Podcast: Cynthia Ozick on the Story of a Jew Who Becomes a Tormentor of Other Jews

By Tikvah Podcast at Mosaic, Cynthia Ozick

In her latest short fiction, the great American Jewish writer retells the true story of Edgardo Mortara, a young Italian boy taken by the pope in 1858 and raised to become a priest.

Podcast: Cynthia Ozick

In the 1850s, when a young Italian Jewish boy named Edgardo Mortara fell ill, his family’s Christian maid had secretly baptized him in hopes that he would be restored to health, or that if he died, his soul would be saved.

This meant that when Edgardo survived and his baptism was revealed, the church saw him as a Christian child, not a Jewish one—and it was forbidden by Canon law for a Christian child to be raised by Jewish parents. So Edgardo, then six years old, was removed from his family against their wishes by the pope, and brought to Rome where he was instructed in the Catholic faith and eventually became a priest.

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