My Experience as a Jew in Bologna

Dear Mayor Lepore,

I hope you're doing well.

My name is Ari Abramowitz. I wanted to share two experiences I had while touring Bologna on Sunday, June 7.

Around 5pm, I went for a walk in Giardino della Montagnola. While I was walking, I took note of a certain group of people, but did not engage with them. As I passed, I heard one of them call out "F*** you!" and then mutter something about Israel. It was clearly directed towards me. I ignored the call, but I was disturbed by it.

I am Jewish. At the time I was wearing a kippah on my head, as I do every day. Aside from that, I was wearing a plain t-shirt, jeans, and sneakers. Nothing that would identify my views on geopolitical events of any kind. But as a Jew in Bologna, I no longer felt safe.

Later that evening, my wife and I attended the 15th “Andrea Baldi” International Piano Competition. It was a wonderful experience. We understood almost none of the commentary between the performances, but the talent and dedication on display were mesmerizing. Something to truly be proud of.

I wish that experience could have stood on its own, without the backdrop of what had occurred earlier. And I wish I could tell you how to prevent this from happening in the future. I can't.

Thank you,
Ari Abramowitz

About a month ago, June 7th to be exact, my wife and I arrived in Bologna for a three-day conference on Fabry disease, a rare genetic condition that my wife had been studying as part of her doctoral program at Bar Ilan University. Or more accurately, that's why she was there. I was taking advantage of the free Airbnb to tour the city.

Before we boarded the train to Bologna from Rome, where we had spent the weekend before the conference, a man approached us and we started talking. He noticed my kippah and mentioned that he had a brother living in Israel. Then, with a concerned look, he warned us not to speak in Hebrew during our travels. He seemed to be under the impression that while Jews might be safe in Italy, Israelis were another story.

We nodded understandingly, thanked him, and continued to our train. A few hours later we pulled into Bologna. My wife went straight to the Royal Hotel Carlton, where the conference was being held. I headed to our Airbnb, with a bit more attention to my surroundings than I had hoped would be necessary. At one point, I thought I overheard the word “ghetto” escape someone’s lips as they passed me. I wasn’t sure, and decided to let it go.

I reached the Airbnb, caught up on some work and much-needed sleep, and then had a bit of extra time until my wife’s poster presentation at 5pm. I decided to squeeze in a quick walk in Giardino della Montagnola, a small park about five minutes away from the Carlton, filled with trees, grass, and a number of rather striking statues.

As I rounded the paved path towards the back of the park, I noticed a group of people in their late teens to early twenties sitting in a circle on the grass. Nothing too remarkable. I kept walking. It was almost 5pm and I wanted to get to the presentation on time.

And then from behind me, I heard someone from the group call out:

"F*** you!"

Me? Had I looked at them the wrong way? I didn’t think so. I had barely looked at them at all. But I started to tense up, suspecting that yes, the presence of a Jew in Bologna may have been all it took to spark that kind of outburst.

I heard the same young man follow up with some comment about “Israel” and whatever doubts I had disappeared.

Already moving at a fairly brisk pace, I was certainly not going to stop now. I considered trying to engage the group in some kind of conversation, but did not anticipate anything productive would come of it. I made my way out of the park, listening for any footsteps approaching behind me. I wondered what the dozens of people within earshot thought of the exchange, or if they even noticed.

A few minutes later, I arrived at the Carlton. My attempts to make sense of scientific research outside of my field came with an expected level of difficulty, but now my attention was split. As I skimmed the posters, I was still replaying what had occurred in the park just ten minutes earlier. Despite what my wife and I had heard at the train station, it turned out there wasn’t much of a difference between Jews and Israelis (let alone between Israelis with differing opinions), or at least not to the young man I encountered in the park. Anyone that fit the caricature was a fair target for four-letter expletives.

I would have to spend the rest of my trip on the lookout. Verbal attacks I could handle. But who was to say things would stop there?

Unable to focus on the posters, I left the session early. I had found information online about a piano concert happening later that evening - a performance by the finalists of the 15th “Andrea Baldi” International Piano Competition. I figured my time until then would be better spent taking in a few more sights along the portico-lined streets.

