Category: Focus

ABSTRACT
The present paper examines the main biographical traits of the Italian author, politician and Risorgimento activist David Levi (1816-1898). Early in life, Levi abandoned the traditional religious spheres of Judaism but always remained attached to his Jewish heritage, as emerges from his oeuvre. Levi’s relevance derives from his constant effort to amalgamate Italian and Jewish identities in a context of increasing secularity. An analysis of his figure and activities, therefore  enables  us  to  investigate  some  crucial  issues at  the  center of  current historiographical debate, such as the nineteenth-century Jewish transition from a traditional to a modern identity, the discussion around the concepts of “assimilation”and  “integration,” orientalist researches and the study of religions in nineteenth-century Italy, and the important role of Freemasonry and Saintsimonism in Levi’s; secularization modes. In fact, their concept of “Religion of Humanity” helped him to create a synthesis between Enlightenment’s aspirations to universalism and Risorgimento’s cosmopolitan nationalism.

ABSTRACT
This paper examines Bernardo Dessau’s activities within the Zionist movement in the years between the end of the Nineteenth century and the first two decades of the Twentieth century. Dessau’s important contribution is still little-known and under-explored even by the most recent historiographical studies on Zionism in Italy.
More specifically, this essay will investigate Dessau’s intellectual and propagandistic commitment towards the realization of the Zionist ideal, his views on the main concepts and issues put forward by the Jewish movement of national rebirth and his responses and reactions to the major historical events which affected, both directly and indirectly, the Jewish community in Italy and abroad in the period before the outbreak of the First World War.
In this research two different types of source have been scrutinized and evaluated: on the one hand, printed publications such as articles and pamphlets, and on the other, the private correspondence between Bernardo Dessau and Felice Ravenna, President of the Italian Zionist Federation, all of which is kept in the Central Zionist Archives in Jerusalem.

ABSTRACT 
The present article focuses on Laura Orvieto’s intellectual development,  asking about the chances, but also the barriers in the life of the sophisticated Italian-Jewish writer. Based on documents from the Orvieto archives in Florence, the Rosselli archives in Turin, as well as selected writings by Laura Orvieto, the contribution examines the protagonist’s access to scholarship and learning in liberal, post-emancipated Italy, where Orvieto gained considerable success and public acclaim both as journalist and writer. At the same time, the article questions the free intellectual’s “success story” by looking at the marginalization and eventual exclusion of the seemingly well-integrated Jewish woman from Italian society during Fascism.

ABSTRACT
In late August 1861 Giuseppe Nacamulli published the first issue of his bi-lingual (Greek-Italian) newspaper Ισραηλιτικά Χρονικά/Cronaca Israelitica thereby inaugurating the first Jewish newspaper in the Greek speaking world. The appearance of a newspaper that advocated for full civil and political rights for Ionian Jews did not go unnoticed and provoked numerous responses of varying degrees of hostility and indeed praise. This article examines these responses within two broader contexts, namely the political and social ferment of the final years of British rule and the long-term, and often tense, co-existence of Jews and Christians on the islands.

ABSTRACT
This article examines the antisemitic attitudes among the Lutheran clergy in Finland during the latter part of the 19th century. The Jewish question was discussed at the Finnish Diet by the estate of the clergy in order to determine if Jews could become Finnish citizens. By the majority vote this was considered undesirable. Adolf Stoecker’s antisemitic ideology, his the ideas of a Jewish conspiracy for world dominance, found Finnish support.

ABSTRACT
This article examines the life and works of Hajim S. Davičo in the context of the history of Serbian Jews, of the “Court Jew” Davičo family and of the Serbian and Triestine context of the late 19th and early 20th century. Hajim Davičo was an active proponent of linguistic acculturation, and in his career as a diplomat he proved total devotion to Serbian national cause, to the brink of complete assimilation. Indeed, his national allegiance put Davičo in the position to interfere even in the matters of the Serbian-Orthodox Church. The provisions of the Berlin congress, the Davičo family background and the need of Serbian bureaucracy for capable and educated men, have all contributed to the rise of this Serbian Jewish diplomat in less than two decades after the emancipation of Jews in Serbia.