Focusing on the figure of the rabbi, this book provides a vivid picture of Italian Jewry during the Renaissance. The author discusses Jewish life of the period (c.1450-1600) in its social, institutional, and cultural aspects, placing them against the backdrop of the wider Catholic environment to give an original interpretation of how Jewish cultural and religious life developed in the Renaissance context. Particular attention is given to changes in the status and functions of the rabbis and to the relations between the rabbinate and the lay leadership. Of special interest is the exploration of the cultural world of the rabbis and the broader issue of intellectual developments at the time. Essentially a translation of Part I of the Hebrew edition, which won wide acclaim for its perspective, Rabbis and Jewish Communities in Renaissance Italy has been carefully adapted for an English-speaking readership. Substantial excerpts from the appendices have been incorporated into the text so that the evidence necessary to support the arguments is easily accessible.

The articles collected in this volume display Robert Bonfil's pioneering reappraisal of the economic and socio-cultural history of the Jews of Italy during the Renaissance and the early modern period, focusing on their encounter with and incorporation into the Italian society that surrounded them. Rather than thinking in terms of challenge and response, and the passive surrender of the Jews to the influence of their Christian surroundings, Bonfil's exploration of the evidence shows it mirroring their conscious choice to preserve a distinctive Jewish identity while at the same time being an integral part of the socio-economic and cultural fabric of the environment in which they lived. Rejecting the ideological assumptions of both the lachrymose and anti-lachrymose conceptions of Jewish history, these are articles which provide stimulating explorations of the realities of the era, and paradigms and case studies of the processes of cultural adjustment to the impact of constantly changing otherness.

With this heady exploration of time and space, rumors and silence, colors, tastes, and ideas, Robert Bonfil recreates the richness of Jewish life in Renaissance Italy. He also forces us to rethink conventional interpretations of the period, which feature terms like 'assimilation' and 'acculturation'. Questioning the Italians' presumed capacity for tolerance and civility, he points out that Jews were frequently uprooted and persecuted, and where stable communities did grow up, it was because the hostility of the Christian population had somehow been overcome. After the ghetto was imposed in Venice, Rome, and other Italian cities, Jewish settlement became more concentrated. Bonfil claims that the ghetto experience did more to intensify Jewish self-perception in early modern Europe than the supposed acculturation of the Renaissance. He shows how, paradoxically, ghetto living opened and transformed Jewish culture, hastening secularization and modernization. Bonfil's detailed picture reveals in the Italian Jews a sensitivity and self-awareness that took into account every aspect of the larger society. His inside view of a culture flourishing under stress enables us to understand how identity is perceived through constant interplay - on whatever terms - with the Other.