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The Disraeli legacy By Daniela Shacham Tags: Israel The origins of the Disraeli family do not lie in Venice. Benjamin Disraeli's grandfather emigrated from Italy to Britain in 1748, when he turned 18. His Italian name was Beniamino Israeli and, in forms he filled out in England, he declared that he was from the town of Cento. In 1826, while on a visit to Italy at the age of 22, Israeli's grandson wrote to his father Isaac about "Cento, which perhaps you remember." There are several towns named Cento in Italy. The Romans carried out measurements of the country, and marked every 100 miles "cento" (a hundred). Towns bearing that name were established at some of these sites. The Cento in which the Israeli family lived is about 30 kilometers from Ferrara, Bologna and Modena, and today has a population of about 30,000. Nathan Hame'ati, a 13th-century Jewish translator, was from Cento; his surname is a Hebraized form of the town's name. In 1796, Goethe, in his book "Italian Journey," described his visit to Cento - a thriving, clean village of about 5,000, situated amid verdant, tranquil hills and fields. In Britain, Beniamino Israeli initially made a living from importing Italian straw hats. At some point he changed his name to Benjamin D'Israeli. His famous grandson deleted the apostrophe when he entered politics, becoming Disraeli, or "Dizzy" for short, and obscured his Jewish descent. Only later did he choose to reemphasize it. Advertisement Cento's greatest source of pride is the locally born painter Giovanni Francesco Barbieri (1591-1666), known as Guercino (meaning "cross-eyed"), but the town is also proud of being the birthplace of the Disraeli family. At the entrance to the reconstructed ghetto, on Provenzali Street, is a plaque noting that the Jewish section of Cento was the home of that family, who moved to Britain in the 18th century, where "his descendant Beniamino [sic] Disraeli, the statesman and writer, was appointed prime minister by Queen Victoria and granted the title Earl of Beaconsfield in gratitude for his many services to the empire." In 1993, an international conference about the Disraeli family was held in Cento and received extensive media coverage. Paolo Levi, a Jewish historian from Cento, who researched the history of the somewhat neglected Jewish cemetery in the town, explained to me when we met that the limited size of that site caused no few problems, and the earliest headstones now extant are from the 19th century. There are no headstones from the 18th century, when the Disraeli family lived there. The street leading to this cemetery is called Via Israelitti, the Street of the Jews. Describing his origins, Disraeli wrote in his orotund style: "They assumed the name of DISRAELI, a name never borne before, or since, by any other family, in order that their race might be for ever recognised." The simple and unromantic explanation of the name is that it is an epithet for "Jew," which the non-Jewish neighbors used with respect to the statesman's forebears. In 1848, Disraeli launched a struggle, which was to last 10 years, for the right of Jews to be elected to the British Parliament. In that year he wrote an autobiographical introduction to a new edition of his father's writings. However, after his death in 1881, it turned out that some of the facts he'd cited there turned out to be incorrect. One of them concerns Venice, which he said was the family's native city. Still, it is intriguing that both Disraeli and his father made use of Venice in their writings - providing, perhaps, "circumstantial" evidence of the family's ties to the city. Disraeli's novels with autobiographical elements ("Contarini Fleming" and "Coningsby") are set in Venice; his father, Isaac D'Israeli, who had literary aspirations, also drew on information about Venice. The newspaper, he believed, originated with the Italians in general and with the Venetians in particular: As evidence, he noted (in his book "Literary Curiosities") that gazetta (gazette), as they called newspapers, perhaps derived from gazzera - meaning chatter, dialect, melee. But more probably, he wrote, the name came from the Venetian coin gazetta, which was also the price of a paper. Isaac D'Israeli noted further that the first newspaper ever published was a Venetian monthly, which was a mouthpiece for the government. Other governments were envious and adopted the idea, along with the Venetian name "gazette." This was probably in the 15th century, he surmised, before the advent of printing, because the first newspapers were handwritten. Shifra Horn's article deals with Disraeli's illegitimate descendants. His younger brother, James Disraeli, also fathered (around 1859) two illegitimate daughters; their mother was his chief housekeeper. Coningsby, the legitimate son of Ralph, another of the Disraeli brothers, was born in 1867 and was the only heir of his uncle, Benjamin Disraeli. He also followed in his uncle's political footsteps, being elected to Parliament (on behalf of the Conservative Party) in 1892. However, the family laurels and the glory accorded to his famous uncle were not enough to help him escape his mediocrity: Indeed, Queen Victoria suggested to Disraeli that his nephew be knighted, but Disraeli disagreed. In fact, he declined the offer three times. However, he did ask the queen to knight his loyal private secretary, Montagu Corry, who had been more than a son to him. Coningsby died in 1936, unmarried and with no heirs, and the family estate, Hughenden Manor, eventually passed into the possession of the state. And if we are already on the subject of inheritance: Among those buried in the Beaconsfield vault at Hughenden is Sarah Brydges Willyams, a rich widow of Jewish descent (her father was Abraham Mendez da Costa), who lived in Torquay. In the years following his parents' death, Disraeli received letters of general admiration from her, which eventually began to have financial importance - beginning with an envelope containing a check for 1,000 pounds and ending with her last will, in which she left him her property. At first Disraeli thought she was a dotty old eccentric, and he sought legal advice about how to respond. In time, though, a warm and prolonged mother-son relationship developed between them, which included letters and visits, and went on until her death in 1863. Something should be said about Lady Dorothy Neville, who is mentioned in the Haaretz article. Her romantic ties with Disraeli, which developed after she had already had three children with her husband, resulted in the birth of Ralph, who bore her husband's surname, Neville. Dorothy was a descendant of Robert Walpole (1676-1745), the first prime minister of Great Britain. In her youth she followed a rather uninhibited lifestyle, and her aristocratic family married her off quickly to minimize possible social damage. Shifra Horn ends her article by mentioning Disraeli Street in Auckland. In Lady Dorothy's memoirs she, too, mentions a street named Disraeli, which stirred the objections of one of the residents. The man vandalized the street sign and was fined after a complaint was filed against him. Even in Israel the idea is controversial. Jerusalem and Haifa have a Disraeli Street, but Tel Aviv does not (maybe because those who leave the Jewish faith should not be commemorated?). The bureaucratic "bypass": a Jaffa street called Nes Lagoyim - Hebrew for "miracle unto the gentiles" - the title of the first Hebrew translation of "Tancred," Disraeli's 1833 novel, which alludes to the vision of the return to Zion (Tancred was the conqueror of Jerusalem in the First Crusade). It bears noting that in his student fraternity days, Theodor Herzl's nickname was Tancred. Daniela Shacham is an historian, who has been researching the history of the Disraeli family and is writing a book on the subject. Bookmark to del.icio.us   Beatle in Bethlehem Paul McCartney says West Bank visit shows he is carrying message of peace. Biden on the attack Democratic VP candidate says McCain presidency would benefit Iran, Hezbollah.

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