“The day will come when the houses of prayer and study of the diaspora will be transferred to Eretz Israel”: the Veneto synagogues transferred to Israel

One of the more controversial aspects of Italian Jewish cultural heritage concerns the preservation of synagogues and religious objects that once belonged to no longer existing Jewish communities. Veneto, a region in north-east Italy, played a significant role in the postwar expatriation of sacred objects. Between 1951 and 1962, the synagogues of Conegliano and Vittorio Veneto (Treviso), the aron ha-kodesh of the German Synagogue, and all the furnishings of the Spanish Synagogue of Padua were dismantled and transferred to Israel. The Italian Jewish communities have largely lost both material traces and the collective memory of these religious artefacts. This article focuses on the Veneto cases, seeking to stimulate a critical reassessment of the legal, ethical, and cultural rationales.