Riccardo Pacifici


Riccardo Reuven Pacifici was a rabbi from an Italian Jewish family of ancient Sephardic origins, with roots in the Jewish Spanish and rabbinical traditions.

Life

Son of Mario Mordechai Pacifici and Gilda Borghi, Pacifici descended from an ancient Sephardic and religious Jewish family of Spanish origin and of rabbinical tradition settled in Tuscany in the 16th century. After the "Liceo Classico" he attended the University of Florence where he graduated summa cum laude in Classics in 1926, and in 1927 he was awarded by the Rabbinical College of Florence—where he had studied under important scholars such as Elia Samuele Artom, Umberto Cassuto, Shemuel Zvi Margulies—the title of Chachàm ha shalèm.
Pacifici served as Vicerabbi of Venice from 1928 to 1930, director of the Rabbinical College of Rhodes from 1930, Great Rabbi of Rhodes until 1936, Chief Rabbi of the Genoa Jewish Community from 1936 until deported by the Nazis in 1943.
Even during the difficult war years, Pacifici never stopped his spiritual and teaching activity. He continued his rabbinical duties between 1942 and 1943 with the Jewish refugees of the Ferramonti di Tarsia internment camp, located in Cosenza in the region of Calabria.
Unwilling to leave his Genoa Community and thus abandon his remaining members, Rav Pacifici was captured by deceit in 1943 by the Nazis and sent to Auschwitz, where he was killed with his wife Wanda Abenaim and many other members of the Pacifici family.
The in the heart of Genoa was named after him in 1966. He was the grandfather of the past Rome Jewish Community President Riccardo Pacifici.