This book depicts the cultural imagination of the Italian-Jewish minority from the unification of the country to the end of the First World War. The creation of an Italian nation-state introduced new problems and new opportunities for its citizens. What did it mean for the Jewish minority? How could members of the minority combine and redefine Jewishness and Italianness in a radically new political and legal framework? Key concepts such as family, religion, nation, assimilation and - later - Zionism are observed as they shift and change over time. The interaction between the public and private spheres plays a pivotal role in the analysis, and the self-fashioning of Italian Jewish elites is read alongside the evolution of the cultural stereotypes typical of the time. Reinterpreting the Italian national patriotic narrative through the eyes of the Jews, Carlotta Ferrara degli Uberti is able to unveil its less known layers and articulations, while at the same time offering a new perspective from which to read the modern Jewish experience in the Western World.

The volume investigates the interconnections between the Italian Jewish worlds and wider European and Mediterranean circles, situating the Italian Jewish experience within a transregional and transnational context mindful of the complex set of networks, relations, and loyalties that characterized Jewish diasporic life. Preceded by a methodological introduction by the editors, the chapters address rabbinic connections and ties of communal solidarity in the early modern period, and examine the circulation of Hebrew books and the overlap of national and transnational identities after emancipation. For the twentieth century, this volume additionally explores the Italian side of the Wissenschaft des Judentums; the role of international Jewish agencies in the years of Fascist racial persecution; the interactions between Italian Jewry, JDPs and Zionist envoys after Word War II; and the impact of Zionism in transforming modern Jewish identities.

Beginning with the establishment of the first ghetto in Venice in 1516, then followed by that of Rome and other cities, the Jews had to measure themselves against this circumscribed and ambivalent place, which included them in the urban perimeter and at the same time isolated them. For almost three centuries this was the space in which the Jews cultivated their identity, on the one hand preserving the characteristics of a millenary culture, while on the other drawing from the world that opened up beyond that border: the constant relationship between the “inside” and the “outside” of the ghetto walls marks the life of the Jews on the long road to emancipation. The volume is dedicated to this complex and articulated reality, availing itself of a very rich critical apparatus in dealing from every angle - historical, artistic, sociological - with a highly current problem: the concepts of resilience, integration, comparison between cultures, aspiration to being the same while remaining different.

This book depicts the cultural imagination of the Italian-Jewish minority from the unification of the country to the end of the First World War. The creation of an Italian nation-state introduced new problems and new opportunities for its citizens. What did it mean for the Jewish minority? How could members of the minority combine and redefine Jewishness and Italianness in a radically new political and legal framework? Key concepts such as family, religion, nation, assimilation and - later - Zionism are observed as they shift and change over time. The interaction between the public and private spheres plays a pivotal role in the analysis, and the self-fashioning of Italian Jewish elites is read alongside the evolution of the cultural stereotypes typical of the time. Reinterpreting the Italian national patriotic narrative through the eyes of the Jews, Carlotta Ferrara degli Uberti is able to unveil its less known layers and articulations, while at the same time offering a new perspective from which to read the modern Jewish experience in the Western World.

The volume investigates the interconnections between the Italian Jewish worlds and wider European and Mediterranean circles, situating the Italian Jewish experience within a transregional and transnational context mindful of the complex set of networks, relations, and loyalties that characterized Jewish diasporic life. Preceded by a methodological introduction by the editors, the chapters address rabbinic connections and ties of communal solidarity in the early modern period, and examine the circulation of Hebrew books and the overlap of national and transnational identities after emancipation. For the twentieth century, this volume additionally explores the Italian side of the Wissenschaft des Judentums; the role of international Jewish agencies in the years of Fascist racial persecution; the interactions between Italian Jewry, JDPs and Zionist envoys after Word War II; and the impact of Zionism in transforming modern Jewish identities.