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Early Modern Jewry boldly offers a new history of the early modern Jewish experience. From Krakow and Venice to Amsterdam and Smyrna, David Ruderman examines the historical and cultural factors unique to Jewish communities throughout Europe, and how these distinctions played out amidst the rest of society. Looking at how Jewish settlements in the early modern period were linked to one another in fascinating ways, he shows how Jews were communicating with each other and were more aware of their economic, social, and religious connections than ever before.

In approximately 1830, a set of new characteristics displaced three centuries of sepulchral tradition in the Jewish graveyards of Padua. Epitaph poetry was abandoned, replaced by a new prose epitaph that was much longer and emphasized individuality by recording detailed information about the deceased. Tombstone design was also revolutionized, adhering to the contemporary neoclassical tradition of European art. Yet a variety of features reflect the paradox that, for all their novelty, the modern epitaphs and tombstones continued to proudly express Jewish identity.

The poetry and socio-linguistic scholarship of Crescenzo Del Monte (Rome, 1868-1935) represent an important contribution to the understanding and preservation of Giudaico-Romanesco, the dialect of the Jews of Rome. Del Monte's assertion that Giudaico-Romanesco represents the closest living descendent of the spoken language of Ancient Rome and the medieval Italian vernacular of Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio, came into irreconcilable conflict with the anti-Semitic, xenophobic, and dialectophobic policies of the regime as the Fascists took control of Italy and exercised ever stricter control over cultural production. Del Monte's work remains fundamental to an understanding of the culture and language of the Jews of Rome in the decades leading up to and following their political emancipation.

In his article \"Bassani's The Garden of the Finzi-Continis and Italian 'Queers'\" John Champagne argues for a reading of the novel as not gay, but queer. Champagne argues that such a reading strategy emphasizes the ways in which the novel deconstructs normative gender, sexual, and even religious identities in an attempt both to resist the tyranny of the normal and to cope with the trauma of the Italian Shoah. A psycho-analytically inflected queer theory in this instance gives us access to the complexity of the novel's portrayal of Italian Jewish identity in fascist Italy and opens up onto a reflection upon Jewish history and memory. In Bassani's novel, Jewish and \"queer\" identities are linked in an effort to deconstruct (in the rigorous sense of the word) a version of the Italian Shoah that would hold Jews like the Finzi-Continis responsible for their own fate. It is thus misleading to suggest, as some other scholars have, that the novel is simply critical of the family. The Garden of the Finzi-Continis is read appropriately as Jewish not only in its content but in its form and queer in its invitation to understand an abnormal, anti-social world where \"useless\" pursuits like love (and art) justify and sanctify everything.

Many Piedmontese Jews at the beginning of the 1900 chose to undertake the \"aliah\" (the ascent), to follow the utopia of communitarian life in the agricultural \"kibbutzim\" in Eretz Israel.

Between the years 1550 and 1650, Italy's Jewish intellectuals created a unique and enduring synthesis of the great literary and philosophical heritage of the Andalusian Jews and the Renaissance`s renewal of perspective. While remaining faithful to the beliefs, behaviors, and language of their tradition, Italian Jews proved themselves open to a rapidly evolving world of great richness. The crisis of Aristotelianism (which progressively touched upon all fields of knowledge), religious fractures and unrest, the scientific revolution, and the new perception of reality expressed through a transformation of the visual arts: these are some of the changes experienced by Italian Jews which they were affected by in their own particular way. This book explores the complex relations between Jews and the world that surrounded them during a critical period of European civilization. The relations were rich, problematic, and in some cases strained, alternating between opposition and dialogue, osmosis and distinction.

This article explores Simone Luzzatto's Discourse on the State of the Jews (Discorso circa il stato de gl'Hebrei, 1638), which was written in an effort to defuse the threat of expulsion that hung over Venetian Jews. Although the treatise seeks to address Venice's political establishment on behalf of the Jews, I argue that Luzzatto intended his text to be read by Venetian Jews themselves as well. Evidence for the two audiences lies in the author's use of irony: Luzzatto employs negative Jewish stereotypes in order to reassure his Christian audience of his impartial treatment of the Jewish community. Read by Jews, these same stereotypes enabled Luzzatto to undercut any idealization of Venice within the Jewish community and to celebrate his community. Through the dual register of irony, Luzzatto's text reflects the means by which Venetian Jews negotiated their identity as a minority community intent on affirming its own identity.

Levi-Montalcini recalls her early work with nerve growth factor in Italy, especially during WWII, where her Jewish background kept her under the close scrutiny of the country's fascists.

In the eighteenth-century Europe, medical practices often still followed theories originating from classical and medieval medicine. In addition, medicaments produced from plants, minerals, or animals, such as snake meat, were commonly used to treat a wide range of illnesses. This study addresses the approach of the Jewish-Italian physician R. Samson Morpurgo (1681-1740) to the use of non-kosher medications.

Between the years 1550 and 1650, Italy's Jewish intellectuals created a unique and enduring synthesis of the great literary and philosophical heritage of the Andalusian Jews and the Renaissance`s renewal of perspective. While remaining faithful to the beliefs, behaviors, and language of their tradition, Italian Jews proved themselves open to a rapidly evolving world of great richness. The crisis of Aristotelianism (which progressively touched upon all fields of knowledge), religious fractures and unrest, the scientific revolution, and the new perception of reality expressed through a transformation of the visual arts: these are some of the changes experienced by Italian Jews which they were affected by in their own particular way. This book explores the complex relations between Jews and the world that surrounded them during a critical period of European civilization. The relations were rich, problematic, and in some cases strained, alternating between opposition and dialogue.