Italian Jewish Women in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Italian and Italian American Studies) 3030740528, 9783030740528

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ITALIAN AND ITALIAN AMERICAN STUDIES

Italian Jewish Women in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries Monica Miniati

Italian and Italian American Studies Series Editor Stanislao G. Pugliese Hofstra University Hempstead, NY, USA

This series brings the latest scholarship in Italian and Italian American history, literature, cinema, and cultural studies to a large audience of specialists, general readers, and students. Featuring works on modern Italy (Renaissance to the present) and Italian American culture and society by established scholars as well as new voices, it has been a longstanding force in shaping the evolving fields of Italian and Italian American Studies by re-emphasizing their connection to one another. Editorial Board Rebecca West, University of Chicago, USA Josephine Gattuso Hendin, New York University, USA Fred Gardaphé, Queens College, CUNY, USA Phillip V.  Cannistraro†, Queens College and the Graduate School, CUNY, USA Alessandro Portelli, Università di Roma “La Sapienza”, Italy William J. Connell, Seton Hall University, USA More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14835

Monica Miniati

Italian Jewish Women in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

Monica Miniati Independent Scholar Florence, Italy

ISSN 2635-2931     ISSN 2635-294X (electronic) Italian and Italian American Studies ISBN 978-3-030-74052-8    ISBN 978-3-030-74053-5 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74053-5 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: © Margherita Hanau Morpurgo, Albertina Bassani Magrini, Lina Bassani Ravenna and Ida Hanau Coen on the stairs of the house of Bassani family in Ferrara, 1909 / Photo by Tito Pasquini / CDEC Foundation Archives, Milan This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

To my family and my adorable Vicky

Acknowledgments

I am most grateful and indebted to several people, scholars, and friends for the help, support, and encouragement they gave this book. In particular, I would like to thank Mario Toscano, Teresa Bertilotti, Alberto Cavaglion, and Flavio Fiorani for the attention they so kindly devoted to me as well as for their valuable advice. I also owe a deep debt of gratitude to Stefania Bartoloni, Marina Bakos, Elisa Bianchi, Tullia Catalan, Stefania Dazzetti, Caterina Del Vivo, Cristiana Facchini, Sara Follacchio, Liana Funaro, Graziella Gaballo, Paola Govoni, Myriam and Ilan Greilsammer, Laurence Jego, Luisa Levi D’Ancona, Catia Papa, Sandra and Andrea Passigli, Matteo Perissinotto, Simonetta Polenghi, Gabriella Romani, Maria Grazia Masetti Rouault, Marcella Simoni, Simonetta Soldani, Fortunée Treves, Emanuela Trevisan Semi, Elisabetta Vezzosi, Ariel Viterbo, and Lionella Viterbo. Moreover, I would love to mention Alessandra Borgese, Nanette Hayon, Daniela Scala and Marina Marmiroli Hassan from the Centre of Contemporary Jewish Documentation in Milan for their generous help at a time when COVID-19 prevented access to libraries. Many thanks to Gisèle Levy from the Bibliographic Centre of the Union of Jewish Communities in Italy (Rome). I wish to thank the following archives whose resources were an invaluable asset: the Archivio dell’Alliance Israélite Universelle, Paris (AAIU); the Archivio della Comunità ebraica, Florence (ACEF); the Archivio della Comunità ebraica, Venice (ACEV); the Archivio contemporaneo del

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Gabinetto Viesseux, Florence (ACGV); the Archivio centrale dello Stato, Rome, Ministero dell’Interno (ACS); the Archivio dell’Unione della Comunità ebraiche italiane (AUCEI); the Central Zionist Archives, Jerusalem (CZA); the Archivio Fondazione Guido Ludovico Luzzatto, Milan; and special thanks to the Treves Levi Vidale Family in Florence for permitting me access to the diaries of Silvia Treves. Finally, I would like to extend heartfelt gratitude to Marie Orton, an excellent translator and invaluable workmate. Her enthusiasm and generosity have been a source of inspiration and ongoing support.

Contents

1 Introduction: The Path to Emancipation for the Italian Jewish Diaspora  1 2 The Emergence of the Jewish “Woman Question” 33 3 The Role of Women in the Process of Modernization 79 4 From Integration to the Reaffirmation of Identity131 5 The War and Its Aftermath: Continuity and Change221 6 Conclusions301 Bibliography307 Name Index353 Periodicals Index365 Subject Index367

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Abbreviations

AAIU ACEF ACEV ACGVF ACS ADEI C.I. CZA I.S. R.M.I. S.I. V.I.

Archivio dell’Alliance Israélite Universelle (Paris) Archivio della Comunità Ebraica di Firenze Archivio della Comunità Ebraica di Venezia Archivio Contemporaneo del Gabinetto Viesseux di Firenze Archivio Centrale dello Stato (Roma), Ministero dell’Interno Associazione Donne Ebree d’Italia Corriere Israelitico The Central Zionist Archives (Jerusalem) Idea sionista Rassegna Mensile di Israel Settimana Israelitica Il Vessillo Israelitico

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction: The Path to Emancipation for the Italian Jewish Diaspora

For the Jews on the peninsula, the achievement of Italian Unification signaled the end of a regime of separation and discrimination, the definitive dismantling of the ghetto, and the completion of the emancipatory process, which had begun in 1848 when Charles Albert, the King of Sardinia,1 granted civil and legal equality to the Jewish community of Piedmont. Emancipation opened a new chapter in the history of the Jews in Italy that was characterized by their smooth integration into the social fabric and by the speed with which the Jewish minority—their total population of 22,458 represented only a little more than one out of every 1000 Italian citizens2—were able to restructure their lives outside of the ghetto. Furthermore, the process of modernization affected the entire Jewish community, generating significant changes and forcing the reevaluation of their traditional balance.3 1  In the aftermath of the Napoleonic experience and the Congress of Vienna in 1815, Italy was again divided into different states. Piedmont returned to the hands of the Savoy dynasty that also controlled the Kingdom of Sardinia. This included, in addition to Piedmont, the island  of Sardinia, where there was no Jewish presence, Liguria and, until 1859, Savoy and Nice. 2  See Statistica del Regno d’Italia (Statistics of the Kingdom of Italy), Censimento generale della popolazione (31 December 1861), vol. III, pp. 210–211. 3  After 1861, the year of the proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy, the Jews of some communities in Lombardy-Venetia, such as Mantua, Verona, Venice, Padua, and Rovigo which

