Beth HaDerech; Messianic Jewish Teachings Online

The Jews of Sicily, Italy (Videos)

The saga of Jewish history has no simple chapters, and the chapter on Sicilian Jews is certainly no exception. While the histories of Galician, Indian, and Japanese Jews have been studied extensively, one of the oldest communities of the Diaspora has been generally neglected. The biggest island of the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily, has been for millennia one of the most important crossroads of the early civilizations. The story told in the Odyssey and the Iliad, the foundation myths of the adventurous Greek spirit, locates mythical creatures such as the Kyklops Polyphêmos, son of Poseidon, in Sicily. Popular imagination still identifies two of the weathered cliffs in the harbor waters of Catania as the stones the giant threw at Odysseus. The strait between the island and the mainland is still named after Skylla and Kharybdis. From ancient times the Greeks settled colonies in Sicily. It is generally accepted that [...]