The most ancient of minorities : the Jews of Italy
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
The most ancient of minorities : the Jews of Italy
(Contributions in ethnic studies, no. 36)
Greenwood Press, 2002
Available at 5 libraries
  Aomori
  Iwate
  Miyagi
  Akita
  Yamagata
  Fukushima
  Ibaraki
  Tochigi
  Gunma
  Saitama
  Chiba
  Tokyo
  Kanagawa
  Niigata
  Toyama
  Ishikawa
  Fukui
  Yamanashi
  Nagano
  Gifu
  Shizuoka
  Aichi
  Mie
  Shiga
  Kyoto
  Osaka
  Hyogo
  Nara
  Wakayama
  Tottori
  Shimane
  Okayama
  Hiroshima
  Yamaguchi
  Tokushima
  Kagawa
  Ehime
  Kochi
  Fukuoka
  Saga
  Nagasaki
  Kumamoto
  Oita
  Miyazaki
  Kagoshima
  Okinawa
  Korea
  China
  Thailand
  United Kingdom
  Germany
  Switzerland
  France
  Belgium
  Netherlands
  Sweden
  Norway
  United States of America
Note
Includes bibliographical references (p. [369]-379) and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
A volume of essays that examine more than 2,000 years of Italian Jewish history, from ancient Rome to contemporary developments concerning assimilation, literature, and the recent trial of a former SS captain implicated in crimes against humanity.
The essays make clear that the Italian Jews have a unique history in Europe. A Jewish colony existed in Rome 200 years before the birth of Christ; the Eternal City therefore represents the oldest Jewish community in the Western world. Successive waves of immigrants created dozens of Jewish communities on the peninsula. Depending on the time and the place, Italian Jews could expect tolerance, discrimination, persecution, or outright violence. Still, they fared better than their brethren in other parts of Europe. Because of their long history on the peninsula, the volume covers an astonishing variety of subjects: from legal discrimination and historical sources to Jewish dancing masters in the Renaissance; from architecture to contradictory interpretations of the Holocaust; from the special section on the linguistic and moral power of Primo Levi to child-rearing manuals of 17th-century Livorno. In addition, two Holocaust survivors recount their experiences in an extraordinary section, The Language of the Witness. Engaging essays for scholars, students, and other researchers interested in Italian Studies and the roles the peninsula's Jewish population played through history.
Table of Contents
Introduction: Israel in Italy: Wrestling with the Lord in the Land of Divine Dew by Stanislao G. Pugliese
Historiography & the Law
Legal Discrimination Against the Jews: Ancient Rome to Unification by Sandra Tozzini
Blaming the Victims: Modern Historiography on the Early Imperial Mistreatment of Roman Jews by Dixon Slingerland
Historical Sources on Italian Jews: From the 14th Century to the Shoah by Micaela Procaccia
Medieval & Renaissance Italy
Florence Against the Jews or Jews Against Florence in the 14th and 15th Centuries? by Michele Luzzati
Between Tradition and Modernity: The Sephardim of Livorno at the End of the 17th Century by Julia R. Lieberman
Jewish Dancing Master and "Jewish Dance" in Renaissance Italy by Barbara Sparti
The Expulsion from the Papal States (1569) in the Light of Hebrew Sources by Abraham David
The Case of Ferdinando Alvarez and His Wife Leocadia of Rome (1640) by Nancy Goldsmith Leiphart
Giovanni di Giovanni: Chronicler of Sicily's Jews by Salvatore Rotella
Literature, Art, and Identity
Judeo-Italian: Italian Dialect or Jewish Lnaguage? by George Jochnowitz
The Culture of Italian Jews and Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice by H. Wendell Howard
Emancipation and Jewish Literature in the Italian Canon by Roberto Dainotto
Assimilationn vs. Orthodoxy in the Literature of 20th Century Italian Jews by Lynn Gunzberg
Racial Laws and Internment in Natalia Ginzberg's Lessico familiare by Claudia Nocentini
Clara Sereni and Contemporary Italian Jewish Literature by Elisabetta Nelsen
Art, Architecture, and Italian Jewish Identity by Samuel Gruber
Italian Jewish Literature from the Second World War to the 1990s by Raniero Speelman
Contemporary Jewish Memorialists by Fabio Girelli-Carasi
World War II & the Holocaust
Haven or Hell: Italy's Refuge for Jews, 1933-1945 by Maryann Calendrille
"Di razza ebraica": Fascist Name Legislation and the Designation of Jews in Trieste by Maura Hametz
Pope Pius XI's Conflict with Fascist Italy's Anti-Semitism and Jewish Policies by Frank Coppa
A "Cool-Blood" Anti-Semitism: The First Anti-Semitic Campaign of the Fascist Regime (1934) by Luc Nemeth
Why Was Italy So Impervious to Anti-Semitism (to 1938)? by Frederick M. Schweitzer
Rescue or Annihilation: The Role of the Italian Occupation Forces Towards the Jews in World War II by Yitzchak Kerem
The Priebke Trials by David Travis
Primo Levi
Deporting Identity: The Testimonies of Primo Levi and Giuliana Tedeschi by Marie Orton
Narrating Auschwitz: Linguistic Strategies in Primo Levi's Holocaust Memoirs by Eva Gold
The Tower of Babel: Language and Power in Primo Levi's Survival in Auschwitz by Anna Petrov Bumble
"The Language of the Witness" Holocaust Survivors Speak
Renato Almansi
Lucia Servadio Bedarida
Epilogue: The Survival of "The Most Ancient of Minorities" by Stephen Siporin
Bibliography: The Jews of Italy: A Selected Bibliography, 1996-1999 by James Tasato Mellone
Index
by "Nielsen BookData"