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 M. Miniati, Italian Jewish Women in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Italian and Italian American Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74053-5_1

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The attainment of complete equality of civil rights had a momentous role in the transformation and innovation of the Jewish community. Far from being exclusively the consequence of emancipation, modernization was also the result of a long process: over the centuries preceding emancipation, the Jews had approached and adapted to the outside world, which represented an important characteristic of the Jewish experience in the time preceding emancipation when exclusion defined their daily existence. The absence of any traumas to the Jewish community as they integrated into the national context can be attributed to altered social and political conditions as well as to greater sensitivity and awareness, especially among the culturally and economically more advanced social groups, regarding the legitimacy and necessity of finding a resolution to the “Jewish problem.” More importantly, a specific characteristic of Italian Judaism was the ability it had demonstrated in numerous circumstances across centuries to detect indications of change and to interpret new cultural elements in ways that harmonized and integrated these elements into its own cultural heritage while still defending and maintaining its own autonomy. This age-old attitude of openness and receptivity managed to remain in force even through the end of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries when the ghetto became the reality for the majority of the Jewish community and the progressive diffusion of the Kabbalah4 prompted some of the Jewish intellectual elite into taking conservative positions respecting secular culture. The forced separation into ghettos resulted in the paradox of a vibrant cultural life in the ghettos that was open to theater, poetry, and literature, not just traditional Jewish studies, thus bespeaking a cultural life that attested to a willingness to draw nearer to the culture of the surrounding society. At the same time, the negative reaction to the were  territories under Austrian rule, as well as  those of the Roman provinces, and in Trieste still did not have equal status. Emancipation arrived for the first communities in 1866, when Veneto was annexed by Italy. Under Hapsburg rule, the Jews of Trieste, who were finally reunited politically with their coreligionists after half a century, had almost the same rights as the Italian Jews. In Rome, the Jews endured a long period of exclusion which finally ended in 1870, with the liberation of the city and the end of the popes’ temporal power. For an overview of the history of the Italian Jews see A. Milano, Storia degli ebrei in Italia, Turin, Einaudi, 1992 (second edition). For the period before and after the emancipation, see pp. 351–370. 4  The Kabbalah refers to a strain of mysticism which began in Spain at the end of the thirteenth century. In same period, the main text of the Kabbalah appeared, the Zohar. See Dictionnaire encyclopedique du Judaïsme, edited by S.A.  Goldberg, Paris, Cerf-Laffont, 1993, pp. 714–716 and 1104–1108.

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i­ntroduction of new scientific and rationalistic ideas into the traditional Jewish cultural patrimony, which was a consequence of the great interest that had developed around the Kabbalah, did not hinder the recognition of secular learning as an essential tool in the struggle for survival. Far from being a “hermetically sealed entity,” Jewish culture in Italy was, on the contrary, generally open to external promptings as well as cultural currents and ideals.5 The final years of the eighteenth century marked a significant, determinant phase in the relationship between Jewish and secular culture. During this period, the economic and cultural conditions that triggered radical change in the Italian Jewish community began to take shape, changes that were especially manifest in the second half of the 1800s. The process of vast economic, political, and social transformation that all segments of European society experienced toward the end of the eighteenth century profoundly influenced the life of Jewish communities. While these individual communities resided in extremely diverse states, they all dealt with the effects of this process of change to the structure and balance of their community in similar ways.6 The alteration in the economic situation in which the small commercial and money-lending businesses typically owned by Jews were overtaken by a capitalism based in commercial manufacturing placed the western Jewish communities, including those in Italy,7 in a highly precarious economic condition. While transformation of the European economic structure caused a decline in the Jewish community and rendered physical survival even more difficult, that transformation also contributed to the weakening of the barriers of prejudice. The technological and economic changes and the development of business and industry promoted the relations between Jews and non-Jews: this interaction extended from the economic to the 5  See I. Barzilay, “The Italian and the Berlin Haskalah, (Parallels and Differences),” Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research,  XXIX, 1960–1961, pp. 18–22; R. Bonfil, “Change in the Cultural Patterns of a Society in Crisis: Italian Jewry at the Close of the Sixteenth Century,” Jewish History, 3, n. 2, Fall 1988, pp. 11–30; A. Foa, Ebrei in Europa dalla peste nera all’emancipazione, Rome-Bari, Laterza, 1992, p. 202. 6  On the changes in the European Jewish communities at the end of the eighteenth century see J. Katz, Out of the Ghetto: The Social Background of Jewish Emancipation, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1973. 7  See R. De Felice, “Per una storia del problema ebraico in Italia alla fine del XVIII secolo e all’inizio del XIX,” in Italia giacobina, Naples, Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 1965, pp. 333–334.

