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Jewish World Review Nov. 17, 1999 /8 Kislev, 5760
June 23, 1858, the papal police entered the home of Shlomo Mortara, a
Jewish
merchant living in Bologna, Italy, and removed the Mortara's six-year-old
son Edgardo.
Six years earlier, a servant girl in the Mortara household, fearing that
Edgardo was on the
verge of death, had sprinkled water on him. When the local papal
inquisitor subsequently
learned of this, he declared Edgardo baptized and had him seized. He
would never return
to his parents.
In 1991, Tali and Moshe Dohlberg, native Israelis living in Genoa, were
divorced.
Custody of the couple's two children Nitzan, aged 6, and Danielle, 2, was
awarded to Tali.
Four years later, Tali became observant and married a religious Jew. That
change enraged
her former husband and he challenged Tali's continued fitness to retain
custody of their
two daughters.
The court ordered a psychological examination of Tali to determine "the
damage
done to the minors as a result of the religious choices of the mother."
In light of the court's
evident hostility to Orthodox Judaism, Tali fled with her two daughters
to Israel.
On April 29 of this year the Israeli Supreme Court ordered Nitzan and
Danielle
returned to Italy for a custody decision by the Italian courts. The
Israeli Supreme Court
expressed its confidence -- naively it would turn out -- that the Italian
courts would
consider the welfare of the girls and the damage that would be caused to
them by being
uprooted from familiar surroundings.
The subsequent custody proceedings in Italy, unfortunately, confirmed
Tali's fears
that adherence to an Orthodox Jewish life would be deemed prima facie
proof of her
parental incompetence. It was uncontested in the Italian court that the
girls' strongly
expressed preference was to remain with their mother, who had been their
primary
caregiver since birth.
The Genoa court apparently accepted these characterizations at face
value. It
refused the local rabbi and former Israeli Finance Minister Yaakov Neeman
the right to
testify about Jewish belief or practice. Many of the “findings’’ about
Judaism of
Dohlberg’s psychologist were incorporated verbatim by the court.
Upon the advice of the Itallian attorney-general, who intervened on the
side of
Dohlberg, the court entered a draconian decree virtually severing the
girls from their
mother and denying them any contact with their past life. Tali is allowed
to speak to each
daughter for no more than ten minutes twice a week, and only in Italian.
Dohlberg tapes
the conversations.
The girls are permitted to see their mother only three times a month, in
a location
designated by Dohlberg and in the presence of people chosen by him. Again
all
conversation must be in Italian. Tali and her daughters last met in room
of six square
meters, together with four "observers" sent by Dohlberg. The girls are
denied the right to
speak on the phone or write to anyone, besides their mother and maternal
grandparents,
without Dohlberg's explicit permission.
Dohlberg has separated Nitzan and Danielle from one another. He has
forbidden
them to talk in Hebrew or to have contact with anyone in Israel. He also
prevented the
rabbi of Genoa from speaking to the sisters or even to make kiddush for
them. The girls
are afraid to talk to anyone in the local Jewish community for fear that
such contacts will
be used as an excuse to cut-off their last ties with her mother.
In one surreptitiously written letter, Nitzan describes her father
forcibly taking
away her prayerbook. When she continued to pray, he yelled in her ear
that her prayers
were worthless. Finally, she writes, "he grabbed my nose and mouth in a
frightening
manner, slugged me and pinched my mouth and nose and this really hurt
me."
Not surprisingly, Antoinietta Simi, a prominent Italian psychologist,
who examined
Nitzan's letters to her mother, found that despite the girl's "excellent
intellectual capacity
in analyzing and relating to the situation effectively . . . the danger
to her mental balance
or even her life, is real and imminent.''
Nothing can explain the absolute power the Genoa court has granted
Dohlberg
over Nitzan and Danielle other than its disdain for Jewish and Israeli
life. The court even
instructed the girls' maternal grandparents -- secular Israelis -- to
converse with them in
English, though they and the girls barely speak any English.
Remarkably, the court did not order an independent psychological
examination of
either parent. The only psychological exam was three years old, and its
author herself had
noted that it was incomplete and inadequate for reaching any conclusions
on custody.
Nevertheless she termed the girls' relationship with their mother as
excellent, and stressed
the need for preserving an intensive connection with Tali, their primary
parent. In the same
preliminary report, she described Dohlberg as "immature," "narcissistic,"
prone to
"uncontrolled bursts of aggression."
In addition to its failure to order a psychological evaluation of the
girls and their
parents, the court gave no weight to the universal presumption that girls
at this crucial
stage of development should be with their mother, especially when the
mother has always
been the primary parent. Nor did it take seriously both girls
oft-reiterated desire to be
returned to their mother and Israel.
Despite a worldwide outcry, by Jews and non-Jews alike, Edgargo Mortara
never
returned to his parents. Let us hope that Italy proves more responsive
than the Church of
those
Those interested in taking a position on this issue may call or write the following:
The Mortara Affair Revisited
By Jonathan Rosenblum
While the Church no longer has the political authority to seize
children, an Italian
court in Genoa and the Italian attorney general's office have recently
applied a secularized
version of the papal inquisitor's reasoning. Duty, they believe, requires
them to "save" two
Jewish girls from being raised as observant Jews.
Yet the very vehemence of the girls' wishes was used against them and
cited by
Mr. Dohlberg's psychologists as proof of the brainwashing to which they
were subjected
by the "cult" into whose clutches they had fallen. Those same
psychologists informed the
court that Orthodox Jews view "exploitation and abuse of children as
legitimate'' and that
Orthodox parents, like drug addicts, are incapable of expressing
autonomous love. For
good measure, they compared Orthodox Jews to everything from Serbian war
criminals to
cult members who kill their children.
(1) Ambassador Francesco Paolo Fulci/ Permanent Representative of Italy to
the United Nations, 2 U.N. Plaza, 24th Floor, N.Y., N.Y. 10017. Phone
212-486-9191, 212-486-1036 (Fax), or via e-mail.
(2) His Excellency Ambassador Ferninando Salleo, Permanent Representative
of Italy to the United States, Embassy of Italy, 1601 Fuller St., N.W.,
Washington, D.C. 20009. Fax: 202-483-2187.
(3) The Honorable Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, Preseident of Italy, Pallazo de
Cuirinale, Rome, Italy 00187. Fax 3906-46992384.
(4) The Honorable Massimo D'Alema, Prime Minister of Italy, Palazzo Chigi,
370 Piazza Colonna, Rome, Italy 00187. Fax: 39066783998.
JWR contributor Jonathan Rosenblum is a columnist for the Jerusalem Post.
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