Jews of Italy

 

Ghetto of Florence

Ghetto of Florence

In the early modern period, Italian Jewry comprised of three major groups- the Italianate, the Ashkenazic, and the Sephardic Jews. These Jews lived in several major cities, including Rome, Venice, Padua, Mantua, Florence, and somewhat later in Livorno (Leghorn). The Italianate community dated its origins as far back as during the Roman Empire. In the late fourteenth and in the fifteenth centuries, many Jews, along with Christian artisans and merchants, migrated to the Italian peninsula from German lands, encouraged by Italian dukes and Renaissance popes, and motivated by hopes for more prosperous lives. After the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492, many Sephardic Jews began to move to Italian cities, whether from the Ottoman Empire or directly from the Iberian Peninsula (see above). In the seventeenth century, another wave of Ashkenazic migrants arrived from eastern Europe following the Chmielnicki massacres of 1648-9.

Jewish life in early modern Italy can be roughly divided into two periods. In the first period, the Renaissance, Jews were encouraged to settle in Italian cities (including towns in the Papal States, like Ancona) because they were able to offer valuable financial services. These affluent Jewish bankers also became patrons of the arts and sciences. The second period, roughly that of the Counter-Reformation, brought a new phenomenon, the Jewish ghetto, as well as other restrictive measures, including book censorship.

The term “ghetto” is often misunderstood and deserves brief comment. It comes from the name of the island Ghetto Nuovo, on which the first enclosed Jewish quarter in Venice was established in 1516. This original “ghetto” was created as a measure to allow Ashkenazi moneylenders to live in the city. Later, in 1541, as Sephardic Jewish merchants from the Ottoman Empire became an increasingly active presence in the city, the Venetian government granted these “Levantine” Jews their own segregated area of the city, the adjoining Ghetto Vecchio, which was connected to the Ghetto Nuovo by a wooden footbridge over a canal. There is no consensus on the meaning of the word, but some scholars argue that it derives from an old Italian word for “foundry,” because a foundry had existed in the Ghetto Nuovo.

It was only in the decades after Pope Paul IV issued the 1555 papal bull Cum Nimis Absurdum that the establishment of Jewish ghettos became accepted policy throughout Italy. (It was not until the 1590s that the term “ghetto” was adopted by contemporaries to refer to the many enclosed Jewish quarters that by then had been established.) The creation of an enclosed Jewish quarter where all Jews were required to live sometimes actually led to the creation of a formal Jewish community. This was the case for the Jews of Tuscany, who were forced to move to a newly created Jewish quarter in Florence in 1571. Until that time, Jews in Tuscany had not been viewed by Tuscan authorities (or by themselves) as a collective “Jewish community.” These Jews, numbering 712 persons altogether according to a census taken prior to the establishment of the ghetto, had lived scattered in 21 Tuscan towns. They had been regarded by town and Tuscan officials as individuals or individual families, rather than a Jewish community.

While the ghetto in Rome was created shortly after the issuance of Cum Nimis Absurdum, the ghettoization of Italian Jewry was a rather lengthy process. Some were only created in the seventeenth century- Verona in 1600, Mirandola in 1602, Padua in 1603, Mantua in 1612, Rovigo in 1613, Ferrara in 1624. The last ghetto was established in Corregio in 1779. Sometimes difficulties in establishing the ghetto arose because Christians did not want to give up their properties and transfer them to Jews, as happened in Regio Emilia where the process of establishing a ghetto started in 1611 but was not completed till 1670.

Despite the hardships that ghettoization brought to the Jewish community, such as being forced to rent apartments from Christian landlords at high prices, overcrowding, and the imposition of a nightly curfew, Jewish scholarship and culture flourished. Naturally, ghettoization did not inhibit creativity in the traditional Jewish areas of halakhah and kabbalah. Although physically separated from Christians in their dwellings, Jews did not in fact live in cultural isolation from their Italian Christian neighbors. Evidence from Christian courts further suggests that Jews and Christians studied together and socialized in pasticerias and grecolaias (pastry shops and wine shops often run by Greeks), eating and drinking together. An early sixteenth-century translation into Italian of a Yiddish manual for Jewish women on women’s commandments indicates that Jewish women read Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso and Boccaccio’s Decameron, among other works. Theater, music, literature, and the sciences were cultivated by Jews in Hebrew, Ladino, and Italian (see the relevant sections below), leaving a treasure trove of evidence indicating a high level of Jewish acculturation and extensive Jewish-Christian interaction, at least at the elite level. Leone Modena, a seventeenth-century rabbi and intellectual, tells us in his memoirs of Christian dignitaries visiting synagogues to listen to sermons delivered by Jewish rabbis, including those of Modena himself. Modena, for his part, wrote poetry and panegyrics in Italian for his Christian patrons.

