TRIESTE, Italy, Feb. 12 (JTA) — This Passover, Jews in Slovenia will mark an important milestone in their efforts to forge a vital community out of what just a few years ago was a handful of scattered individuals. At their community seder in the capital, Ljubljana, they will use a new, Hebrew-Slovenian Haggadah. “At last year´s seder we used a handmade Haggadah, but this year we will have the new hardback edition,” Rabbi Ariel Haddad said. The Rome-born Haddad directs the Jewish community´s museum in Trieste, a port city in northeast Italy that borders Slovenia. Ljubljana is only an hour´s drive away, and since 1999 Haddad has doubled as the rabbi for Slovenia´s 150 or so Jews. “I go to Ljubljana about once a month,” he told JTA in an interview at the museum. “I try to go for the major holidays and sometimes I´m there for Shabbos. I meet with the local Jews and hold classes.” The Slovenian Jewish community is “small but thriving; they are very active, willing people,” he says. “Five years ago there was almost nothing. I don´t know how much of the merit is mine, but the fact that I´m part of this growth makes me very happy.” Once the northernmost republic of the old Yugoslavia, Slovenia declared independence in 1991, a move that helped trigger the Balkan wars of the 1990s. Only about 2 million people live in the country. There were flourishing Jewish settlements here in medieval times, but Jews were expelled more than 500 years ago from most parts of what today is Slovenian territory, and few Jews had lived there since long before the Holocaust. Technically, there was a Jewish organization based in Ljubljana, but it was weak and carried out almost no social, cultural or religious functions. This changed in the late 1990s when a new, active leadership took over. Supported by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, the community obtained a meeting room in 1997 and began programming activities, including a youth group, a women´s group and courses in Hebrew. “Within four years, membership in the community doubled,” said one Slovenian Jew. Already, Jewish leaders are looking for bigger premises and hope to establish a real synagogue. For Jews just learning what it means to be Jewish, communal celebrations of Passover — with its colorful traditions, detailed ritual observances, and wealth of legend and lore — are an important part of the community- building process. “The first real community seder in Ljubljana was two years ago,” Haddad said. “I brought all the kosher food with me from Trieste, already cooked. “Last year´s seder was bigger,” he added. “We had about 100 people and held it at the downtown Hotel Union; the manager loaned us the premises and kitchen for free. I came a few days early and kashered the kitchen. We did all the shopping locally and cooked everything on site. “It was quite a job, but we managed — and that´s what we´re doing again this year,” he said. They´ll also be using the new Haggadah, a high-quality, scholarly, annotated edition whose production was financed by the Slovenian government and the JDC. “It´s a beautifully designed edition, illustrated by the painter Jaakov Bar-Aron, and it will come out in 500 numbered copies,” said Irena Sumi, who was part of the team of Jewish and non-Jewish scholars that produced the book. “All authors except the designer donated their work, and a substantial load of work that was,” she said. “We started the project two years ago.” The aim was to obtain a text suitable for religious use that also would prove to be of scholarly value and of prime cultural importance in Jewish and Slovenian cultural contexts. The new Haggadah includes a thorough explanation of Passover festivities and rituals, parallel Slovene and Hebrew texts, Slovenian transliterations of the blessings and other key parts of the ritual. The Slovenian translation was subjected to the scrutiny of linguistic experts, historians, and rabbinic authorities. In addition, the Haggadah includes an explanatory introduction by Haddad and a preface by the JDC´s local representative, Yechiel Bar Chaim, who says the text reflects the dynamism of the growing Slovenian Jewish community. “The Jews of Ljubljana are diverse in themselves,” he said. “There are those who grew up in contact with Jewish observance and others who discovered their Judaism only as adults. They express their sense of belonging in different ways — those who come to the community to learn and others who join to support the sick and needy. What we see here is a text open and diverse for a community that is creative and dynamic.”
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