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.

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.

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

In order to develop the field of research on printed material of Jewish magic, the article focuses on the first printing of the Sefer Šimmuš Tehillim (“Book of the Magical Use of Psalms”). The title of the work already suggests the magical use of the 150 biblical psalms. Moreover, the genre of this book resembles that of a manual, less intended to be read than to provide the reader with the appropriate instructions for an intended purpose. The subjects of these instructions are the habitual ones related to, for instance, healing, protection, love charms, dream questions, opening of the heart and aggressive magic. In 1551, the most popular magical manual in Judaism was printed for the first time in the small Italian town of Sabbioneta located in the duchy of Mantua. Regarding the editorial and redactional work of the publishers of the first edition, two different tendencies can be observed. First, the editors tried to complete the structure of the manual so that finally almost every psalm is connected with at least one benefit. Moreover, the text is presently almost completely in Hebrew, except some very common Aramaic words. Second, the editors canceled many additional uses, instructions and magical names, still attested in older manuscripts, including the fragments from the Cairo Genizah. A closer look at the proper beginning of the Sefer Šimmuš Tehillim provides a good impression of the general structure and concept of this magical manual. Furthermore, some peculiarities of this edition including errors or the use of loanwords are discussed.

"L’arabo anziano" is a poem published in Cairo in 1869 and authored by James Sanua (1839 – 1912), an Egyptian Jew of Italian origins who is considered as one of the pioneers of the Arab theatre and one of the first Egyptian nationalists. The poem is a precious testimony for the time Sanua spent in Livorno, Italy, and reflects his links with Freemasonry. This article intends to focus on the role of this poem for a comprehension of the rise of nationalism in James Sanua’s ideals and tries to shed light on his Italian experience through new unpublished documents found in the Historical Archives of the Jewish community of Livorno.

A research carried out at the University of Salento on the poorly known episode of the Southern Apulian DP Camps (1944-1947) is here described: it aims to collect in a data base (www.profughiebreinpuglia.it) testimonial evidence on the period that followed the tragedy of the Shoah and witnessed the spiritual and physical rebirth of thousands of Holocaust survivors. On the shores of the Salento region, near Lecce, four camps, organized under the auspices of the Anglo-American forces and run by the UNRRA (United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration), hosted Jewish refugees, who were mostly of Central and Eastern European origin. Their daily activities are especially taken into account to shed light on the complex relationships that resulted from the cooperation of refugees, Anglo-American soldiers, emissaries of the Palestinian yishuv, and local Italians.

The great handwritten production drawn up by the Jews in Lugo, mainly from 17th to 19th Centuries, kept in the libraries of Europe, United States and Israel, is very important for the identification and reconstruction of the main protagonists and aspects of the local Jewish community’s everyday life. Among this abundant documentation, the unpublished manuscript 4101 from the Jewish Theological Seminary library in New York City contains a copy of an anthology of Jewish prayers composed by Rabbi Yiṣḥaq Berekyah Da Fano (III) (1676-1750) for various circumstances and festivals, produced in 1759. The transcription of the Hebrew text and the Italian translation by the author allow us to preserve the memory of this specific liturgical prayers, together with the memory of everyday events of inspiration and therefore worthy of commemoration. Moreover, this material contributes to enrich not only the cultural profile of the author and his illustrious family, but also the results of the studies carried out so far on Lugo’s internal sources that make the local Jewish community a very interesting case-study.

Session One (Sunday): Communities and Contexts

Marginal or Monumental?  “Kokhim” in the Catacombs of Rome

Is there a distinctly “Jewish” type of funerary architecture employed in the catacombs of Rome?  This contribution examines the arrangements of the tomb form known as the “kokh” (pl. “kokhim”) within certain areas of the catacomb of the Vigna Randanini in Rome, drawing attention to their characteristics and organization in light of the kokh’s limited presence in the other catacombs of Rome in the third and fourth centuries CE.  The majority of Jews in this site – as elsewhere in Rome – buried their dead in a typically Roman fashion, using the most simple and common methods available to create a tomb.  The evidence of kokhim is concentrated in three small underground complexes or hypogaea that were excavated independently, and with very different points of origin, before being integrated into a larger, communal cemetery also used by Jews.  This situation is consistent with the development of distinctly “Jewish” and “Christian” underground cemeteries in the suburbs of Rome beginning in the third century CE, as the communal necropoleis appear to have been de-emphasized for largely homogeneous sites.  The Vigna Randanini catacomb thus exhibits signs of Jewish burial activity coupled with innovations in local cemetery design to create a uniquely Jewish cemetery on a scale not previously seen for this community in Rome.

