Ta' Xbiex has retained most of its good looks and seafront villas are much sought after for apart from their imaginative architecture they will forever enjoy beautiful seaviews of Malta's largest yacht Marina and the 16th century bastions of Valletta. Villa Bel Air the residence of the Italian ambassador is one of these coveted properties and a reception there is always pleasurable.
H.E. the ambassador to Italy Giovanni Umberto De Vito and Signora De Vito held a reception last week to welcome Mr Harry Wall from the USA to promote Italy and Malta as tourist destinations. Mrs De Vito is Hadar Halevy, the mezzo-soprano who so successfully sang the male part of Orphée in Gluck's Orphée and Eurydice at the Manoel Theatre recently, a role she shared with another mezzo-soprano, Lucia Cirillo.
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Mr Wall told me that he was in Malta at the invitation of the Malta Tourism Authority. "We were invited because of the interest to raise awareness among American Jews of cultural, heritage and other attractions of Malta," he told me. Mr Wall is the founder and producer of Jewish Discoveries, an online travel resource that features Jewish communities and heritage around the world. www.JewishDiscoveries.com. Mr Wall explains: " We produce videos, high quality photo reportage, and documentaries about Jewish life worldwide. These are distributed to American Jewish organizations as well as online for travellers and tourists."
Mr Wall was accompanied by Richard Nowitz, a very well-known, even famous, photographer and his wife Varda Avnisan, who has an Art Glass Design Studio in the States. She says she became the artist she is today quite by accident and after the unimaginable attack of 9/11. She began looking for therapeutic and meaningful ways to express her feelings about the world and its loss and devastation on that day. Varda was born in Israel and after growing up in a country of wars and terror attacks, this brought to surface many memories that she had often tried to forget. "Designing beautiful pieces of glass was a way of making something broken into something whole again," she says.
Mr Nowitz has done much work over many years for National Geographic, Condé Nast Travel and has published over 30 travel books.
Mr Wall told me he doesn't know how many American Jewish travellers currently visit Malta. "It is a small but significant segment of the travel industry. It is estimated that there are about 30,000 Israelis who travel to Malta annually."
Many American Jews travel with the purpose of exploring cultural and religious heritage. "We think that there are interesting sites, among them the Jewish Catacombs, synagogue, cemeteries, and other visual reminders of Jewish presence on the island. Then there is the celebration of the Jewish holidays, both by the local community and visitors. He believes that with more information about Malta's Jewish sites and heritage, together with the country's very interesting cultural heritage, museums and preserved cities - Mdina and Valletta in particular - that there will be more American Jewish travellers visiting Malta. The ambassador of Italy to Malta and his wife Hadar, who is from Israel, have been friends from the time the ambassador was posted in Israel and after that in New York. Mr Wall looks forward to returning to Malta and can foresee the island as a growing attraction for American Jewish travellers. "It is a good example of initiatives by the MTA as part of its marketing efforts in the US," he told me
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There has been a Jewish community in Malta for hundreds of years. I have been wanting to own a copy of Godrey Wettinger's The Jews of Malta in the late Middle Ages for a long time but it is out of print. Claire-Eliane Engel in her Histoire de l'Ordre de Malte comments that during the Great Siege, 'les juifs de Malte avaient été d'une loyauté au-dessus de tout eloge' (the Jews of Malta had behaved with a loyalty above all praise). There you are. They were already here during the great siege.
I asked Mr Wall if they had paid a visit to Shelley Tayar who is possible the oldest and most informed of her community in Malta. She had given me a copy of An Account of Malta's Jewish Community since 1800 which I had serialized in First, our monthly magazine, when I was its editor. Alan Keighley researched and wrote the historical section and Andy Welsh saw the whole project through to completion. Shelly's part in it starts on page 40 with her Reminiscences of George: my husband. How many Rosh Hashana's did I attend at the Hilton with photos of the evening appearing in First? They were invariably 'eucumenical' events - Catholics, Bahais, priests and rabbis present. That is Shelley - a huge heart and all inclusive.
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My father and George were friends and George visited my father at home occasionally. The first mangoes and avocadoes I ever tasted were brought to us straight from Israel by Gita, Shelley's sister and George's first wife, and George. I can see them both, in my mind's eye, in our kitchen, where everything happened, talking to my mother who always seemed to be cooking something. Little did I know then, that destiny would take me to Mauritius where we had mangoes and avocadoes growing in our very garden.
Another interesting person I met was Jason Allan. He is the managing director of Maxima Tours Ltd and Exclusively Malta and operates from Ontario and New York. Exclusively Malta has been promoting Malta for several years. 'We have coined ourselves as North American Specialists,' he told me. 'Over the last few years North Americans have become more aware of Malta due to its unique appeal to special interest markets focused on History and #3 on the Annual New York Times Travel Section list of "52 Places to go in 2016". Both play an important role in the growth of American tourism."
So Michelle Buttigieg, who is maligned at every opportunity on blogs etc., just because she is an old friend of Mrs Michelle Muscat, the PM's wife, is certainly doing more than her share of work in New York, promoting Malta. She was an excellent choice and is producing results.
This was a most pleasant evening engineered by Sig. and Siga De Vito which brought a group of personalities together whose networking will bring results for Malta's Tourism industry.