST ACCOMPLISHED SAYS PROFESSOR FALCO AUTHORITY ON CANON LAW AND MEMBER OF JEWISH COMMUNITIES LAW COMMISSION

The new law, Professor Mario Falco, Professor of Canon Law at the University of Milan, who was a member of the Special Commission appointed by the Italian Government to draft the Jewish Communities Law, said to-day in an interview with the J.T.A. representative, accomplishes at last the unification of Italian Jewry, at which attempts have been made continuously since 1865.

The Jewish Communities in Italy are now recognised as public bodies, Professor Falco declared, regulated along the lines of Jewish traditional structure. One of the great things achieved by the law, he went on, is that it has once and for all settled the question that withdrawal from the Jewish Community can be effected only by conversion to another faith, or by a public declaration that one owes no allegiance to Judaism and does not consider oneself a Jew. It is no longer possible for a man to claim to be a Jew and yet refuse to accept the obligation of helping to maintain the work of the organised Jewish Community. The Federation of Jewish Communities set up under the law is a most important fact, especially since it is empowered to raise funds by compulsory taxation, collected by the revenue officers of the State with all the powers of the State behind them. Italian Jewry has been strengthened by the new law, Professor Falco said, and is now enabled to proceed to develop wider and deeper activities.

The Italian Government decided to bring about the unification of Italian Jewry in connection with the new religious policy which it adopted in 1929, following the Concordat concluded with the Vatican. A special Commission was appointed for the purpose of drawing up the Jewish Communities Law, with Senator Berio, who presided over the Commission for the reform of the regulations of the Jewish Communities of the Italian colony of Lybia, as its President. Three of the six members of the Commission were Jews Dr. Sacerdoti, the Chief Rabbi of Rome, Advocate Sereni, President of the Federation of Jewish Communities in Italy, and Professor Mario Falco.

The intention of the new law on Jewish Communities, it was explained is to unify and modify the legislative provisions affecting the Jews of Italy, since many of the existing provisions date back to prior to the formation of the Italian Kingdom, having been promulgated at various times by the King of Sardinia, the Archduke of Tuscany, the Emperor of Austria, and other rulers over various territories now constituting the Italian Kingdom.

The Italian Government, it has further been explained, has sought to provide that the Jewish Communities, whose standing has hitherto varied from legally recognised and vested collective organisations to more do facto associations, should henceforth all be legally established under one single category, and grouped together in a Union similar to the syndicates which in the corporate Fascist State have become legal bodies. This is the consequence of the alterations brought about in 1929 in the National Statute, whereby religious communities other than the Roman Catholic were no longer “tolerated”, but became “officially admitted”. The new measure is in the logical line of development of Fascist legislation, the keynote of which is that all the activities of citizens should be harmonised and directed by the all-pervading structure of the State, and that all associations with practical aims must be brought under State control.

Advocate Sereni, the President of the hitherto existing Federation of Jewish Communities, sent Signor Mussolini a telegram of thanks last October declaring that the Jews will be happy to enter the ranks of State organisations.

FASCISM AND THE ITALIAN JEWS.

The problem that arises under the new law, it has been pointed out in some quarters, is whether the Fascist regime will not utilise the opportunity of this compulsory organisation of Italian Jewry to interfere unduly with the internal affairs of the Jews. The issue depends largely upon the evolution of social and political theories among the Fascist intelligentsia. On the whole, it is claimed, the tendency to antisemitism in Italy is confined to certain small groups of extreme Fascists, but finds no response in wider circles and is severely curbed by the Government. The Rome Correspondent of the “Manchester Guardian”, writing to his paper in October, when the announcement of Cabinet approval of the new Jewish Communities Law was made, remarked that where the Jews have been free hitherto to associate as desired in friendly or educational societies, they are now to be compelled to form themselves into a Jewish Federation which will “form one big Union representing all the interests of Italian Hebraism”. With the Fascist passion for grouping and labelling the citizens of Italy, the new law is in keeping, he added, but it also tends to create a racial distinction, of which few Italians have hither to been conscious. If Fascism has any distinctive attitude to Judaism, he wrote, it is hostile, but this is rarely expressed. If it feels danger in this quarter (where none has ever been felt to exist before in Italy), it will be able to “control” Jews in Italy more easily when they are federated.

Signor Mussolini shortly after the conclusion of the Concordat with the Vatican issued a statement in which he said: I have never used, nor will I ever use, force to close either church or temple, or mosque or synagogue, because it would seem to me an attempt to extinguish the light of the spirit of the ideal. The moral and spiritual power of religion makes it an indispensable part of national life. Wherever there is religious discipline there is also civil discipline.

In an interview in June 1929 with Mr. Jacob Landau, the Managing Director of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Signor Mussolini contended that the Concordat has, if anything, improved the position of the Jewish Community in Italy. The Concordat has been widely misunderstood, he claimed. State and Church remain separate as in the United States of America. On the whole, he went on, the Jewish population in Italy is small. We have altogether 60,000 Jews in Italy, of whom 15,000 live in Rome, about 10,000 in Milan, 5,000 in Trieste, and about 1,000 in Naples. Here in Italy, he declared, the Jew is free and an equal citizen. He is an Italian. The Jewish Community in Italy is more than 2,000 years old. It is the oldest in Europe. The Jew wept on the grave of Caesar, and has through more than 20 centuries participated in the history of this country in all its vicissitudes.

Despite Signor Mussolini’s reassuring statements, however, there has been a good deal of uneasiness among Italian Jews with regard to the future of Italian Jewry, in consequence of the Concordat, particularly in the matter of marriages and above all in respect to the schools. Previously the State schools were secular schools, while now they teach Christian doctrine according to the accepted form received by Catholic tradition as the basis and aim of elementary education in all its stages. Jewish parents fear, therefore, that their children attending State schools are thus subjected to conversionist influence. The Jews feel that they ought not to be compelled to send their children to Christianising schools where the whole future of Italian Jewry is being imperilled, but that since the Catholic schools and even the Catholic clergy are maintained by taxation, to which the Jews contribute as citizens, the Jews are also entitled to be given support for Jewish schools, where Jewish children would not be constantly subjected to a Christianising atmosphere.