history of Jews in Italy

Il protestantesimo è una branca del cristianesimo sorta nel XVI secolo per riformare la Chiesa cattolica, la cui dottrina e la prassi erano considerate deviate e non più conformi alla parola di Dio. Questo movimento religioso, originato dalla predicazione dei riformatori Jan Hus, Martin Lutero, Huldrych Zwingli, Giovanni Calvino e John Knox determinò enormi risvolti politici nelle nazioni dell'Europa centrale e in altre che, per via di alleanze strategiche e dinastiche, erano legate alla cultura espressa in lingua tedesca. Sotto il termine "protestantesimo" si riunisce un variegato universo di chiese ed organizzazioni ecclesiastiche, alcune delle quali molto diverse tra loro.

Il mio lavoro di tesi si occupa di ricostruire la storia della comunità israelita italiana di Tunisia, detta anche comunità “livornese” in quanto i suoi appartenenti erano quasi interamente provenienti dal porto di Livorno, che aveva intrattenuto con la Reggenza di Tunisi rapporti commerciali e diplomatici intensi fin dal XVII secolo. A Tunisi i livornesi si erano costituiti in comunità autonoma, distinta da quella degli ebrei tunisini, fin dal 1710. Costituirono il primo nucleo di italiani stabilmente installato nel paese e nel corso dei secoli acquistarono un ruolo di leadership all’interno della comunità italiana, la quale aumentò il suo peso demografico in maniera esponenziale tra la fine del XIX secolo e i primi anni del Novecento. Nella prima metà del XX secolo la Tunisia ospitava la comunità di emigrati italiani più grande del Mediterraneo, valutata da alcuni storici intorno alle 100-120.000 unità: più degli italiani presenti nelle colonie di Libia, Etiopia, Somalia ed Eritrea messe insieme. In questo gruppo gli ebrei livornesi rappresentavano un’esigua minorità, stimata intorno alle 4-5.000 unità, ma di grande importanza qualitativa: essi formavano nel complesso una borghesia medio-alta, economicamente intraprendente, altamente istruita e socialmente impegnata. Costituivano un gruppo distinto dal resto della popolazione, composta in prevalenza da immigrati siciliani di umile estrazione che erano approdati sulle coste tunisine in tempi recenti. Sotto il periodo della dominazione della Francia, che istituì il protettorato sulla Tunisia nel 1881, i livornesi rafforzarono la comunità italiana fondando ‘dal basso’ una serie di istituzioni per rafforzare la presenza italiana nel paese. Scuole, orfanatrofi, tipografie, banche, ospedali, associazioni culturali, società sportive e filantropiche: un tessuto di associazioni che permise alla comunità italiana di mantenere la sua identità.
L’impatto del fascismo sugli italiani di Tunisia, e nello specifico sui livornesi, fu un fenomeno assai complesso che produsse reazioni contrastanti. Da un lato l’ideologia fascista suscitava profonda avversione in una borghesia come quella livornese, impregnata di ideali democratici e liberali e largamente inquadrata in una rete di logge massoniche a difesa di ideali contrapposti  quelli del nuovo movimento. Dall’altro il fascismo suscitava consenso nella misura in cui si poneva a difesa degli italiani di Tunisia, minacciati da una politica si naturalizzazione condotta dalla Francia per riequilibrare la bilancia demografica tra italiani e francesi, nettamente squilibrata a favore dei primi. Ma al di là alle posizioni di principio, lo stesso processo di fascistizzazione della comunità italiana di Tunisia pose dei seri problemi alla comunità livornese, che vedeva sfidata la propria egemonia materiale e culturale all’interno della colonia. Il confronto dialettico tra l’élite livornese e il governo fascista, che puntava a un dominio completo degli italiani di Tunisia per meglio appoggiare le proprie rivendicazioni sul protettorato, costrinse gli ebrei italiani a rimettere in gioco la propria identità e il proprio ruolo nella comunità italiana.
Un’attenzione particolare è stata dedicata a ricostruire il periodo compreso tra il 1938 e il 1943, quando con l’applicazione delle leggi razziali il fascismo si pose in aperta rottura con i livornesi di Tunisi. La questione delle persecuzioni antisemite da parte del console italiano, nonchè l’ambigua protezione offerta agli ebrei italiani durante la Seconda guerra mondiale, quando la Tunisia vide l’applicazione di legislazioni razziali ancora più severe a opere della Francia di Vichy prima e della Germania nazista poi, rappresentano problematiche ancora da chiarire.
Il lavoro di ricerca si propone dunque di rispondere a numerosi interrogativi. Prima di tutto di chiarire i caratteri specifici della comunità livornese di Tunisi, dal punto di vista socio-economico ma anche per questioni più immateriali (ideali politici, auto-rappresentazione, identità cosmopolita). Poi di comprendere nel suo sviluppo storico i rapporti tra i livornesi e il fascismo, privilegiando tematiche quali il consenso e il dissenso, le visioni reciproche, la gestione del potere. Tale percorso è stato ricostruito secondo una precisa prospettiva metodologica, meno legata a interpretazioni eurocentriche e attenta invece a valorizzare il peso della realtà locale nonché il ruolo determinante degli attori “periferici”, legati al contesto coloniale tunisino.

