Jews in Italy

Mauro Perani is Full Professor of Hebrew at the University of Bologna, Department of Cultural Heritage. President of the European Association for Jewish Studies in 2006-2010, he is currently President of the Italian Association for Jewish Studies (AISG). In 2013, he discovered the oldest complete Sefer Torah, in the University of Bologna library. In the same year, he received a PhD honoris causa from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem for his research on thousands of medieval Hebrew manuscripts reused in Italian archives as bindings in the 16th-18th centuries. Director and Editor of Materia Giudaica, journal of the AISG, he also founded the series Corpus Epitaphiorum Hebraicorum Italiae. He has worked on the “Italian Genizah Project” for thirty-five years, and is currently partaking in the “Books within Books” initiative as a Member of the Scientific Board. He is the author of a dozen volumes and more than four hundred articles.   Yaron Harel is Full Professor at the department of Jewish History at Bar Ilan University. He is the vice-chairman of the Israeli Historical Society, and incumbent of the Yekutiel and Hannah Klein Chair in the History the Rabbinate during the Modern Period, Bar-Ilan University. His research deals with political, social, and cultural history of the Jews in the Middle East in modern times. He published twelve books and several peer-reviewed articles.

“Individually and collectively [the articles] providevaluable information and analysis about the current state of research ofItalian Jewry in particular and in the context of Jewish studies in general. ...The Jews in Italy: Their Contribution to the Development and Diffusion ofJewish Heritage highlights how at the communal level Italian Jewish cultureembodies Italian, and indeed global, culture.”—Howard Adelman, H-Judaic

• PrefaceTHE ROMAN PERIODRoman Attitudes to Jews and Judaism in the First Century BCE Miriam Ben ZeevTHE MIDDLE AGES & THE RENAISSANCEThe Oldest Complete Extant Sefer Torah Rediscovered at the Bologna University Library: Codicological, Textual, and Paleographic Features of an Ancient Eastern Tradition Mauro PeraniPalestinian and Babylonian Traditions in Italy at the Outset of the Middle Ages: The Yerushalmi in the Writings of R. Isaiah di Trani (the Rid) Yaron SilversteinAbraham de Balmes’s Miqneh Abram: An Adaptation of Modistic Concepts by a Hebrew Grammarian of the Renaissance Dror Ben-AriéThe Anonymous Hebrew Translation of Giordano Ruffo’s De medicina equorum and Its Language Michael RyzhikBetween The Book of Jossipon and The Book of Jashar Carmela SarangaItalian Jewry and Kabbalistic Rites Moshe HallamishLadino Translations from Italy: The Bible, Pirke Avot, the Passover Haggadah, and the Siddur Ora (Rodrigue) SchwarzwaldThe Jews of France and Italy during the Later Middle Ages and the Renaissance Shimon SchwarzfuchsTorah and Nature in the Writings of Some Italian Jewish Thinkers of the Renaissance Miguel Antonio Beltrán MunarPrenuptial Agreements in Ketubot from Italy Yoel ShiloTHE MODERN PERIODJewish Ashkenazi Gastronomy in Northern Italy in the Early Modern Period: The Testimony of the Book Mitzvot Hanashim Zahava WeishouseThe Depiction of Jesus’s Circumcision and Presentation in the Temple in Early Modern Paintings in Venice: Some Questions on Jesus’s Identity Maria PortmannFreemasonry and Saint-Simonism as Carriers of Enlightenment Values in David Levi’s Weltanschauung Alessandro GraziThe Unique Characteristics of Dybbuk Exorcisms in Rabbinic Documents from Eighteenth-Century Italy Yaniv GoldbergRabbinic Ties between Italy and Aleppo in the Eighteenth Century Leah Bornstein-MakovetskyTHE CONTEMPORARY PERIODJewish Solidarity: The Actions and Support of the Union of Italian Israelite Communities for the Jews of Libya and Ethiopia in the 1930s Yitzhak MualemThe Dispute between Italy and France in Tunisia: The Role of Language and the Position of Italian Jewry Filippo PetrucciJews as Promoters of Italian Civilization in Libya Rachel SimonThe Relations of the Holy See with the Jewish People after the 1993 Fundamental Agreement between the Holy See and the State of Israel: Divergence between the Interreligious Dialogue with the Jews of Rome and the Diplomatic Dialogue with Israel Eliav TaubPrimo Levi: Chemist/Writer, Italian/Jew Smadar ShiffmanJewish Educational Proposals in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Florence Silvia Guetta