Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the growing local interest in Palermo’s ‘hidden’ medieval Jewish heritage, as well as the inchoate ‘revival’ of a small contemporary Jewish community. It analyses how these developments relate to twenty-first century geopolitics and the idea of a 'cosmopolitan' Mediterranean.

Paper long abstract:

Sicily’s Spanish rulers expelled the island’s remaining Jews in 1492, and Sicily not had a substantial Jewish population since. Recently, however, some in Sicily argue that Judaism is now ‘returning’ to the island. Street signs in Italian, Hebrew and Arabic now mark Palermo’s former Jewish quarter. A possible miqweh, or Jewish ritual bath, has been ‘discovered’, but its authenticity is contested. The Church has granted use of a deconsecrated chapel to the city’s nascent Jewish community. This interest might appear disproportionate to Judaism’s numerical significance in Palermo, which lacks a minyan, the ten adult men required for liturgical purposes. What, then, might explain these changes?

This paper demonstrates that the increased visibility of Jewish Palermo is employed to symbolise and encourage the city’s oft-cited ‘tolerant’ identity. This narrative reinforces an idea that Sicily is ‘rediscovering’ its vocation as a cosmopolitan island, in implicit contrast with the mainland. According to its proponents, twenty-first century immigration therefore represents the evolution of this multicultural city, rather than a novelty or an aberration.

Some in Palermo hope that the renewed visibility of Jewish heritage might be a catalyst for a return of Jewish religious life. I argue that tourism, immigration, European and Middle-Eastern geopolitics, and a broader resurgence of interest in the contested idea of the Mediterranean as a potential model for multiculturalism, all contribute to the increased prominence of the idea that Palermo is undergoing a cosmopolitan ‘revival’, of which the inchoate return of Judaism to Palermo is both a symptom and cause.