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cultural level, aided by the unraveling of certain negative myths, the collapse of numerous prejudices, particularly the prejudice about usury, and most of all, by the expansion and development in the Jewish and Christian intellectual spheres of a new concept that relationships could be established between the two groups of different religious orientation. In non-Jewish society, the intellectual elites reconsidered and debated the condition of the Jews in light of the Enlightenment values of freedom and equality as the right of all individuals, and thus considered the discrimination to which Jews had been subjected not only profoundly unjust and injurious to their dignity but also a significant hindrance to the civil progress of society and to the construction of a secular State structure. The recognition of the right of Jews to liberate themselves from abuses of power and the commitment to guaranteeing them their own economic and political space were accompanied by the demand that the Jewish minority be more receptive to the values and cultures of the surrounding society. The affirmation of a new cultural orientation did not necessarily signify that the wall of mistrust and prejudice that divided Jewish and Christian society had permanently fallen. Anti-Semitic prejudice continued to find support not only within the highest and lowest circles of society but even among the supporters of Enlightenment thought.8 Despite the barriers that still prevented a radical change in Christians’ attitude toward the Jews, a different view of the Jewish world was beginning to take shape and in time would reach from the intellectual spheres to the political sphere. In the Jewish context, the economic, social, and cultural preconditions necessary for embracing the Enlightenment demands were not deficient. The altered economic situation, and the resultant growing importance of banking and finance, had transformed Jewish communities from unified entities into socially differentiated groups. Within these groups, an economically prominent class emerged

8  On the presence of anti-Jewish prejudice in some aspects of Enlightenment thought see A. Hertzberg, The French Enlightenment and the Jews, New York, Columbia University Press, 1989; J. Berkovitz, The Shaping of Jewish Identity in Nineteenth-century France, Detroit, Wayne State University Press, 1989, in particular pp. 24–38. On ambiguities of the relationship between Jews and the Enlightenment, see also R. Schechter, Obstinate Hebrews, Cambridge, University of California Press, 2004, pp. 35–65. Regarding the reconsideration of the “Jewish question,” in Italy at the end of the eighteenth century by Enlightenment thought, see G. Luzzatto Voghera, Il prezzo dell’uguaglianza. Il dibattito sull’emancipazione degli ebrei in Italia (1781–1848), Milan, Franco Angeli, 1997, pp. 39–45.

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that interacted with and increasingly identified itself with the new rising middle class. The economic and social transformation of European Judaism during the second half of the eighteenth century was part of a cultural context characterized by the presence and development of diverse ideological movements aimed at delivering the Jews from their condition of psychological and social marginalization. The Jewish Enlightenment, or Haskalah, which originated in German Judaism was intent on redefining the existential dimension of the Jews according to Enlightenment precepts, with the purpose of promoting their integration into the societies in which they lived. The Haskalah was the movement that knew most comprehensively how to respond to the needs of a certain segment of Jewish society to find a new social and cultural identity. The knowledge of secular culture; the openness to the ideals, values, and lifestyle of the surrounding society; and the rejection of separation and peculiarity as obligatory elements of identity were the fundamental points in a new approach that inevitably contrasted with orthodox Jewish tradition. In this sense, the Haskalah represented a moment of modernization and rupture that was destined, especially in the Jewish communities of central and eastern Europe, to give rise to conflicts and divisions.9 The process of modernization also reached Italian Judaism but the longstanding tradition of openness to secular culture that characterized Italian Judaism—a tradition that was present across the peninsula, notwithstanding the disparate political and social realities in which each community lived—prevented the conflict between tradition and modernity from emerging in dramatic terms. The reaction of the communities that entered into closer contact with the new ideological message revealed that, compared to the experience of other Jewish communities in Europe, the experience of the Italian community was a special case. The movement of the Haskalah 9  See M. Del Bianco Cotrozzi, “Tolleranza giuseppina ed illuminismo ebraico: il caso delle unite principesche contee di Gorizia e di Gradisca,” Nuova rivista storica, LXXIII, September–December, 1989, p. 697. On the meaning of Haskalah and its ideological scope see D. Sorkin, The Berlin Haskalah and German Religious Thought. Orphans of Knowledge, London-Portland, Or, Valentine Mitchell, 2000; S. Feiner, The Jewish Enlightenment, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004; the entry Haskalah, in Enciclopedia Judaica, Jerusalem, Keter Publishing House, 1971, pp.  1433 1445 and in Dictionnaire encyclopédique du Judaïsme, cit., pp.  434–435. See also I. Barzilay, “The Ideology of the Berlin Haskalah,” Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research, XXV, 1956, pp. 21–37.

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into Italy had its epicenter in Trieste and Gorizia. These cities belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Empire and were therefore bound to it by strong economic interests, although culturally they leaned toward the Italianspeaking community. As buffer communities, Trieste and Gorizia acted as a channel that connected and mediated between Italian Judaism and the new ideological and cultural impulses coming from central Europe.10 At the end of the eighteenth century, the two communities constituted the important terrain of experimentation and application of Joseph II’s (1741–1790) Enlightenment politics. Following the Edict of Tolerance (Editto di Tolleranza) in 1781 which had the intent of integrating Jews into the nation, Joseph II initiated a program of reform in which the logic of individual concessions was substituted by the recognition of civil rights.11 Although Trieste and Gorizia represented a separate context in the spectrum of the Italian Jewish communities,12 their attitude regarding the “fascinating intertwining”13 of the new imperial orientation and of the Haskalah’s urgings for reform in some ways exemplified the more general relationship between Italian Judaism and modernization.14 Compared to the other Jewish communities throughout the Austro-­ Hungarian Empire (the majority of which found themselves for the first time confronted with Enlightenment politics), the Italian communities saw the edicts of Joseph II—which included for example, the right to reside outside of the ghetto, the possibility of acquiring property and entering into professions—as a way to continue on a path they had already begun. The 10  See I. Barzilay, “The Italian and the Berlin Haskalah,” cit., pp. 17–54; L. Dubin, “Trieste and Berlin: The Italian Role in the Cultural Politics of the Haskalah,” in Toward Modernity. The European Jewish Model, edited by J. Katz, New Brunswick-Oxford, Transaction Books, 1987, pp.  189–224 and  Id., The Port Jews of Habsburg Trieste. Absolutist Politics and Enlightenment Culture, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1999, in particular pp. 118–137. 11  It should be remembered that the enlightened policy of Joseph II also affected the community of Mantua, which became part of the Habsburg Empire in 1707. On the similarity between these reforms and those in Trieste and Gorizia, see P. Bernardini, La sfida dell’uguaglianza. Gli ebrei a Mantova nell’età della rivoluzione francese, Rome, Bulzoni, 1996, especially pp. 1–57. 12  See, for example, G. Cervani, “Gli ebrei a Trieste nella seconda metà del Settecento,” in Gli ebrei a Gorizia e a Trieste tra “ancien régime” ed emancipazione, edited by P.C.  Ioly Zorattini, Udine, Del Bianco, 1984, pp. 13–28; L. Dubin, The Port Jews, cit., pp. 10–63; T. Catalan, La Comunità ebraica di Trieste (1781–1914), Trieste, Lint, 2000. 13  This is Cervani’s expression from “Gli ebrei a Trieste,” cit., p. 13. 14  See M.  Del Bianco Cotrozzi, “Tolleranza giuseppina ed illuminismo ebraico,” cit.; L. Dubin, “Trieste and Berlin,” cit., and Id., The Port Jews, cit.

