MEIS

National Museum of Italian Judaism and the Shoah

The National Museum of Italian Judaism and the Shoah - MEIS recounts the over two thousand years of Jewish experience in Italy, giving us a glimpse of the life, thought and fundamental contributions they have made to the history and culture of Italy, with special attention to the times of persecution and the Shoah.

MEIS is a place open to all, a laboratory for ideas and reflections on what it means to be a minority, stimulating the debate on Judaism, its future in Italy and on the value of dialogue between cultures.

The final configuration, scheduled for 2020, will include: a public reception area, exhibition areas, the MEIShop, a library, an archive and documentation and cataloging center, a restaurant, an auditorium, educational suites and offices.

EVENT IN PROGRESS:

Jews, an italian story - PERMANENT EXHIBITION
The exhibition is confirmed and it became permanent. With "Jews, an italian story", MEIS wants to deal with the italian Hebraism, describing how it raised and developed in the Penisola, since the Roman Age to the Middle Age, and how it built its own identity with respect to the other places of the diaspora. Throughout some experts' videos, the precious and rare artifacts, full immersion stops, multimidial inserts, reconstructions (Gerusalemme's Temple, Tito's arch, the jewish synagogues of Ostia e Bova Marina), sounds and music, the exhibition identifies the origin and the dispersion areas of the Jews, and retraces the exile routes to the western Mediterranean.
The exhibition shows their stability in Roma and in the South-Italy, it deals with migration, slavery, integration and religous intolerance with regard to the pagan world and the christian one. The flourishing of Hebraism in South- Italy during the Middle Age, just before their expulsion, follows those events and then a Jewish italian culture will grow in the Country. The museum's themes are introduced with a multimidial show "Throughout the eyes of the italian Jews", edited by Giovanni Carrada e Simonetta Della Seta: 2200 years of history and italian culture in twenty-four minutes, recounted with a Jewish perspective.

NEXT EXHIBITION:

- "The garden that is not there" dedicated by the artist Dani Karavan to the novel of Giorgio Bassani "The garden of the Finzi- Contini" and to Ferrara, from the 31st of October 2018 to the 10th of February 2019.

- "The Renaissance speaks Hebrew" edited by Giulio Busi and Silvana Greco, from the 15th of March 2019