L’ebrea errante. Uso popolare della Megillat Ester a Roma dopo Shoah e Liberazione

The paper main theme is Esther in Purim parodies. As a study case, the Jewish
community in Rome is taken into consideration. In spite of the relatively small numbers
of Holocaust victims among the Italian Jews, the traumatic memories of persecution were
well present in the survivors’ awareness. In the early post-war years, they felt a pressing
need to pass on their knowledge of the Holocaust to the younger. Apart from academic
papers and literary works of import, a number of popular texts appeared. One example
is a version of the Tale of Purim written around 1950. The narration carries on the Italian
tradition of Aggadah-style literature, and its language makes it one of the latest documents
featuring idioms of the now forgotten Jewish-Roman dialect. In the tale, the Holocaust is
referred to by equaling Hitler to the persecutor of the Jews as of Megillath Esther. In that
fashion, Esther as a literary character wanders from the ancient religious discourse to the
extra-literary actuality.