Primary Sources and Presentations

  1. Samuel Aboab, Sefer Zikhronot,Bernard Cooperman, University of Maryland, USA.
  2. Taverns and Public Drinking in Florence, Stefanie Siegmund, University of Michigan, USA.
  3. The City as a Place of Regulation, Border and Exclusion- Case of Livorno, Bernard Cooperman, University of Maryland, USA.
  4. Family Ties & Political Structure in Pisa and Livorno, Bernard Cooperman, University of Maryland, USA.
  5. Juveniles in Early Modern Jewish-Italian communities- Between Family Control and Kabbalistic Piety, Roni Weinstein, University of Pisa, Italy.
  6. The Documentation of Accidental Defloration among the Jews of Early Modern Italy, David Malkiel, Bar-Ilan University, Israel.
  7. A Challenge to Sexual and Marital Propriety and Communal Reaction, Kenneth Stow, Haifa University, Israel.
  8. Roth, C. “The Memoirs of a Siennese Jew (1625-1633).” Hebrew Union College Annual V (1928)- 353-402.
  9. “Leone Da Modena, the Virtuoso of Letter-Writing.” In Letters of Jews through the Ages – From Biblical Times to the Middle of the Eighteenth Century, edited by Franz Kobler, 401-427. New York, N.Y.- East and West Library, 1978.
  10. “Sumptuary and Other Police Laws- Forli, Italy, May 18, 1418.” In The Jew in the Medieval World- A Source Book, 315-1791, edited by Jacob Rader Saperstein, Marc Marcus, 220. Cincinnati- Hebrew Union College Press, 1999.
  11. “Takkanot of Italy.” In Jewish Self-Government in the Middle Ages, edited by Louis Finkelstein, 288-295, 297, 299-300, 304-306, 308-309, 312-314, 315. Westport- Conn., Greenwood Press, 1972.
  12. Boccato, Carla. “The Testament of Jacob Cohen Ascanasi- The Family and Commerical Enterprise in the Venetian Ghetto at the End of the Sixteenth Century.” Mediterranean Historical Review 8, no. 1 (1993)- 120-124.

    Secondary Sources

    1. Adelman, Howard Tzvi. “Law and Love- The Jewish Family in Early Modern Italy.” Continuity and Change 16, no. 2 (2001)- 283-303.
    2. Beecher, Donald. “Leone De’ Sommi and Jewish Theatre in Renaissance Mantua.” Renaissance and Reformation 17, no. 2 (1993)- 5-19.
    3. Bonfil, Robert. “Change in the Cultural Patterns of a Jewish Society in Crisis- Italian Jewry at the Close of the Sixteenth Century.” Jewish History 3, no. 2 (1988)- 11-30.
    4. Carpi, Daniel. “The Activity of The “Italian Congregation” Of Venice on Behalf of the Jewish Communities of Eretz Israel During the Years 1576-1733.” Henoch 21, no. 3 (1999)- 331-360.
    5. Cooperman, Bernard Dov. “Ethnicity and Institution Building among Jews in Early Modern Rome.” AJS Review 30, no. 1 (2006)- 119-145.
    6. Feci, Simona. “The Death of a Miller- A Trial “Contra Hebreos” In Baroque Rome.” Jewish History 7, no. 2 (1993)- 9-27.
    7. Horowitz, Elliot. “Families and Their Fortunes- The Jews of Early Modern Italy.” In Cultures of the Jews, edited by David Biale, 573-636- Schocken, 2002.
    8. Malkiel, David. “The Ghetto Republic,” in Davis and Ravid, The Jews of Early Modern Venice, 117-142, 273-276.
    9. Ravid, Benjamin. “From Geographical Realia to Historical Symbol- The Odyssey of the Word “Ghetto”.” In Essential Papers on Jewish Culture in Renaissance and Baroque Italy, edited by David B. Ruderman. New York- New York University Press, 1992.
    10. Ravid, Benjamin. “The Prohibition against Jewish Printing and Publishing in Venice and the Difficulties of Leone Modena.” In Studies in Medieval Jewish History and Literature, edited by Isadore Twersky. Cambridge- Harvard University Press, 1979.
    11. Ruderman, David B. “At the Intersection of Cultures- The Historical Legacy of Italian Jewry.” In Gardens and Ghettos- The Art of Jewish Life in Italy, edited by Vivian Mann, 1-23. Berkeley and Los Angeles- University of California Press, 1989.
    12. Ruderman, David B. and Giuseppe Veltri. “The Cultural Significance of the Ghetto in Jewish History.” In From Ghetto to Emancipation- Historical and Contemporary Reconsiderations of the Jewish Community, edited by Myers David N. and William V. Rowe. Scranton, PA- University of Scranton Press, 1997.
    13. Ruderman, David B. “Contemporary Science and Jewish Law in the Eyes of Isaac Lampronti of Ferrara and Some of His Contemporaries.” In The Frank Talmage Memorial Volume, edited by Barry Walfish, 211-224. Haifa- Haifa University Press, 1992.
    14. Tirosh-Samuelson, Hava. “Jewish Culture in Renaissance Italy- A Methodological Survey.” Italia 9, no. 1-2 (1990)- 63-96.

      Images

      1. Bible. Prophets, Book of Jonah transliterated into Judeo-Italian (Tuscan dialect), Italy, (16–) MS L667, Fol. 362r.
      2. Edict Ordering the Confiscation and Burning of the Talmud, Venice, 1553.
      3. Mahzor (Roman rite), Soncino/Casal Maggiore- Benei Soncino, 1485/6, Heb-73, Vol. 2, fol. 117v-118r.
      4. Almanac, Italy, 1496, Heb-3.
      5. Birkat ha-Mazon, Venice, 1603, RB145-3, Title page.
      6. Elegy by David Finzi in honor of Moses Zacuto, Mantua, 1697, B (NS)PP565.
      7. Elegy by Shimon Hizkiyahu Lustro for Simon Hezekiah Lustro, Padua, 1699, B (NS)PP299.
      8. Elegy, Moise Levi Muia and Leon Levi Muia (?), Venice, 1706, RB448-33, Title page.
      9. Elegy, Shimshon ben Yaakov Hacohen Modon for Yehudah Briel, Venice, 1722, RB141-10, Title page.
      10. Medaber Yehudah, Leone Modena, Venice, 1602, RB 118-23, Title page.

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