La "triade Borgia", composta dal pontefice Alessandro VI e dai suoi figli Cesare e Lucrezia, caratterizzò la vita politica e religiosa della penisola italiana nel periodo compreso tra il 1480 e il 1520.
Nel mondo giudaico Alessandro VI è considerato un protettore degli ebrei, per aver egli mostrato comprensione verso i profughi sefarditi che giunsero a Roma nel giugno 1493 a seguito dell'espulsione dal regno bipartito di Spagna. In realtà l'ambiguo pontefice rivelò tratti di severità verso la comunità israelitica romana, alternati a momenti di conciliazione, approfittando non di rado della sua ricchezza economica e tassandola per finanziare le campagne militari del figlio Cesare.

The article discusses examples of mixtures
between groups of Italian Jews of various origins (Ashkenazic, Italiani, Sephardic), mixtures that can lead to confusion about the origin of names and show the complexity of the origins of Italian Jews. These examples illustrate a general point, namely that the onomastic approach
can provide valuable information for history and genealogy.

Recent studies have shown that Sicilian Jews during the Middle Ages played an important role in Mediterranean Trade. They had a marked tendency to mobility and They travelled for commercial reasons to Malta, Africa, Tuscany and Sardinia. Sardinian Jews also travelled a lot, in particular to Sicilian island to export goods of Sardinian market. Based on published and unpublished documents of Spanish and Sicilian archives the present study focuses on some cultural, social and economic relations existed between Sicilian Jews and the Jews of the Kingdom of Sardinia. This essay investigates some dynamics of mobility that existed in the 15th Century between the two islands. Particular attention is paid to the Jewish families who lived between Sicily and Sardinia and to many cultural aspects that join Sicilian and Sardinian Jews.

FRANCESCO BIANCHI, “Una storia di pinne e di squame”. Appunti per
una storia del pesce nell’ebraismo medievale
Partendo dai dati biblici e talmudici, l’articolo esplora, in primo luogo,
il ruolo del pesce nella creazione e le leggi alimentari che ne regolano il
consumo nel mondo ebraico medioevale attraverso la testimonianza dei
più importanti esegeti ebraici di quel periodo. Successivamente sono analizzati gli scarni dati a nostra disposizione dalle fonti ebraiche che ci infor322 Abstracts and Keywords
mano sul commercio del pesce e sui modi di prepararlo. Una breve
descrizione del ruolo simbolico nella tradizione e nel folkore ebraico conclude la ricerca.
Parole chiave: pesce, leggi alimentari, esegesi, commercio, cucina, simbologia
Against the background of the Biblical and Talmudic sources, the
paper illustrates both the status of the fish in the Creation and the dietary
laws ruling the Jewish kitchen, according to the most important Jewish
scholars in Middle Age. Afterwards, the sources dealing with the trade
and the cooking of fishes are scrutinized and compared to the situation in
the Christian world as well. A brief description of the fish as a symbol in
the Jewish tradition close the paper.
Keywords: fish fauna, food laws, exegesis, trade, cuisine, symbolism

