Street signs in Italian, Hebrew and Arabic, installed in the twenty-first century, mark Palermo's former Jewish quarter, over half a millennium since Sicily last had a substantial Jewish population. They recall a medieval Jewish minority, but also symbolise what some consider to be Palermo's essentially pluralistic character. What motivates this inchoate revival of ‘Jewish space’, and what does it mean for contemporary Palermo? ‘Rebranding’ Palermo as a crossroads of civilisations encourages tourism, but this alone does not explain the re-evaluation of its multi-religious heritage. Palermo is an often-overlooked case study for the contemporary emergence of Jewish ‘sites of memory’. Using a micro-scale ethnographic study to analyse a narrative rooted in history, I show how the ‘rediscovery’ of Jewish history can have multiple catalysts. In Palermo, these include a Europe-wide interest in ‘things Jewish’, and Sicily's increasing religious diversity in the present.

中文翻译：

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Meschita 的路标：巴勒莫的中世纪犹太区是记忆之地


21 世纪安装的意大利语、希伯来语和阿拉伯语路牌标志着巴勒莫的前犹太区，距离西西里岛上一次拥有大量犹太人口已经过去了半个多世纪。它们让人想起中世纪的犹太少数民族，但也象征着一些人认为巴勒莫本质上的多元化特征。是什么推动了“犹太空间”的初步复兴，它对当代巴勒莫意味着什么？将巴勒莫“重塑”为文明的十字路口鼓励旅游业，但仅凭这一点并不能解释对其多元宗教遗产的重新评估。巴勒莫是当代犹太人“记忆场所”出现的一个经常被忽视的案例研究。通过微观尺度的民族志研究来分析植根于历史的叙事，我展示了犹太历史的“重新发现”如何具有多种催化剂。在巴勒莫，这些包括整个欧洲对“犹太事物”的兴趣，以及西西里岛现在日益增长的宗教多样性。