Why are there are no Italian-American Jews?

There are lots of Italian Jews, but I don''t think I''ve ever heard of an Italian-American one. Why is that?

• There are. You just don''t know any. I worked with one at my first job.%0D

• I''m not Italian or Jewish, but I think many Italian Jews were taken to the German concentration camps where they died.\ \ Also, most (not all by a long shot) of the Italians who immigrated to the USA were from southern Italy and Italian Jews did not tend to live in that part of Italy.\ \ Exceptions sure, but mainly Italian Jews lived in Rome and points north.

  Amateur hystorian and lez-genius

• One of my old roommates was of Italian Jewish descent.%0D\ %0D\ So there.

• We call ourselves iajews.

• Italian Jews... now I''ve heard everything.

• What''s next, negresses who are also Jews?

  Dorothy Kilgallen

• Isn''t old time smaltzy singer Eydie Gorme an Italian Jew or a Spanish Jew?

• "Old time smaltzy"? %0D\ %0D\ How about "one of the great underrated singers of the past sixty years?" RESPECT THE DIVA!!!%0D\ %0D\ Gorm%C3%A9 was born as Edith Garmezano in Bronx, New York in 1928, the daughter of Fortuna and Nessim Garmezano. Her father was a tailor. She is a cousin of singer/songwriter Neil Sedaka. Her parents were Sephardic Jewish immigrants, her father from Sicily and her mother from Turkey.%0D\ %0D

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2Llrp9TWqU

  S.L.

• An Italian-American Jew sounds pretty much like my dream man.%0D\ %0D\ Just saying.

• most Italian Jews (and Moslems) in the South converted to Christianity when the Hapsburgs and Borbons ran amok down there, but there were a goodly number of them.

• Jewtalians

• My mother''s oncologist was an Italian American Jew.

• I would assume that there are few Italian American Jews because prior to the Holocaust, Italian Jews, like French and English Jews, among others, did not experience the oppression Jews in many other parts of Europe did. Therefore, they remained in Italy. %0D\ %0D\ After the War, many of those who survived and decided to leave Italy, may have immigrated to other places, such as Palestine and Argentina.

• According to Wikipedia, there are 80,000 Italian Jews in Israel, 45,000 in Italy, and only 200 in the United States.

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_Jews

• Edye was Sephardic - Spanish - she spoke Spanish fluently and was very popular in Spanish speaking countries.%0D\ %0D\ Relatively few Italian Jews were sent to the camps. The Italians did not co-operate with the Germans like so many other countries did.

  http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005455

• There are and their pizza bagels are to die for!

• [quote]The Italians did not co-operate with the Germans like so many other countries did.\ \ Neither did the Japanese. The Holocaust was German, followed by the Vichy French, followed by (I think) the Poles.

• My brother-in-law is an Italian-American Jew. He''s a great husband/father all-together, plus he''s handsome, good-natured, funny, bright, a good provider, and, from what I can tell, hung like a stallion.

• [italic]and from what I can tell, hung like a stallion.[/italic]\ \ How, and how old is he?

• [r15]Eydie was part of the Sephardic diaspora--her parents were from Turkey and Sicily. She spoke Ladino, which is a kind of Judaeo-Spanish language. It was probably easy for her to pick up mainstream Spanish.

• "smaltzy"?\ \ Oy vey.

  Mrs. Edelstein

• I''m not sure what you''re trying to say, R17.%0D\ %0D\ I doubt there were many Jews in Japan.%0D\ %0D\ You are forgetting the Netherlands, Greece, Hungry, the Baltic countries...if I''m not mistaken, over 80% of the Jews in those countries died in the camps.%0D\ %0D\ You got me curious, so I looked it up. There were 44,500 Italian Jews before the war, 7,500 were murdered.%0D\ %0D

  http://history1900s.about.com/library/holocaust/bldied.htm

• For years I thought people with the name Shapiro were Italian. Had no idea it was a Jewish name.

• I''m with r9. I''d love to meet one.

  Shylock

• I love R21.

• There are many op.

• I''m one!

• Fiorello La Guardia was of Italian descent. His dad was an Italian Catholic and his mother was an Italian Jew.\ \ Yves Montand was really named Ivo Livi. Originally from Tuscany in Italy his dad was an Italian Jew and his mom was Catholic.\ \ There are two different types of Italian Jews. In the vast majority were Bene Italkim who are native Italian Jews who were there hundreds of years before the Sephardic Jews arrived. Usually these Jews have Italian first and last names like Amedeo Modigliani. Sephardic ones are from the South where Spain ruled. I have met a lot of Sephardic Jews from Sicily BUT never from Naples, Bari or anywhere else from the South.\ \ Schmaltz someone said. It has no relevance i Italy as there were hardly any Ashkenazi Jews there save those related to Howard Stern. and my German Christian aunt in the Fatherland uses the word schmaltz, so it''s not that Yiddish to me anyway!

• I''m a Jewish American of Italian-Jewish descent (my last name is an Italianate spelling of a Hebrew last name). Does that count?

• Whats with all these jew threads? Don''t jews have a jew board to post to?

• Historically, Italians are mostly Catholic--even before World War II. And like most of Europe, historically the population is either Catholic or Protestant. And even though demographics are changing, there still aren''t all that many Jews in Europe.

• There are a lot of people in NY who are half Italian and half Eastern European Jew, whether they practice a religion is another thing.

• [quote]Neither did the Japanese.%0D\ %0D\ There are Japanese Jews? Now I''ve heard everything.