The study of Italian Rabbinic literature holds pride of place in Reuven Bonfil's scholarly oeuvre. 1 His classic study, Ha-rabbanut be-italia bi-tekufat ha-renaissance, 2 stimulated renewed appreciation of, and interest in, the lives and writings of late medieval and early modern halakhists such as R. Joseph Colon, R. Benjamin of Montalcino, R. Azriel Trabotto (both the Elder and the Younger), R. Avraham Ha-Kohen of Bologna and others. His later studies on the cultural terrain of Southern Italy in the early Middle Ages renewed the long-standing debate regarding the origins of Ashkenazic halakhic tradition and the process by which the Babylonian Talmud and the Ge'onim effectively conquered Apennine Jewry, and then the Jews of Franco-Germany. Bonfil is also a pioneer in the application of the tools of cultural anthropology to halakhic and other rabbinic texts, in order to reconstruct thereby the categories of Medieval and Renaissance Jewish Culture. 3 In particular, responsa literature has played an important role in Bonfil's ongoing efforts to deepen our understanding of quattrocento and cinquecento Jewish life in Northern Italy. 4 In tribute to him, this paper will discuss certain salient themes concerning the status of women in Quattrocento Northern Italy,

The text aims to evaluate the level of participation of the Italian, Ashkenazi and Sephardic Nations in processes of mutual inclusion and family relationships fusion among the three groups, in Ferrara between 1492 and 1598.  The archival collection helped us to understand what circumstances were an obstacle to 'mixed' marriages between Jews of different linguistic and cultural origin (the various testamentary uses, the greater independence of the Ashkenazi women, the different size of the dowry and the Sephardic marriage / inheritance law).

Sicilian Origins and Roman Splendours of Ferdinando Balami: Pontifical Archiater, Poet and Translator of the First Half of the 16th Century.
The career of Ferdinando Balami, which took place in the shadow of papal power in Renaissance Rome, was unquestionably extraordinary. He was the son of Sicilian Jews, or Jewish converts, who had emigrated to the Urbe following the exile of 1492-93. Balami practised medicine and managed to scale the heights of his profession in the eternal city and the earnings he accumulated enabled him to have a luxurious palace in the centre of Rome, designed by Antonio da Sangallo the Younger. Balami knew and frequented the academia and the banquets: he, too, composed and exchanged verses of poetry, and, thanks to his established position at the papal court, he managed to exploit this network of friendships cultivated by means of his role as physician and pontifical archiater, maintaining relationships with the greatest cultural and political exponents of the time, united by a shared philo-Medici project. Over the course of his life in Rome, Balami showed himself to be a humanist physician who, following the centuries-old tradition of the Jews of Sicily, made his knowledge of languages and ability to translate of texts into in- struments of power and social success. His role as a translator of Galen’s texts from Greek into Latin undoubtedly transported him into the intellectual avant-garde of the time and earned him a place in posterity with his successors and critics. Furthermore, in Rome between the 15th and 16th centuries, one begins to see a certain number of “Sicilians”, either Jews or new Christians, who formed a rete mirabile (“remarkable network”) that had access to the Urbe thanks to the relationships of patronage with eminent families who maintained interests in and ties to the island.

in Rostros judíos del Occidente medieval, XLV Semana Internacional de Estudios Medievales (Estella-Lizarra, 17-20 de julio de 2018), Gobierno de Navarra, Pamplona 2019, pp. 193-217 (open access volume at: <https://www.navarra.es/home_es/especial/SemanaEstudiosMedievales/Actas.htm>, <https://www.navarra.es/NR/rdonlyres/DA399C57-3C97-4D44-B9D7-1E81B9EF4A4D/449279/2018.pdf>)

This case study considers rabbinic texts that address the migration of converso refugees to Venetian Crete in the mid-sixteenth century. New papal policies and the onset of the Roman Inquisition on mainland Italy prompted a refugee crisis in Candia that led to tensions between the migrants and local Candiote Jews. Coming primarily from Sephardic origins, these migrants were in search of refuge as well as the opportunity to reclaim their Jewish identities after forced conversion; here we con- sider three letters contained in Takkanot Kandiyah from rabbinic authorities on how to diffuse the situation and approach the converso issue within a halakhic framework.