Our topographical analysis of the site, including a complete inventory of the seventy or so kokhim revealed thus far and a new map of their situation, illustrates the distinct ways in which the “Randanini kokhim” are distributed and designed.  Some kokhim are strikingly uniform in their shape and dimensions; others have their inner shafts enlarged in an idiosyncratic fashion to accommodate additional tombs.  They can be one of many forms of burial in a “hybrid” setting, or be featured prominently in an environment that seems to have been created with exactly this form of tomb in mind.  With nearly every kokhim now violated and reduced to a simple cavity in the tuff, it is this data that must be collected and studied to help us to broaden our understanding of the appearance of this tomb in the Vigna Randanini catacomb and better define its structural relationship to variations on the kokh or tomb “a forno” in other subterranean funerary spaces in Rome.  This is a particularly critical process, because the design is quite rare in Rome, and outside of the Vigna Randanini catacomb is most often found in what have been termed “private” catacombs, in which a certain manner of coexistence between pagan and non-pagan patrons or clientele is preserved.  Almost none of the cemeteries in question have been adequately documented or restored, let alone definitively labeled as “pagan”, “Jewish” or “Christian”.  We explore, then, the possible motives for the inclusion of this distinctive tomb design in the development of these sites, and whether or not it can connect to certain religious beliefs or other expressions of identity in late ancient Rome. 

Session One (Monday): Practice and Politics 

Chair: Ruth Langer

“Teach Your Daughters Wailing”: mMo’ed Qatan 3:8-9 and the Gendering of Tannaitic Funeral Practice" Gail Labovitz (American Jewish University)

This paper will explore particularly the activities which the tannaitic authors imagine women to undertake as part of the funeral process, using mMo’ed Qatan 3:8-9 as a point of entry. Integrating biblical, rabbinic, Greco-Roman, and Christian materials, questions to considered here include: was public mourning a professional role for rabbinic women, what was the nature of women’s activities and laments at funerals, did the forms of lament and praise for the deceased offered at the funeral differ (materially and/or in terms of their social valuation) if offered by men or by women, why might these roles have been assigned especially to women?

“Staging Jewish death at the turn of the Medieval Era” Sylvie Anne Goldberg (EHESS)

The Treatise Semahot (3rd century) shows that during the Antiquity, death and all that surrounds it were subjected to special ceremonials: professional mourners, weeping, elegies, first burial and second-burial are displaying a spectacular image of death. However, this staging of death has undergone many changes over time. As it is well known that many rituals, customs, and prayers were introduced during the Middle-Ages, this paper will therefore seek to focus on some of them selected on the basis of their material aspects, containing concrete representation of the approaches of death in the Jewish world at that time.

“From matsevah to Grabmal -- Central European gravestones as markers of Jewish cultural evolution” Jess Olson (Yeshiva University)

The most ubiquitous -- and historically useful -- pieces of material culture surrounding death in Jewish cultural history is the matsevah, the tombstone. For the most part, historians have approached these often complex works of sculpture in the modern period primarily as conveyances of demographic information, but the design of Jewish matsevot in the 19th and 20th centuries provides valuable, and unique insight into the evolving tastes and cultural identities of central European Jews. This paper will examine and interpret the evolution of these monuments in the context of evolving Jewish identity in Germany and Austria-Hungary between 1848 and 1914.

"In-between Graves: Space and Class in Cemetery Conflicts among the Jews of Interwar Poland" Daniel Rosenthal (Ph.D. Candidate, University of Toronto)

The growth of the urban Jewish population of Poland after the First World War strained existing cemetery infrastructure to such an extent that communities were forced to reorganize how burial space was allocated and defined. These changes to the use of space in sanctified burials grounds indicate how Jewish officials navigated their dual responsibilities to their poor constituency and to the new governmental bodies of the Second Polish Republic.

“History, science and religious politics: The archaeology of medieval Jewish cemeteries” Samuel D. Gruber (Syracuse University)

The 19th-century rediscovery and excavation of the Rue de la Harpe Jewish cemetery in Paris and the Jewish catacombs in Rome alerted and excited historians about the potential rewards of the archeology of European Jewish sites, including cemeteries, but for the most part little conscious effort was made to identify the locations or to methodically examine the remains of Jewish cemeteries until the 1980s, when again, like in 19th-century Paris, new urban development encroached on previously undisturbed burial grounds. This paper and discussion will examine recent methods of and finds from Jewish cemetery excavations in England, Spain, the Czech Republic and elsewhere, and how new discoveries have been greeted with enthusiasm and opposition by different quarters of the academic and religious Jewish communities.

