The Jews of Sannicandro (San Nicandro) Garganico

The Jewish community of Sannicandro Garganico, a small town in the north of Apulia, south Italy, was established around the 1920s by Donato Manduzio and after his conversion to Judaism. A farmer as most of his family's members, Manduzio fought in WWI. While serving in the army, he improved his very poor reading and writing skills, and upon his return to Sannicandro he gathered a group of fellow farmers and workers in his own house to read the Bible and discuss about theological and socio-political issues. Initially convinced that the Jews had disappeared and that what was written in the Bible were the vestiges of people no longer existing, his mission was to revitalise the "true" religiion and to establish a new spiritual "priesthood" based on a literal understanding of the Scriptures. Once he was told about the actual existence of Jews, he came in contact with the Roman rabbinate, and after WWII most of the fellow disciples and fellow correligionists formally converted to rabbinical orthodox Judaism, making aliyah. 

A central role in the rite of Sannicando's converts was played - and partially still is - by women, sinnging mostly in local vernaculr and musically borrowing from local worker's tunes and popular music of the time. Many songs of the "Sannicandro rite" were recorded by Leo Levi between 1952 and 1959. They consists mostly of devotional texts written in Italian or local vernacular, on simple rhytmic and melodic patterns. 

For more information about the community and its founder Donato Manduzio, see at https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comunità_ebraica_di_San_Nicandro_Garganico and https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donato_Manduzio