Arrivals: An Italian in Israel

Maya Sinigaglia, 20, from Milan to Jerusalem, 2015.

By ABIGAIL KLEIN LEICHMAN
Maya Sinigaglia (photo credit: Courtesy)
Maya Sinigaglia
(photo credit: Courtesy)
Once upon a time, an Israeli Yemenite woman met an Italian man who had come to Israel to volunteer on a kibbutz. The romance blossomed into marriage, and the couple had a son and a daughter in Jerusalem.
A year after Maya Sinigaglia was born to the couple in 1995, the young Israeli- Italian family moved to the father’s hometown of Milan, where the three children were raised bilingually in Hebrew and Italian. They came every summer to visit their relatives in Israel, including, among others, six maternal uncles and their families in various parts of the country.
In Milan, the artistically talented Maya went to a high school for the arts.
“When I finished high school, it was time to decide what to do with my life, so I applied to Bezalel [Academy of Art and Design],” she says.
“I love Jerusalem. It’s a very magical city, and I wanted to try how it feels to live with Jews.”
Her friends in Milan thought she had lost her mind.
“They said they hoped to see me alive when I came back,” Sinigaglia relates.
“I didn’t have any serious problems in Milan, but I saw a lot of ignorance. On my first day of high school, many of the kids thought I was Indian, and last summer I had problems with friends posting anti-Semitic messages on Facebook. I’ve been trying to change minds, but at some point you just say, ‘I don’t care what they think.’”
Though her parents were sad at the thought of their daughter moving far away, her father worked with her to complete the necessary documents she had to file at the Jewish Agency office in Milan. Once she arrived in Israel, her paternal grandmother – who divides her time between France and Jerusalem – helped her navigate through the local bureaucracy.
Sinigaglia gained admission to Bezalel by passing an eight-hour creativity exam. She is working hard in her first year, enjoying the introduction to many different forms of art.
“I’m in Bezalel’s visual communications program, and that offers a little bit of everything, from photography to how to convey things in form and color.”
She found accommodation in a Hebrew University dormitory, where she shares an apartment with four Israelis.
She is the only Italian she knows of at Bezalel, but at the Hebrew University she has made friends with some fellow Italians at the Rothberg International School. In addition, she has the supportive community of Italian-Israelis in the cultural organization Hevrat Yehudé Italia, based in the S.U. Nahon Museum of Italian Jewish Art in Jerusalem.
One might have expected that someone with Sinigaglia’s background would have an easy acclimation to Israel, yet she found she has some adjusting to do, both culturally and linguistically.
“I feel very at home in Israel, but now that I live here it is a little difficult to get used to the Israeli mentality,” she admits.
“People are very expansive in every way, and that can be a very good thing, but sometimes it’s annoying; sometimes you just want to be left alone and have your own space.”
Furthermore, Sinigaglia’s Hebrew reading and writing skills aren’t as advanced as her conversational skills, and academic Hebrew can be difficult for her to follow.
“When I hear the teacher speaking a high level of Hebrew it takes me time to understand, or I ask for help,” says Sinigaglia, who plans to take an ulpan this summer to sharpen her comprehension.
On the positive side, she prefers Israeli academic culture to what she was accustomed to in Milan.
“In my high school, the teachers did not even know our names, while here they really care a lot about us. They even call us if there is an issue to discuss. They’re very human,” says Sinigaglia.
“I like that people in Israel care about others. It’s in the culture, and I love it.”
Coming from a kosher home, she is dazzled by her food choices in Jerusalem.
“I’m very happy because I can eat all the meat I want. Kosher meat costs a lot in Milan so we didn’t eat it very often,” says Sinigaglia.
“But I do miss Italian pizza. They try to make pizza here and it looks the same but doesn’t taste the same.”
She also yearns for her mother’s homemade meals.
“My mom is a chef and she cooks world cuisines,” says Sinigaglia.
Her mom misses her, too – so much so that she calls her daughter daily and came to visit her in Israel three times in the first four months.
Her brother, who is 25, also is thinking of making aliya.
As for her future, Sinigaglia confides that her ideal career would be illustrating children’s books. However, she has lots of other dreams to fulfill before settling down.
“I hope to travel and learn new languages and enjoy life,” she says.
Meanwhile, she plans to hike the Israel Trail this summer before starting her second of four years at Bezalel. She receives many assignments to be executed as homework, so she has little time during the academic year to get together with friends and family, let alone take trips to Milan or to England, where her boyfriend lives.
Pointing to an enlargement of one of her drawings hanging on her dorm wall, Sinigaglia explains that she draws with pens and favors collages filled with a variety of objects – often including skulls – visible in the concoction of images.
“I love making a stew of what I see around me,” says Sinigaglia with a laugh.