The article deals with the political and military organization
of the former internees in the Italian concentration camp
Rab. Although there were only about 2,000 of them at the
beginning of September 1943, they managed to disarm the
entire Italian military garrison on the island of Rab, which
consisted of 2,200 soldiers and carabinieri, partly by cunning
and partly by force. It was a unique event in world history,
made even more glorious by the fact that no Italian soldiers
or carabinieri were liquidated in the process. The head
of the Executive Committee of the clandestine Liberation
Front was Jože Jurančič, who was arrested in 1949 and then
imprisoned on Goli Otok. As such, he was one of the former
internees of the Rab concentration camp who carved stones
and placed them in the renovated cemetery of the former
internees of Rab.

Analysis of a cantorial-liturgical manuscript produced in mid-17th century Venice by the Sephardic cantor David Silva. The manuscript contains a number of texts of traditional prayers, piyyutim and songs in Ladino, with the indication of their tunes, including Turkish-Arabic maqamat.

C'è un edificio, a Sabbioneta, provincia di Mantova, che ha attirato la mia attenzione, per molti buoni motivi. Chi era Pio Foà? Perché le guide la chiamano "La casa del rabbino"?
There is a building, in Sabbioneta (Mantova) that captured my attention for many good reasons. Who was Pio Foà? Why do the guides call this building "The Rabbi's house"?

The aim of this work is to analyze the phenomenon of the implementation of forced sermons in the Jewish community of Lugo during the 18th century. A study conducted on several microfilms of miscellaneous documents related to the ancient archives of the Jewish community of Lugo, now preserved at The Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People in Jerusalem, allows us to update the state of research and reveal interesting aspects about forced preaching to the Jews of Lugo in the 18th century. The author presents six documents dating from September 5, 1766, to May 10, 1778.

During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, two communities of Jewish immigrants and exiles settled in Italy: Ashkenazim fleeing or expelled from the German lands and northern France in the decades following the Black Death and Sephardim departing the Iberian Peninsula after the massacres of 1391 and over the following century until the final expulsion in 1492.  Throughout these encounters both communities shaped their own identities as Ashkenazim and Sephardim based, to a great extent, on their mutual images and the differences between them.
A discussion of the relationship between Ashkenazim and Sephardim in the early modern period is still a desideratum; however, reviewing how each group approached one specific phenomenon can clarify some of the differences and the similarities between them. In this chapter, I consider one limited aspect of these relationships and examine the attitudes of Ashkenazim and Sephardim in early modern Italy and the Ottoman Empire to messianism, messianic calculations, and expectations and the roles they played in the formation of messianic movements.

The jewish comunity of Syracuse was in the Medieval period very important in international trade. Few surviving notarial acts state a prominent presence of Jews in mediterranean trading. New unpublished documents form the spanish archive of Barcellona show an interesting rich member of the comunity: Beniamino Romano, who was creditor of the king John of Aragon.

Il comportamento femminile nella società e in famiglia nel Rinascimento italiano (XVI secolo) era disciplinato da un rigido codice etico che pervadeva la vita quotidiana delle donne regolandone ogni aspetto. In grande maggioranza, esse passavano direttamente dalla casa paterna a quella maritale, essendo l'uomo a farsi carico della loro protezione. Sottoposte a un regime giuridico avente il fine di preservare la reputazione sociale della famiglia d'appartenenza, le donne erano ...

This case study considers rabbinic texts that address the migration of converso refugees to Venetian Crete in the mid-sixteenth century. New papal policies and the onset of the Roman Inquisition on mainland Italy prompted a refugee crisis in Candia that led to tensions between the migrants and local Candiote Jews. Coming primarily from Sephardic origins, these migrants were in search of refuge as well as the opportunity to reclaim their Jewish identities after forced conversion; here we consider three letters contained in Takkanot Kandiyah from rabbinic authorities on how to diffuse the situation and approach the converso issue within a halakhic framework.

