Tour to Piedmont

Jewish Heritage Tour of Piemonte, Italia
to benefit the
Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation
May 18–25, 2006

Join Zepporah Glass, JPEF board member and Elana Horwich, the dolce vita travel expert, in an intimate and luxurious week-long discovery of yesterday's and today's hidden secrets of Jewish Piemonte.

Piedmont is usually venerated within Italy for its breathtaking alpine scenery, magnificent culinary tradition, its regal capital Turin (the original capital of Italy!) and prestigious wines such as Barolo, Barbaresco, Dolcetto d’Alba and Nebbiolo. In autumn Piedmont is particularly renown, for in addition to being the time of the grape and olive harvest, it is also the highly esteemed truffle season.

However, few are aware that Piedmont used to be home of one of the most thriving and liberated Jewish communities in Italy. In fact, the awe-inspiring Mole Antonelliana (Turin’s famous Eiffel-tower-esque cinema museum) was originally built to be the community’s synagogue. Tucked away in Piedmont's cobble-stoned towns are twelve synagogues which today are all but two unused, some grandiose marking the Jews' liberation while others clandestine gems built in the period of the Ghetto. Not all know that Piemonte’s skyscraping Alps, soon to host the 2006 Winter Olympic Games, boasted one of Europe’s most successful combat Resistance movements and that a large number of Piedmontese Jews, including Primo Levi, chose to fight the Nazis as partisans.

Even fewer know that Turinese Jews, who hold services in their breathtaking synagogue every Shabbat, are waiting to invite this JPEF group into thier homes for a homemade Italian Shabbat dinner.

What is unknown to many will be known to us.
o Meet local Jewish partisans
o Learn about the resistance movement in Northern Italy
o Visit many of the twelve “hidden” synagogues, as well as Jewish cemeteries, of the Piedmont region
o Savor the wines in the vineyards of Italy’s most prestigious grapes
o Indulge in the dolce vita lifestyle of a countryside Relais Chateau and its spa
o Experience the culinary magnificence of Northern Italy and try local Jewish recipes
o Be a participant in a cultural exchange between Italian and American Jews.
o Show support for JPEF and the Italian Jewish community!

The Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation (JPEF) is a non-profit organization whose mission is to develop and distribute effective educational materials about the Jewish Partisans, bringing this celebration of heroic resistance against tyranny into educational and cultural organizations. Most people don’t know that there were 20,000-30,000 Jews who fought back against the Nazis as Jewish partisans, responsible for thwarting the Nazi war machine in countless ways. JPEF is dedicated to difusing this information which has the power to transform people’s perception of the Jewish Experience during the Holocaust. Please visit www.jewishpartisans.org

Please download our brochure for more information - click here