Fossano

FOSSANO, town in N.W. Italy. Fossano was one of the three communities, with Asti and Moncalvo, which preserved the special liturgy of French origin known as the *Apam rite. Jewish bankers in Fossano are first mentioned in the 1670s. A ghetto was established in 1724. There were then approximately 100 Jews living in Fossano. The "miraculous" escape of the Jews from a riot on the fourth night of Passover during the French revolutionary wars (1796) was long commemorated by a local Purim. The community ceased to exist before World War II.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Roth, in: RMI, 5 (1930/31), 36–39; idem, in; HUCA, 10 (1935), 457–60; Colombo and Tedesco, in: RM1, 29 (1963), 129–41; Milano, Bibliotheca, index. ADD. BIBLIOGRAPHY: M. Acanfora Torrefranca, "Il rito APAM; una diversa tradizione musicale?," in: Scritti sull'ebraismo in memoria di Emanuele Menachem Artom (1996), 322–28.