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edict of Joseph II served to legitimize conditions that Italian Jewish communities in the Empire were already living. The reforms thus served to further promote a substantial change in social and economic position of Italian Jewish communities.15 In the same way, the reform and reorganization of the educational system envisioned in the imperial directives, which focused on a curriculum that extended the teaching of secular disciplines with the direct intent of accelerating the process of the integration of the Jews, was not a disturbing element or a surprising leap in scholastic quality for the Jewish communities in Italy. Instead, these reforms represented an important moment of legitimization that demonstrated the communities’ autonomy and the advanced state of modernization that the communities had already attained in this area. The combination of religious instruction with secular learning was one of the criteria that had already been adopted by Jewish schools, traditionally careful to guarantee their students an academic preparation that was not limited to the religious sphere alone. Hence the enthusiasm with which the Jews in Trieste welcomed the cultural project of Joseph II, which saw practical implementation with the founding of the Scuola Pia Normale in May of 1782. This new institution signified tangible proof of the devotion of Italian-speaking Jews to the process of reform. It likewise indicated the concord between the imperial directives and the specific needs of the Italian Jewish community, which included a significant number of merchants and entrepreneurs and which desired for its young people to receive, within a Jewish context, the necessary preparation to take part in the future economic life of the city.16 This familiarity with secular studies was the origin of the collaboration between the Jews living in Italy and Naftaly Herz Wessely (1725–1805), a prominent figure in the German reform movement. Wessely advocated for the substitution of the scholastic curriculum in which religious studies had played a central role with a scholastic curriculum that was open to different sectors of knowledge. This was the reason for the fierce opposition from the rabbinate of central and eastern Europe, which considered Wessely’s program damaging to tradition and community cohesion, and it 15  The Jews in the Italian territories had enjoyed such privileges for many years. The compulsion to wear a distinctive sign was a rule that had fallen into almost total disuse. See L. Dubin, “The Ending of the Ghetto of Trieste in the Late Eighteenth Century,” in Il mondo ebraico. Gli ebrei tra Italia nord-orientale e Impero Asburgico dal medioevo all’età contemporanea, edited by G. Todeschini and P. C. Ioly Zorattini, Pordenone, Studio Tesi, 1991, pp. 290–310 and Id., The Port Jews, cit., pp. 41–63. 16  See L. Dubin, “Trieste and Berlin,” cit., pp. 192–194 and Id., The Port Jews, cit., pp. 102–109.

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was also the reason for the reformer’s appeal to his Italian coreligionists to intervene on his behalf in the bitter conflict. His Italian colleagues responded positively to his request and worked to legitimize his message, though they were never passive or uncritical actors in the debate. The Jews in Trieste shared Wessely’s view insofar as it affirmed that religious and secular instructions were complementary, but they disagreed when the latter was privileged over the former. From the beginning, the power relations between Italian Judaism and the German Haskalah had been defined in clear terms. Even before there was an exchange and a collaboration, the Italian Jewish communities within the AustroHungarian Empire had already independently set out on the path to modernization, and consequently, when confronted with the ideological and cultural proposition of the Haskalah, they knew how to choose those elements that would assure continuity to their tradition and those elements with which they identified.17 The balanced distance between more traditional orthodoxy and the excesses of modernization would be a constant even through the nineteenth century and would become one of the characteristic features of the religious and cultural makeup of the entire Italian Jewish community. At the end of the eighteenth century, Trieste and the neighboring communities occupied a privileged position and constituted a pillar of the Italian Jewish avant-garde; their attitude of openness and collaboration in the process of modernization found its principal justification in a feature that was common to all of Italian Jewish life, namely, the high level of acculturation: Whenever a more liberal policy toward Italian Jewry was evolved—whether under Joseph the Second, Napoleon the First, or, later, at the time of restored national statehood—such a change always found that Jewry ready to assume its place in society.18

With the arrival of the French troops in Italy in 1796, the cultural and ideological turmoil that characterized the second half of the eighteenth century inside and outside of the Jewish community had its first practical  See L. Dubin, “Trieste and Berlin,” cit., pp.  194–211 and  Id., The Port Jews, cit., pp. 119–137. On the work of Naftaly Herz Wessely see E. Breuer, “Naphtali Herz Wessely and the cultural Dislocations of an eighteenth-century Maskil,” in New Perspectives on the Haskalah, edited by S.  Feiner and D. Sorkin, London, Portland, Or., Littman Library of Jewish Civilisation, 2001, pp. 27–47; S. Feiner, The Jewish Enlightenment, cit., pp. 87–104. 18  I. Barzilay, “The Italian and the Berlin Haskalah,” cit., p. 19. 17

