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JUNE 3, 2021 | The Jewish Home JUNE 3, 2021 | The Jewish Home
The Wandering
Jew
Malta Where, What, When, & Why By Hershel Lieber
A view of the walled city of Medina
What’s Malta? Malta is one of the smallest and most densely populated nations of the world. Where’s Malta? Malta is situated in the Mediterranean Sea below Italy and above Libya and Tunisia and is part of Europe. When Malta? Between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur of 2018. Why Malta? Because we were never there before. *** altese history is so colorful and complex as is its multiethnic population. Malta was ruled by Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Byzantines, Normans, French and British. Though the Muslim religion was predominant under the Arab rule, Christianity became entrenched with the Norman invasion in 1091. Later, in 1565, the famous knights of Malta
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repelled the Siege of Malta by the Ottomans. Even the Maltese language is a hybrid of Sicilian and Arabic. Still, everyone speaks English and most know Italian as well. Malta was a major Allied base during World War II in the Mediterranean and North Africa. Finally, in 1964, it won its independence from the United Kingdom, and in 1974 became a republic. Jewish history is also part of the island’s fabric of multi-ethnicity. There were Jews present under most foreign nations that ruled this strategically important bastion of the Sea. There were Jews who arrived there as slaves of their captors. They are even catacombs with Jewish symbols dating back to the Roman and Byzantine periods. During the expulsion of the Jews from Spain and Sicily, the Jewish presence in Malta came to an end. Only under French and British rule in the early 1800s did Jews from
England, Turkey, Portugal, Gibraltar and neighboring North Africa return in small numbers. Presently, there are somewhere under two hundred Jews living in Malta, most of them in or near the capital, Valletta. We arrived from Poland, on the main island, called Malta, on Wednesday, Tzom Gedalya. We settled into the Le Meridien Hotel, facing the beautiful sky-blue waters of the Mediterranean Sea. As with many of our trips, we inquired about the status of Jewish life in general and about Chabad activities and amenities in particular, before leaving for Malta. What a blessing for our comfort was the presence of the Chabad-owned L’Chaim restaurant, which was open for dinner every night and had the option of reservations for Shabbos meals. I had previously spoken to the Chabad shliach Rabbi Chaim Segal, who was very welcoming and helpful in catering to our needs. The night we arrived, both Rabbi Se-
gal and his rebbetzin were not at the restaurant, which was a ten-minute walk from our hotel. We were really hungry when we arrived, as we had not eaten all day due to Tzom Gedalya. We ordered a hot soup and a Middle Eastern-style main dish and topped it off with a cold glass of beer. Truly a mechaye after a full day of traveling and fasting. We then trekked back to our hotel and conked out as soon as our heads touched our pillows. The next morning after Selichos and Shacharis, we had breakfast on our veranda facing the Sea. Our plans were to walk around the historic center of Valletta and take in the sights. The most convenient way of traveling was by city bus, whose bus stop was a mere block away from our hotel. The streets and the bus were very congested as can be expected in a nation with over a half million people within a 122-square-mile area. All structures in the city are apartment buildings or high-rises, since the only way one
