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Instructors: Dr. Michela Torbidoni
Event type:
Lecture
Displayed in timetable as:
Hours per week:
2
Credits:
3,0
Language of instruction:
English
Min. | Max. participants:
1 | 28
Comments/contents:
This course aims to introduce students to the multifaced and vivid cultural life of early modern Italian Jews. A particular attention will be paid to the ghetto of Venice, in which the concept of "ghetto" was born and where – contrary to its original meaning – one of the most lively Jewish community flourished. The course will guide through the philosophical issues debated by highly gifted rabbis and intellectuals of 17th century Italy, such as Leon Modena, Simone Luzzatto, Josef Delmedigo, and the legendary poetess of Venetian ghetto, Sara Copio Sullam. Thanks to their education in general culture, their studies of Latin and natural sciences, they played a crucial role in increasing the dialogue with the Christian world and in the transmission of profane knowledge into Jewish culture. Extraits from their work will be analysedThe course will focus also on the international relevance of the rabbis and intellectuals of Venice: on this regard it will be analyzed their influence on the Jewish community of Amsterdam and their intellectual exchange with England as well as their fame among Christians by reading the correspondence of some of the many foreign visitors of the ghetto.
No prior knowledge is assumed. No knowledge of Hebrew is required.
Literature:
Daniel Schwartz, Ghetto. The History of a Word, Harvard University Press, 2019.
Donatella Calabi, Venice and its Jews (Milan: Officina Libraria 2017).
R. C. Davis and B. Ravid, eds., The Jews of Early Modern Venice (Baltimore, London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001).
D. B. Ruderman, Early Modern Jewry: A New Cultural History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011). (available online on the web site of the Library of Unihamburg)
G. Veltri, Renaissance Philosophy in Jewish Garb: Foundations and Challenges in Judaism on the Eve of Modernity (Leiden: Brill, 2009).
David. N. Myers, Massimo Ciavolella, Peter Reill, Geoffrey Symcox, Acculturation and its Discontents. The Italian Jewish Experience Between exclusion and Inclusion (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 2008).
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