In a remote southern Italian town in the 1930s, a group of Catholics who had never before met any Jews began practicing their own idiosyncratic brand of Judaism. Helmed by a disabled and charismatic WWI veteran named Donato Manduzio, who fancied himself a prophet, the 80-odd impoverished peasants of San Nicandro converted en masse after the end of World War II, with the majority eventually emigrating to the newly founded state of Israel.
From the time the San Nicandro story first became public, its inspirational arc was a subject of fascination for many, including my late grandmother, who was my first and most important religious teacher and a charismatic leader in her own way. It was because of Bubby that I first learned about the Jews of San Nicandro as depicted in Phinn Lapide’s book, “The Prophet of San Nicandro” (1953). But I later discovered that other versions of the story had appeared: in Time (September 1947), Commentary (April 1948) and in a book translated from the French, “San Nicandro: The Story of a Religious Phenomenon” (1957) by Elena Cassin.