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implementation and political legitimization across a large section of the Italian territory. The French occupation initiated an irreversible process of maturation and growth in the Jewish community in both economic and political terms. The first emancipation offered Jews the possibility of engaging with the surrounding context in terms of equality, triggering a radical change in their existence. In a short time, the Jewish community proved that they could manage this new dimension of their existence: their ability to move into public life, united in their devotion to the new regime, guaranteed the Jews access to public schools, political and administrative offices, and the highest levels of the Civic Guard and the military.19 The marked improvement in the condition of the Jews was evident; however numerous obstacles still existed that prevented Jewish emancipation from being considered an urgent issue by all “Gentiles.” Particularly, those from disadvantaged social classes were more susceptible to the influence of the Catholic clergy and were hesitant to overcome their deep-seated prejudices and mistrust. In the years that marked the second Napoleonic period with the declaration of the Kingdom of Italy, despite the conservative resistance that dominated during the Italian Republic, the Jews reaffirmed their participation not only in the administration of the State but also in intellectual life, thus recuperating on the level of civil and political liberties the equality that had not been granted to them on the level of religion.20  R. De Felice, “Per una storia del problema ebraico,” cit., pp. 356–360; B. Di Porto, “Gli ebrei nel Risorgimento,” Nuova Antologia, 115, vol. 543, fasc. 2136, October–December 1980, p.  259; S.  Foà, Gli Ebrei nel Risorgimento italiano (1928), Assisi-Rome, Carucci, 1978, pp. 11–28. See Paolo Bernardini’s study dedicated to the Jews of Mantua: La sfida dell’uguaglianza, cit., pp.  225–234. For an overview of the Jewish condition in the Napoleonic period see R. Anchel, Napoléon et les Juifs. Paris, Les Presses Universitaires de France, 1928. It is important to stress that historiography has highlighted the issue of differing attitudes and feelings among members of the Italian Jewish community regarding the Napoleonic Revolution and regime, though still in the context of support for the regime. The different legislations to which the communities were subject, as well as the social belonging of their members, played an important role in this disparity. See. M. Caffiero, “Tra Chiesa e Stato. Gli ebrei italiani dall’età dei Lumi agli anni della Rivoluzione,” in Storia d’Italia, Annali 11, Gli ebrei in Italia, vol. II, Dall’emancipazione ad oggi,  Turin, Einaudi, 1997, pp.  1126–1128. For the special case of Trieste, Livorno and Mantua see T. Catalan, La Comunità ebraica di Trieste, cit., pp. 27–29; J. P. Filippini, La nazione ebrea di Livorno, in Storia d’Italia, Annali 11, cit., pp. 1060–1061; P. Bernardini, La sfida dell’uguaglianza, cit., pp. 223–247. 20  Under the Constitution of the Italian Republic of 1802, Catholic worship held a privileged position. On the juridical condition of the Jewish community in the Napoleonic period see G. Fubini, La condizione giuridica dell’ebraismo italiano, Florence, La Nuova Italia, 19

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From an economic point of view, Napoleon’s policies toward the Jews were beneficial in several aspects: with the opening of the ghettos, the Jews expanded the scope of their participation in every kind of activity and commerce, thus contributing to the increase in the number of occasions for meeting and interacting with Christian society.21 In addition, at this point, the community assumed a socioeconomic configuration that would remain constant even through later periods: the presence of Jews reached notable levels in the middle segments of society while, with the exception of Rome, their numbers were significantly reduced in the lower and higher segments of society.22 The participation of the Jews in public life was not limited only to the business sector, nor was the only reason for their participation a desire for social mobility. Feeling for the first time that they were an integral part of the national community, the Jews were anxious to demonstrate their capability and their spirit of initiative and collaboration, which the regime of separation had restricted for many long years. The negative myths regarding the Jews’ asociality, and their inability to interact with the outside world began to lose force, which undoubtedly became one of their major advantages and successes during the Napoleonic period and which had a lasting effect in the years to come. While the Napoleonic policies about the Jewish community frequently oscillated between contradictory attitudes, alternating between periods of friendliness and times that revealed an obvious intention and desire to control and restrict the entire Jewish community,23 1974, pp. 1–7; M.F. Maternini Zotta, L’ente comunitario ebraico. La legislazione negli ultimi due secoli, Milan, Giuffré, 1983, pp. 55–61. 21  For example, on the important role of this policy in the formation and economic development of the Jewish community in Milan, see G. Maifreda, Gli ebrei e l’economia Milanese. L’Ottocento, Milan, Franco Angeli, 2000, pp. 63–76. 22  See A. Milano, Storia degli ebrei in Italia, Turin, Einaudi, 1992, (second edition), p. 349. 23  Napoleon’s repressive intentions, which emerged during the proceedings of the Assembly of Jewish Notables (July–September 1806) and the Grand Sanhedrin (February– March 1807), culminated in the infamous decree of March 17, 1808, which imposed a series of heavy restrictions on civil liberties. On the Sanhedrin of Paris, see R. Anchel, Napoléon et les Juifs, cit.; M. Graetz, Les Juifs en France au XIX siècle, Paris, Seuil, 1989; Le Grand Sanhédrin de Napoléon, edited by B. Blumenkranz and A. Soboul, Toulouse, Privat, 1979. On legal groundwork and the structure of the new consistory in Italy, see S. J. Sierra, “Aspetti e problemi dell’opinione pubblica ebraica in Italia,” in Miscellanea di studi in memoria di Dario Disegni, edited by M.  Artom, L.  Caro, S.J. Sierra, Turin, Jerusalem, Giuntina, 1969, pp. 239–253; G. Laras, “Le Grand Sanhédrin de 1807 et ses conséquences en Italie: organisations des Concistoires et réactions des Communautés,” in Le Grand Sanhédrin de Napoléon, cit., pp. 33–48; P. Bernardini, La sfida dell’uguaglianza,