Session Two (Tuesday): Archaeology and Imagined Communities

Chair: Eric Meyers

"City and Periphery - Jerusalem and Judean Burials during the Late Second Temple Period - An Archaeological Overview" - Boaz Zissu (Bar Ilan)

While the urban necropolis of Jerusalem during the late Second Temple period (2nd c. BCE-1st c. CE) has been thoroughly studied, the more distant Jewish rural areas have been mostly neglected. The proposed paper attempts to present an overview of the tombs' architecture, burial customs and chronology of Jewish burial in the Judean countryside vs. those of the urban center of Jerusalem during the 2nd c. BCE - 2nd c. CE.Fine

"Jewish Others: Visual Culture and Ethnic Identification at Beit Shearim" - Sean Burrus (Duke, Ph.D. Candidate)

The catacombs at Beit Shearim (ca. 200-400 CE) offer a chance to explore how disparate communities, the local Galilean and the diasporic, come together in the same funerary sphere. This paper will examine the role of visual culture in the Beit Shearim catacombs as a point of demarcation between communities.         

“Between Beit She’arim and Eden: Rabbinic reflection on the Tomb of Makhpelah” Steven Fine (Yeshiva University)

This paper explores the ways that ancient rabbis constructed their own vision of the biblical Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron. It suggests that the rabbis imagined the tomb complex in ways that reflect monumental communal burial complexes of late antiquity, most notably those at Beit She'arim in the lower Galilee. It further argues that the rabbis project burial practices and attitudes toward the dead of their own time onto the Tomb of Machpelah.

"Marginal or Monumental? Kokhim in the Catacombs of Rome” -  Jessica Dello Russo (Northeastern University)

This contribution to the AJS seminar on "The Materiality of Jewish Death" examines the arrangement of multiple examples of the distinctive tomb type known as the "kokh" (pl. "kokhim") within certain areas of the catacomb of the Vigna Randanini in Rome, drawing attention to their unusual characteristics and organization in this particular site in light of their limited presence in the other catacombs in Rome and most other cemeteries outside of Palestine in the period of Late Antiquity.

Concluding Discussion"

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.

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 ...

The Yearbook mirrors the annual activities of staff and visiting fellows of the Maimonides Centre and reports on symposia, workshops, and lectures taking place at the Centre. Although aimed at a wider audience, the yearbook also contains academic articles and book reviews on scepticism in Judaism and scepticism in general. Staff, visiting fellows, and other international scholars are invited to contribute.  Only frontmatter and content are uploaded. The entire volume is available as open access, follow the link:
https://www.degruyter.com/viewbooktoc/product/497751

Nella diaspora europea, il ruolo della trasmissione della cultura e delle tradizioni giudaiche è stato assunto dalla scuola elementare condotta dal rabbino o da un suo aiutante: in tal modo, la cultura risultava strettamente connessa alla religione, rendendo sfumata la distinzione con l'istruzione laica. Qui si tratterà delle caratteristiche dell'istruzione ebraica a Carpi.

I identified and copied down a circular brick stamp with Jewish motifs imprinted upon a piece of broken tile (tegola) of a yellowish clay that emerged from the fill of a broken terra-cotta container (dolium?) in the American Academy in Rome/Packard Foundation Statonia excavations of 2000.  Results of these excavations are forthcoming the Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome (eds. T. Pena - E. Papi).  .

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.

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.

www.libri-ebraici-a-corte.it Libri ebraici a corte è il progetto del Dipartimento di Studi Umanistici-Università di Torino dedicato alla ricostruzione della storia delle collezioni librarie ebraiche della Biblioteca Ducale di Torino, poi Biblioteca Regia e Regia Universitaria, collezioni oggi custodite alla Biblioteca Nazionale Universitaria.
L'opuscolo contiene l'indice dei nomi ricavato dall'indicizzazione delle fonti, consultabile anche on line sul portale

This article inquires into the specificity of Jewish attitudes toward Christian power in the Grand-Duchy of Tuscany and is meant to reconstruct the history of legal contentions between Jews and Christians during the second half of the 18th century starting from the case of the small town Pitigliano. Through the analysis of the communication carried out by the "Jewish University" with the Grand-ducal institutions, this study sheds light on some of the multiple paths of Jewish integration within local groups of right-holders, as well as on ways of Jewish penetration inside Christian political and juridical arenas. Through the vicissitudes of Jewish pleaders coping with Christian power and on the basis of their pleas, it is possible to write a history of the Jewish political and diplomatic experience. The case of the Jews of Pitigliano enables to appreciate the multiform dimension of Jewish social experiences in the Diaspora and to approach Jewish communitarian and individual trajectories.