I knew that by this point many people would have taken off their kippah, or covered it with something less conspicuous. I decided to leave mine on. Partly because I wasn’t interested in hiding who I am. Partly out of a hope that along the way I might help to unravel, or at least complicate, a few people’s preconceptions about who and what a Jew is.

That decision, however, came at a cost. I spent the rest of my time in Bologna on constant alert, paying attention to the people around me and how close they got to me. As I toured the city, I felt like I had a target on my back in a way that I never had before.

Around 7:30pm, I met back up with my wife at Oratorio di San Rocco for the concert, unsure of what to expect. We climbed two flights of stairs to find an ornately decorated room with a grand piano on stage at the front. Someone opened with introductory remarks, but we weren’t able to make much out with our minimal Italian vocabulary. Then the performances began. One pianist after another displayed talent far beyond what we anticipated given the “voluntary donation” admission fee. We were blown away.

After about two hours, the concert came to a close and everyone filed out of the hall. My wife and I checked our phones to be greeted by notifications about a new bout of rocket fire from Iran to Israel. I sent a few videos of the concert to an extended family WhatsApp group as a small relief for those of them caught in bomb shelters. The videos were met with a reply that it looked “just perfect.” I couldn’t let that sit. I sent back a brief description of my earlier encounter in the park, and then we made our way back to the Airbnb for the night.

As I turned over the day’s events in my head, I decided there was a story here worth sharing. By the end of the night I had put together a draft of the letter above, which I sent to the mayor the following morning, hoping someone would read it. Either way, I still had two days ahead of me in Bologna.

Those two days came with a series of similar, if less stark, juxtapositions. I visited San Luca Basilica, the Archiginnasio, and the Museum of Palazzo Poggi. All fascinating and beautiful stops with a mix of history, architecture, and nature. But before boarding the whimsical “San Luca Express” train, I stepped into a bookshop to browse the shelves. I found a noticeably one-sided section on Israel and Palestine, with titles far outnumbering those covering any other geopolitical topic. As I walked the streets from one attraction to the next, I noticed a similarly curious number of Palestinian flags and “Free Gaza/Palestine” graffiti relative to shows of support for other international groups (I do recall spotting one Ukrainian flag). I suspected that if I asked I would be told that the issue was with Israel’s government, not with Jews in general. But it was hard to miss one element that set the Israel/Palestine conflict apart from all others: it offered the opportunity to paint Jews as disproportionately responsible.

Then there was the less subtle find towards the end of our third day. In large purple bubble letters, someone had simply spray painted the word “Jews” on two columns along one of the porticos. In case the sentiment wasn’t clear, above one of them someone else had added another word: “F***”.

To Mayor Lepore’s credit, by the end of the week I found a reply in my inbox sincerely apologizing for the experience I had in the park. There were obviously larger issues at play which would take more than an email to address, but I was relieved to know I had been heard and I appreciated the personal response. I thanked the mayor and offered to continue the conversation should he ever find that useful.

When we returned home, I gave my father a call. As we chatted about my experience, he pointed me to a poem called Incident, written by Countee Cullen in 1925:

Once riding in old Baltimore,
  Heart-filled, head-filled with glee,
I saw a Baltimorean
  Keep looking straight at me.

Now I was eight and very small,
  And he was no whit bigger,
And so I smiled, but he poked out
  His tongue, and called me, “Nigger.”

I saw the whole of Baltimore
  From May until December;
Of all the things that happened there
  That’s all that I remember.

Of course, at thirty-one years old, my memory is perfectly capable of holding both the beautiful and the ugly elements of our trip to Bologna side by side.

I just wish it didn’t have to.

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Clockwise from top left: A statue at Giardino della Montagnola; Via dell'Indipendenza (from my walk after the poster session); the Israel/Palestine display at the bookshop; Oratorio di San Rocco

Clockwise from top left: the "San Luca Express"; San Luca Basilica; the Aula Magna at the Museum of Palazzo Poggi; the Anatomical Theatre of the Archiginnasio