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the Napoleonic phase did initiate the process of integration into the surrounding context. The Jews enjoyed numerous opportunities that they were not willing to renounce, especially after the end of the Napoleonic interlude when they had acquired a wider range of experience with a heightened awareness of themselves and their due rights and felt even more clearly the injustice and artificiality of the conditions they had endured in the past. The fall of Napoleon’s empire, the fragmentation of Italy into different state and juridical entities following the Congress of Vienna, and the return to segregation were undoubtedly a setback in the process of emancipation and modernization for the Jewish population, but these obstacles did not prevent the community from moving forward. The enormous economic, social, and cultural changes that had occurred during the Napoleonic period rendered the restrictive measures that were reinstituted in various states across the peninsula ineffectual, demonstrating how anachronistic and inapplicable such measures actually were.24 The conditions that legitimized and prolonged a repressive structure that found its source of power in segregation largely no longer existed. During the French interlude, important changes and transformations had taken place, which moved from the economic to the ideological plane, thus preventing Christian and Jewish society from passively accepting the decrees of the Restoration. In the Jewish context, the emancipation under Napoleon had initiated the first disagreements in the community between generations with cit., pp.  251–270. For a general analysis of Napoleon’s policies towards the Jews, see R. Schecter, Obstinate Jews, cit., pp. 194–235. 24  The Piedmontese State had been particularly diligent in reestablishing the old repressive system, but was forced to modify, due to the risks that the strict application of the restrictive rules entailed for the economy. See V.D. Segre, The Emancipation of the Jews in Italy, in Paths of Emancipation. Jews, States, and Citizenship, edited by P.  Birnbaum and I.  Katznelson, Princeton, New Jersey, Princeton University Press, 1995, pp. 206–237; G. Arian Levi and G. Disegni, Fuori dal ghetto. Il 1848 degli ebrei, Rome, Editori Riuniti, 1998, pp. 47–67. Only the Papal States continued to support the centuries-old tradition of intransigence toward complete separation. The Jewish community in Rome was forced to witness the destruction of all it had acquired on the economic and civil level and was quickly forced back into an even more oppressive situation. On the condition of Judaism in Rome during the Napoleonic period, see R. De Felice, “Gli ebrei nella repubblica romana del 1798–1799,” Rassegna storica del Risorgimento, XL, fasc. III, July–September 1953, pp. 327–356; G. Piperno Beer, “Appunti sugli ebrei di Roma nel periodo della dominazione napoleonica (1809–1814),” Rivista italiana di studi napoleonici, XIX, n. 1–2, 1982, pp. 201–217. On the effects of the Restoration on Italian Jewish communities, see A. Milano, Storia degli ebrei in Italia, cit., pp. 351–355; G. Martina, Pio IX and Leopoldo II, Rome, Pontificia Università Gregoriana, 1967, pp. 195–204.

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profoundly different attitudes toward the French. The older generation, while not negating the benefits to the community from the practical application of the principle of equality, saw the dangers to the integrity of the Jews’ cultural and religious traditions. The younger generation, on the other hand, made no secret of their enthusiasm for the new political developments; therefore, they were more apt to take advantage of the numerous opportunities offered to them rather than assume a defensive position. This divergence in attitudes inevitably gave rise to different reactions to the new reality that came about with the closing of the ghetto. Mindful as they were of the freedoms of the first Napoleonic interlude, the elder generation saw separation as a return to a more holistic form of Judaism, a return to a lifestyle that they feared had been lost forever along with the faith that had given them the strength to confront the harsh realities of life. The younger generation was resigned to the situation which they considered to be a temporary condition. This younger generation and the one that followed were determined to take up the struggle to reaffirm their rights and carry forward the prospects for their rightful freedoms without colliding with a wall of indifference.25 In Italy, the social and ideological groundwork was being laid that not only would legitimize the aspirations and demands of the Jewish community but also would prevent their social and psychological isolation. One significant legacy of the French occupation of Italy was the further growth and development of the middle class, which was able to draw numerous advantages from the Napoleonic policies: the fragmentation of the large estates, the sale of national properties, and the development of small- and mid-sized industries undoubtedly helped the bourgeoisie to acquire a more important economic role. The emerging class still had to confront numerous persistent economic and social obstacles, which limited their ability to rise. The Napoleonic regime had undoubtedly favored agricultural, financial, and industrial activity in Italy; however, it had also inhibited Italy’s complete development and reduced the entire economic system to a mere support structure for the French economy, thus revealing the clear intention to promote the French rather than the Italian middle class. In addition to the general dissatisfaction over economic matters, there was dissatisfaction over political matters. This originated with Napoleon’s denial of demands for greater autonomy and freedom of movement from the class of notables who came mainly from the middle and noble classes and who represented the administrative, military, judicial,  See A. Milano, Storia degli ebrei in Italia, cit., p. 357.

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and academic ossification in the Kingdom of Italy. A segment of this leadership class was unwilling to play a purely technical or advisory role. Following the principles that informed the revolutionary experience, this class made claims of independence from Napoleonic aims, especially given that the State where they were expected to function had transformed in 1805 from a small regional State into the Kingdom of Italy. When it became evident that their expectations were destined to remain disregarded, this new leadership class increasingly distanced itself from the regime, causing many to join to the secret societies that arose during the final years of the Napoleonic period.26 Thus, a minority formed that would become the inspirational and driving force in the Risorgimento in the wake of the Restoration and that would include the emancipation of the Jews as a feature of their own political action.27 Beginning in the 1830s, this segment of the bourgeoisie and nobility reconnected with the changes in opinion that had begun at the end of the eighteenth century to see the “Jewish question” outside of a traditional lens, and they expressed innovative ideas about the role and condition of the Jews. The abolition of a discriminatory regime and the complete civil, economic, and political equality of the Jewish community resulted in significant points of connection with these new opinions that in the Risorgimento period came to constitute the ideological base of the program of liberation and regeneration of the Jewish community, a program that was considered an essential step in the process of the liberation and regeneration of the Italians.28 The Jews found an important point of reference with these Risorgimento  thinkers because the same issues regarding the Jewish struggle for emancipation  had undergone a transformation. During the nineteenth century, the Jews promoted demands that extended beyond 26  See G. Candeloro, Storia dell’Italia moderna, vol. I, Le origini del Risorgimento, Milan, Feltrinelli, 2014. On the formation and characteristics of the bourgeois class in the Napoleonic period see M. Meriggi, “La borghesia italiana,” in Borghesie europee dell’800, edited by J. Kocka, Venice, Marsilio, 1989, pp. 166–167. 27  See M. Toscano, “Gli ebrei in Italia dal Risorgimento alla Repubblica,” in I TAL YA’. Duemila anni di arte e vita ebraica in Italia, Milan, Mondadori, 1990, pp. 41–42. 28  See F.  Della Peruta, “Le ‘interdizioni’ israelitiche e l’emancipazione degli ebrei nel Risorgimento,” Società e storia, VI, n. 19, 1983, pp.  77–107, and Id., “Gli ebrei nel Risorgimento fra interdizioni ed emancipazione,” in Storia d’Italia, Annali 11, cit., pp. 1135–1167. On the Jewish emancipation in Europe as a stage in the more general process of the development of bourgeois society, see R. Rürup, “Emancipation and Bourgeois Society,” Leo Baeck Institute Year Book, XIV, 1969, pp. 67–91.