• Pope Pius did nothing to help the Jews of Italy during WW2- the Vatican needs to open their archives about their relationship with the Jews of Rome. According to my guide in the Jewish Ghetto, the Jews of Rome were taxed so that the Colosseum could be completed and hence- they own it. Was in Rome last year and there was an exhibit at the beautiful Temple about the history and culture of Roman Jews that was very popular.... the Jewish ghetto is very trendy in Rome. I highly recommend the Jewish Roma tour there- fascinating and fun. And see the beautiful film The Garden of the Finzi Contini

• At least in Brooklyn, many of the Italian Jews married Norwegian Catholics.

• Italy has an enormous population of Jews, as does Spain, Cuba and Argentina.

  Lila "the big NY Jew" McKann

• Photographer Helmut Newton escaped the Nazis by going to Shanghai. Apparently, many Jews fled there. The Germans asked the Japanese to round them up, but the Japanese kept forgetting to do so.

• What am I, chopped liver?

  Chico Marx

• [quote]Photographer Helmut Newton escaped the Nazis by going to Shanghai. Apparently, many Jews fled there. The Germans asked the Japanese to round them up, but the Japanese kept forgetting to do so.\ \ There''s a documentary called [italic]the Shanghai Ghetto[/italic] which includes lots of interviews with survivors.

• Cute and double cute.

• r 20: Gorme picked up Spanish so well, she briefly worked as an interpreter at the United Nations.

• [r41] Ladino is very close to Spanish.

  She is also very intelligent

• "For years I thought people with the name Shapiro were Italian. Had no idea it was a Jewish name."%0D\ %0D\ Although Shapiro is an Ashkenazi name it is related to Safir, meaning Sephardi, and many people named Shapiro have distant Sephardic ancestry.%0D\ %0D

• Read this book:

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Garden_of_the_Finzi-Continis

• Fiorello LaGuardia was an Italian Jew, OP.

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiorello_La_Guardia

• My understanding was the same "Shapiro" came from the German city Speyer. It''s on wikipedia but I read it in a book.

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shapiro

  Dustin

• R45. only half J.

• I think the reference to Japan was in their occupation of parts of Asia durign WWII that had a lot of Jewish refugees, like Shanghai. Japan didn''t single out the Jews (they mistreated all the inhabitants equally).

• There is Ari Italiani, who live on 3389 Hillbough Street in Brooklyn. \ \ That''s the only one I know of for sure.

• [quote] only half J.\ \ \ uh. . . .isn''t that the point of the thread?

• Watch the movie Tea with Mussolini

• Voila, OP.

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Brooks

• Funny that after the success of "Life is Beautiful" and all the Benigni hatred on DL, especially about his winning an oscar, that some people are still shocked that there is such a thing as an Italian Jewish community.\ \ Another oscar winning movie classic about Italian Jews, based on the famous novel, is De Sica''s Garden of the Finzi Continis.

• Ladino is basically 15th Century Castilian Spanish written in Hebraics.

• And Yiddish is basically 16th Century German written in "Hebraics".%0D\ %0D

• I know an Italian Jewish guy in NYC, we had sex a couple of times in our twenties. He is dark, etc. and great sex!

• From Robert Hughes' very fine current book "Rome." "Augustus, for instance, knew that a large tract of Rome beyond the Tiber was owned and inhabited by Jews. Most of these Jews were Roman freedmen, who had been brought to the city as prisoners-of-war and then manumitted by their owners. They did not worship the Roman gods, or perform obeisances at Roman shrines. But because they caused no trouble either in doctrine or in action, Augustus saw that no pressure was put on their synagogugues; no Jew was prevented from meeting with his or her brethren for the expostion of the the Law-- 'On the contrary, he showed such reverence for our traditions that he and almost all of his family enriched our Temple with expensive dedications..... " * * * In other words as in all parts of the Empire, whether it be Europe (including, perhaps primarily, Italy), North Africa or the Near East, there were Jews well before their were Christians (and the earliest Christians were, after all, Jews, or converts to a new form of Judaism).

• So the women have real jewelry *and* real orgasms? Wow.

• New York City Mayor Fiorello Laguardia. His father's family was Italian non-Jewish. His mother's family was Italian jewish.

• Sylvester Stallone is Italian Jew. Italian father, Jewish mother)

• I sir am Italian American Jewish and must say that tis true that we are rare...

  Sami%20Eskinazi

• Hath no one heard of The Merchant of Venice?

  Shmuel Shylock

• Why have two old Jewish-themed threads been revived today?

• Fiorello Enrico La Guardia was raised an Episcopalian and practised that religion all his life.

• R60. Sylvester Stallone's father was born in Gioia del Colle, Apulia, Italy, and emigrated to the United States in the 1930s. Stallone's mother is of half Russian Jewish and half French descent. That combination doesn't make Sylvester much of a tribe member.

• Sophia was Catholic, yet she seemed Jewish. Perhaps her family were converts?

• Lea Michele.

• Thought police at R63, I believe we're allowed to discuss Jewish people.

• Italian Jewish icon...Moses Montefiore. Now, read up on him. He's important.

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moses_Montefiore

  Go%20MM%21

• If you're really that stupid, r68, then it's no wonder you play along with a troll.

• Joy Behar is kind of one

• Maybe you've been blessed with good health. Both my mother and a close friend were (successfully) treated for serious illnesses by Italian-American Jewish medical specialists.