Angelo Mordechai Donati, nato a Modena il 3 febbraio 1885, discendeva da una importante famiglia ebraica, le cui origini risalgono al XVI secolo.  Nel 1927 batté il record mondiale di volo in altitudine. Fu amministratore di molte società tra cui la Rinascente. Partecipò alla Conferenza di Pace di Versailles nella delegazione ebraica. Trasferitosi in Francia operò, durante la Seconda Guerra Mondiale, per la sicurezza dei sui correligionari.

Tra le presenze femminili più interessanti dell'intero Medioevo italiano si annovera certamente Matilde di Canossa, potente feudataria e sostenitrice del Papa nella lotta per le investiture. In un periodo di continue battaglie, intrighi e scomuniche, la Magna Comitissa dimostrò una straordinaria forza d'animo e vantava una formidabile propensione al comando, forte della fede religiosa che traspariva persino dalla firma sui documenti ufficiali: Mathilda, Dei Gratia, si quid est.

Over more than two thousands years, Italian Jews have produced an impressive quantity of documentary materials. To spot the data of the seismical events, therefore, has not been easy, and the results can still be supplemented , though the research has been carried out on a quite large and rich material both manuscript and printed in the Hebrew language. The crop was large and interesting, since documents about eleven different earthquakes in Italy have been found. They are texts of various kinds, sometimes just short notes, but very often long liturgical poems or whole writings, through which the Jewish minority traces its own historical memory and its own understanding of these exceptional tragic events. From the Middle Ages till the first half of the XIX century, Italian literature in the Hebrew language records the earthquakes towns that had a major Jewish community the data are richer and give more detailed information: this is the case, for instance, of the earthquake of Ferrara, in the second half of the fifteenth century. Here Azaryah de' Rossi gives us not only a vivid account of the reactions of his fellow Jews, but also the fullest and most organic essay on the causes and the meaning of the earthquakes. We also possess a remarkable abundance of Hebrew sources on the earthquake that struck Leghorn in January 1742: among other very interesting documents, there is also a daily diary, in which the strength and the nature of the shakes are recorded, during the quite long period the earthquake lasted, that is till the end of March of the same year.

This paper sheds light on how Jewish-Christian relations were reconfigured in late eighteenth-century Italy by analyzing the Italian debate over Emperor Joseph II’s Patent of Toleration (1781) and the status granted to religious minorities in the Cispadane constitution (1797)—the first “Italian” constitution. Religious difference had long provided the basis for Jewish legal separation from the non-Jewish world. This arrangement was based on a confessional framework—meaning that the organization of the state was supposed to reflect the religious belonging of the subjects. Such an arrangement was challenged at the end of the eighteenth century by the emergence of new regulatory frameworks—the Enlightenment framework of utility and the post-revolutionary framework of nationality. According to the former, membership in the political community was predicated on the basis of social utility, not on religious belonging, so religious difference should not provide the ground for any kind of social exclusion or legal discrimination. On the contrary, the emergence of the principle of nationality led to the singling out of the Jews as others from the national community, as Catholicism was soon identified as a key component of the emerging Italian national identity. Thus, the analysis of Jewish-Christian relations calls into question the traditional understanding of the age of revolutions as a period of secularization and illuminates the role that religion played in the emergence of national identities.

This essay focuses on some articles by Tullia Zevi published  in two American Jewish weeklies («Jewish Advocate» and «Chicago Sentinel») between May and December 1961, covering the Eichmann trial and the reactions of the Catholic press in Italy. The interest of these articles is given by the journalist’s perspective: to document the reactions of the Church and the Italian Catholic press of different orientations towards the trial of the high-ranking Nazi, in a phase of revision of relations with the Jewish world, but in a context where religious anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism reemerged in Italy publicly, as well as privately, in disturbing forms.