Today we had another onsite class, which was really just an experience. It was the synagogue, Jewish community, and Jewish museum in Florence. The architecture and building were stunning inside. Very different from other synagogues. There were beautiful, simple stained glass windows and really colorful frescos covering all the walls. Unlike the synagogue I got to visit in Chicago with my living world religions class, this was an Orthodox synagogue! Shoutout to Trey - yes the women have to sit upstairs separate and the only time they can read the Torah out loud is at their bat mitzfahs when they're 13. But personally I think the view is better from up top anyway and the seats are better because they are padded :P lol! They have about 1000 members now, but only like 10-30ish come regularly, but on the high holy days the place gets full. They meet 4 times a week and on Sabbath they do a church eat church style thing and it lasts about 8 hours! From this community they had about 300 people get deported into Aushwitz and only about 30 survived. About 500 of their members were able to hide in Florence. Then we watched this really depressing movie about the history of the Holocaust and how it really started with all the anti-semitism and that's why people didn't intervene or care about Hitler spewing hate all over all the time. It talked about some book that Henry Ford interpreted and then mass printed, but it didn't catch on in America - I don't remember what it was called, but I had never heard of it before. And they basically thought that made Hitler crazy and get brainwashed to believe that anything bad that happened was the Jews' fault.
Then we had lunch at a Kosher vegetarian restaurant next door and the antipasta (appetizer/first course) was hummus (I tried it :'( ) and then the main course was cous cous with mixed veggies in a broth - soooo good all mixed together! I know...who is this that took over Sara's blog right? It was so good I actually got seconds. Then the dessert was some kind of apple awesomeness. It reminded some people of apple crisp? I don't know anything except is was delicious! Then a few of us went to the markets and then went back to the villa.
I think except for a couple specific things, I have everyone's souveniers :D
PS - yesterday and today we haven't been allowed to take any pics :( I got pics of the outside of the synagogue today and yesterday I may have decided it risk getting yelled at and take a couple of Michelangelo's masterpiece, The David. 0:) [The guards didn't see me though...hehe]
Tomorrow is about an hour (so really 2 hours+) of onsite classes from this author who wrote about Bach and Tolkien and then I have an afternoon tour of the University of Florence. I also need to activate my Eurail and reserve my spot on the trains! We're getting all the details and stuff worked out for our free travel :D
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