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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.
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.
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.
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