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those of their own group. “Together with the most restless and bold elites,” the Jews aimed for “a leap forward in liberal-national quality,” a leap that they expected would bring about their own emancipation, for which they were determined to fight. “The Italian Jew … wanted emancipation … and wanted to earn it.” The Jews saw their own future as “potential citizens of a vast civil and national community. They dedicated to its construction their own resources and their own energy, at their own risk.”29 In the first two decades of the Restoration, highly politicized Jewish individuals participated in the Risorgimento movement and contributed to conspiratorial activities of organizations such as the Carboneria, Veri Italiani, and Giovane Italia (Young Italy), which were engaged in the fight against restoration and absolutist monarchical regimes.30 It was no longer from among those who were most aware of the urgency of the “Jewish question” that the Jews sought support for their demands. Alliances formed between the two specific parts of the population, Jewish and non-Jewish, between the two classes that shared the same interests and aspirations: the Jews linked their future and their aspirations of entering the middle class to the future and the aspirations of the rising Italian bourgeoisie (during the Napoleonic period, the Jewish middle class grew in concert alongside the Italian middle class), as patriots and, above all, as a minority group that was anxious to achieve equality in rights and in responsibilities.31

 B. Di Porto, “Gli ebrei nel Risorgimento,” cit., p. 262.  See F.  Della Peruta, “Le ‘interdizioni’ israelitiche,” cit., p.  92 and Id., “Gli ebrei nel Risorgimento,” cit., p. 1154. On the participation of the Jews in the Risorgimento, see also B. Di Porto, “Gli ebrei nel Risorgimento,” cit. and Id. “L’approdo al crogiuolo risorgimentale,” R.M.I., L, n. 9–12, September–December, 1984, pp. 803–862; S. Foà, Gli Ebrei nel Risorgimento italiano, cit. While Foà’s volume is essentially a textbook, it is highly informative. See also T. Catalan, “Italian Jews and the 1848–1849 Revolutions: Patriotism and Multiple Identities,” in The Risorgimento Revisited. Nationalism and Culture in NineteenthCentury Italy, edited by S. Patriarca and L. Riall, New  York, Palgrave Macmillan 2012, pp. 214–231. See also Francesca Sofia’s original views on the interweaving of Biblical themes and Risorgimento ideology in “Ebrei e Risorgimento: appunti per una ricerca,” in La Bibbia la coccarda e il tricolore. I Valdesi tra due Emancipazioni (1798–1848), edited by G.P. Romagnani, Turin, Claudiana, 2001, pp. 349–367. 31  See A. Milano, Storia degli ebrei in Italia, cit., pp. 356–357. The particular case of the emancipation of the Italian Jews as a process of nationalization was highlighted by A. Momigliano in his review of “Gli Ebrei in Venezia” by C. Roth, La Nuova Italia, IV, n. 4, 20, April, 1933, pp.  142–143, now in Id., Pagine ebraiche, Rome, Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2016, pp. 163–167, (second edition). 29 30

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In Italy, the debate over the emancipation of the Jews lagged behind other European countries by several years. Nevertheless, despite the different context, the process seemed to follow the same ideological path and was characterized by the same uncertainties. Reason, tolerance, and justice were the principal categories invoked in support of the rights of Jews to equality: however, the Enlightenment and, later, the Liberal orientation, when analyzed from a historical point of view, included a fundamental inconsistency because they emphasized emancipation not as a right but rather as a means that would allow the Jewish community to revitalize and improve itself.32 This began with the assumption that Jews were somehow defective beings whose less negative characteristics of nature and personality could be cultivated on the condition that they would renounce their religious and cultural identity and construct a new identity based on the beliefs, values, and lifestyles of the surrounding society. Among Catholics, the tendency prevailed to consider emancipation as the first step toward conversion, even though for some, such as Niccolò Tommaseo, the civil and juridical equality of the Jews was a right that should not be subjected to any conditions, especially since the moral, religious, and cultural inheritance of Judaism had always been an important example for humanity.33 The views of Carlo Cattaneo, a prominent figure in the Italian Democratic Federalist strain of thought, emerged from the center of this secular opinion. He examined the “Jewish question” in economic terms and looked for the most appropriate solutions in this same area. Cattaneo held that abolishing all the economic and professional limitations on the Jews would allow them to direct themselves toward those activities that, in time, would help to modify their mentality, thus bringing about their true emancipation. Permitting the Jews to direct their capital toward land ownership would promote the progressive abandonment of their atavistic habit of speculation and accumulation of wealth—habits acquired after centuries 32  See A. Canepa, “Emancipation and Jewish Response in Mid-nineteenth-Century Italy,” European History Quarterly, 16, October 1986, pp. 404–410 and, in particular, G. Luzzatto Voghera, Il prezzo dell’uguaglianza, cit., pp. 37–89. 33  See F. Della Peruta, “Le ‘interdizioni’ israelitiche,” cit., pp. 99–102 and Id., “Gli ebrei nel Risorgimento,” cit.,  pp. 1158–1164; N.  Tommaseo, “Diritti degli Israeliti alla civile eguaglianza,” R.M.I.,  X, 4–5, August–September 1935,  pp. 163–167 (published in the Telegrafo della sera of Trieste on 25 November 1848). See also F. Sofia, “Stato moderno e minoranze religiose in Italia,” R.M.I., LXIV, n. 1, January–April 1998, pp. 37–42.

