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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.
The history of Jews in cosmopolitan maritime trading centres is a field of research that is reshaping our understanding of how Jews entered the modern world. These studies show that the utility of Jewish merchants in an era of European expansion was vital to their acculturation and assimilation.
This is a study of the early writings of Virginio Gayda (1885-1944), a talented but amoral Italian journalist whose career spanned two world wars. A keen observer, prolific writer and propagandist during his stint as the newspaper La Stampa’s special correspondent in Habsburg Vienna, Gayda lent his considerable skills to promote an aggressive foreign policy. No one did more than he to poison relations between the Italian and Yugoslav peoples. His is the story of a respected journalist who chose an ultranationalist path to fascism and international fame. Not uninfluenced by rank careerism and material reward he forsook his roots to embrace the antisemitic “race” laws of 1938 and Italy’s disastrous partnership with Nazi Germany.
Border Heritage opens new insights in migration studies through analysis of the same emblematic eastern-central European borderland in Trieste, crossed by four refugee migrations over 70 years of history (1945–2022). Born from a dual personal and professional perspective, the book’s original structure starts from the Ukrainian displacement, going back to the asylum seekers arriving via the Balkans, then to refugees from the former Yugoslavia, and the exodus from Istria after the Second World War; the second part focuses on places, objects, and displaced memories. Each chapter begins with a particularly significant account by a refugee, which anchors the argument in everyday life and give...
This is an intellectual biography of the Italian Jewish writer and politician David Levi (1816-1898). Freemasonry, Saint-Simonianism, and the Enlightenment are his vessels for a new, secular, interpretation of Jewish identity and for innovative views on Judaism’s relation with modernity.
The Jewish population of early modern Italy was characterised by its inner diversity, which found its expression in the coexistence of various linguistic, cultural and liturgical traditions, as well as social and economic patterns. The contributions in this volume aim to explore crucial questions concerning the self-perception and identity of early modern Italian Jews from new perspectives and angles.
This book is the first epoch-spanning study on Jewish participation in the Italian women’s movement, focussing in a transnational perspective on the experience of Italian-Jewish protagonists in Liberal Italy, during the First World War and the Fascist dictatorship until 1945. Drawing on ego-documents, contemporary journals and Jewish community archives, as well as records by the police and public authorities, it examines the tensions within the emancipation process between participation and exclusion. The book argues that the racial laws from 1938 did not represent the sudden end of an idyllic integration, but rather the climax of a long-term development. Social marginalization, the persecution of Jewish rights, and the assault on Jewish lives during fascism are analysed distinctly from the perspective of Jewish women. In spite of their significant influence on the transnational orientation of the Italian women’s movement, their emancipation as women and Jews remained incomplete.
The history of the Christian-Jewish relations is full of curious, intense, and occasionally tragic episodes. In the dialectical development of the Western monotheistic religions, Judaism plays the role of the “thesis”, of the origins and background for the rise of Christianity and Islam. With the rise of Christianity, Judaism was progressively marginalized, since it was denied the same essence and validity of Christianity, which grew immensely in terms of spiritual and secular power. Christian scholars since the Middle Ages looked at Judaism as at the “broken staff” in the evolutionist line of religion, to quote the insightful work of the late Frank E. Manuel. At the same time, while...
Finalist for the 2019 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award in the History category The First Zionist Congress, held in Basel, Switzerland, in August 1897, was arguably the most significant Jewish assembly since antiquity. Its delegates surveyed the situation of Jews at the end of the nineteenth century, analyzed cultural and economic issues facing them, defined the program of Zionism, created an organization for planning and decision-making, and coalesced in camaraderie and shared aspiration. Though Zionism experienced multiple conflicts and reversals, the Congress's goal was ultimately realized in the establishment of Jewish sovereignty in Palestine—the State of Israel—in 1948. As The...
The East Central Europe in Exile series consists of two volumes which contain chapters written by both esteemed and renowned scholars, as well as young, aspiring researchers whose work brings a fresh, innovative approach to the study of migration. Altogether, there are thirty-eight chapters in both volumes focusing on the East Central European émigré experience in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The first volume, Transatlantic Migrations, focuses on the reasons for emigration from the lands of East Central Europe; from the Baltic to the Adriatic, the intercontinental journey, as well as on the initial adaptation and assimilation processes. The second volume is slightly different in scope, for it focuses on the aspect of negotiating new identities acquired in the adopted homeland. The authors contributing to Transatlantic Identities focus on the preservation of the East Central European identity, maintenance of contacts with the “old country”, and activities pursued on behalf of, and for the sake of, the abandoned homeland. Combined, both volumes describe the transnational processes affecting East Central European migrants.