Carlotta Ferrara degli Uberti – författare

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 élites 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.