Outside the Ashkenazi/Sephardic Divide: Italian Jewish Studies in Italy and Beyond
This Round Table focuses on the issues of Jewish identity raised by the Italian Jewish
experience, as seen through the academic network of Italian Jewish Studies. Academic
interest in Italian Jewry began in the mid-19th century in Italy and Germany, and has since
developed into a wide-ranging field of research that involves scholars in Europe, Israel and the
United States. Interest and awareness for Italian Jewish culture has grown exponentially
during the last decades.
Since its inception, scholarship on Italian Jewry offered a dichotomy between local
investigations and global approaches. General overviews of Italian Jewish history paved the
way to the creation of an institutionalized field of research, established through the efforts of
Umberto Cassuto since the 1910’s, which in 1924 culminated in the publication of Italia
Judaica, a bibliography edited by Giuseppe Gabrieli, chief librarian at the Regia Accademia
Nazionale dei Lincei. The volume was part of the bibliographic guides published by the
Fondazione Leonardo (Rome), presided by Giovanni Gentile, then Minister of Public Education
for the recently established Fascist regime, and whose aim was to “intensify within Italy and
publicize abroad Italian intellectual life.” Sustained by pioneers like Cecil Roth and Attilio
Milano, this path generated a wide-ranging debate concerning the particularities of the “Italian
Jewish cultural identity.” Local investigations, also initiated in the mid-19th century, were
systematized by pioneering contributions such as those by Berliner, Vogelstein and Rieger,
followed in Italy by Morpurgo, Cassuto, and Foa, and eventually by Roth. Their approach has
hitherto produced outstanding scholarly works on a variety of aspects of local Jewish life
throughout the peninsula, epitomized by the Documentary History of the Jews of Italy, edited
by Shlomo Simonsohn.
The cultural history of Italian Jewry presents a host of topics that typically exists beyond set
chronological and geographical divides, ranging from the late antiquity to the present, from
Ashkenazi to Sephardic cultures, from Jewish-Christian relations to the Holocaust, from the
study (and conservation) of primary sources to the emergence of virtual Jewish culture.
Discussants will examine the particular interaction of diverse Jewish cultures in Italy, the state
of the study of Italian Jewry within the field of Jewish studies today, and the creation
international academic partnerships.
The discussion will feature a presentation by Mauro Perani, University of Bologna, Secretary of
the Italian Association for Jewish Studies and President of the European Associations for
Jewish Studies, in conversation with scholars from Italy, Israel and the United States,
moderated by Francesco Spagnolo (Judah L. Magnes Museum, Berkeley).
Participants include Gadi Luzzatto Voghera (University of Padova and Boston University),
David Malkiel (Bar Ilan University), Arthur Kiron (University of Pennsylvania) and Murray
Baumgarten (UC, Santa Cruz, and co-director of the NEH Venice program).
The Round Table will include short presentations (5-10 minutes) that focus on particular
examples and raise issues for discussion. Participation in a roundtable, which qualifies as a
discussant, does not preclude presenting a paper on another panel.
Presented by the Primo Levi Center: Natalia Indrimi, Director, natalia@primolevicenter.org
917-606-8202
Academic Coordinator: dr. Francesco Spagnolo, PhD, Head of Research, Judah L. Magnes
Museum, Berkeley, fspagnolo@magnes.org 510-549-6950 x339