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of their involvement with commerce and usury but which prevented their complete integration into surrounding society.34 Considering Jewish emancipation from an economic and social point of view reflected an awareness of clear connections that had formed between the interests of the bourgeoisie and of the Jews that had acquired a certain visibility, especially in the Piedmont area.35 In the first decades of the nineteenth century, the Jewish community in Piedmont became an active part of the middle class. They became involved in many aspects of the growing economy: managing significant funds, carrying out commerce, and directing important manufacturing. As members of the middle class, Jews in the first half of the nineteenth century directly confronted the issue of their own emancipation, and analogously, the liberal bourgeoisie assumed the Jewish emancipation as its problem, as its proper duty,…because by this point the bankers, merchants, manufacturers and property owners were flesh of their flesh, their source of life, and the weakening of that source would represent serious damage that would threaten economic crisis.36

The majority of Catholics and lay persons, though starting from different ideological positions, attributed the same function to Jewish emancipation; those positions could diverge as to which path to follow, which instruments to utilize, and which objectives to pursue, but they found an important point of convergence in conflating the civil and juridical equality of the Jews with their assimilation. This assimilation was understood as 34  C. Cattaneo, “Ricerche economiche sulle interdizioni imposte dalla legge civile agli israeliti,” (1836) in Id., Interdizioni israelitiche, Turin, Einaudi, 1987, (second edition). See also F.  Della Peruta, “Le ‘interdizioni’ israelitiche,” cit., pp.  95–97 and Id., “Gli ebrei nel Risorgimento,” cit., pp.  1158–1164; A. Canepa, “Emancipation and Jewish Response in Mid-nineteenth-Century Italy,” cit., p. 408; A. Ara, “Il problema ebraico nella Restaurazione: Carlo Cattaneo e le ‘Interdizioni Israelitiche’,” Rivista storica italiana, CXIV, 2002, pp. 431–457. On the influence of Cattaneo’s thought on the cultural and political groups engaged in the struggle in favor of the granting of civil and juridical equality to the Jews, see C. Ghisalberti, “Riflessi delle ‘Interdizioni israelitiche’ di Cattaneo sulla seconda emancipazione degli ebrei d’Italia,” in Id., Istituzioni e Risorgimento, Florence, Le Monnier, 1991, pp. 87–106. 35  See G. Martina, Pio IX e Leopoldo II, cit., p. 208. 36  G. Arian Levi, “Sulle premesse social-economiche dell’emancipazione degli ebrei nel Regno di Sardegna,” R.M.I., XVIII, n. 10, October 1952, p. 414. See also Id. and G. Disegni, Fuori dal ghetto. Il 1848 degli ebrei, Rome, Editori Riuniti, 1998, p. 70.

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the definitive distancing and abandonment of their cultural and religious tradition and as the adoption of patterns and models of behavior that would alter the Jewish community to make it ever more similar to the surrounding population and would lead it increasingly to impose a kind of self-censorship on its own specificity.37 The year 1848 marked a turning point for Italian Judaism. On March 29, Charles Albert (1798–1849) conceded civil rights to the Jews, and they found themselves the protagonists of a new period in history. The process of “parallel nationalization”38 that had begun at the end of the eighteenth century and was completed with the unification of Italy was accelerating. The Jewish communities most affected by the process of emancipation reacted with enthusiasm to this new reality. The enthusiasm was shared by the same religious elites whose messages attested to the profound patriotic sentiments of the entire community. The position assumed by Samuel David Luzzatto (1800–1865), an eminent figure in nineteenth-century Italian Judaism, regarding these fateful events was emblematic. The name Luzzatto was connected to the founding of the first Italian rabbinical college. In 1820, Joseph II’s successor, Frances I (1768–1835), authorized the requirement for all those who wished to work as rabbis in communities within the Empire to have an appropriate level of knowledge of philosophy and religious instruction. The Jews in the Italian territory, demonstrating that they knew how to adapt to the exigencies of the times, enthusiastically greeted the requirements established by the authorities. In 1829, the Rabbinic College was founded in the Jewish community of Lombard-Veneto.39 The College was founded in response to a request of the emperor; at the same time, it was a useful weapon employed by Italian Judaism to avert the possible dangers 37  See A. Canepa, “L’atteggiamento degli ebrei italiani davanti alla loro seconda emancipazione: Premesse e analisi,” R.M.I.,  XLIII, n. 9, September 1977, p.  422; Id., “Considerazioni sulla seconda emancipazione e le sue conseguenze,” R.M.I., XLVI, n. 16, January–June 1981, pp. 45–89; Id., “Emancipation and Jewish Response,” cit., p. 410. 38  See Arnaldo Momigliano’s incisive review of Gli Ebrei in Venezia by C. Roth, La Nuova Italia, cit., p. 142. On the debate on “parallel nationalization,” see M.  Toscano, “Risorgimento ed ebrei: alcune riflessioni sulla ‘nazionalizzazione parallela’,” R.M.I., LXIV, n. 1, January–April 1998, pp. 59–70, now in Id. Ebraismo e antisemitismo in Italia. Dal 1848 alla guerra dei sei giorni, Milan, Franco Angeli, 2003, pp. 13–23. 39  See M.  Del Bianco Cotrozzi, Il Collegio rabbinico di Padova. Un’istituzione religiosa dell’ebraismo sulla via dell’emancipazione, Firenze, Olschki, 1995. See also G. Castelbolognesi, “Il Collegio rabbinico di Padova al tempo di Samuel David Luzzatto,” R.M.I., XXXII, n. 9–10, September–October 1966, pp. 205–211.

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of indiscriminate and uncontrolled close contact with secular culture. Thanks to the work of Luzzatto, the Science of Judaism entered Italy and the Rabbinic College, which became the main center for its elaboration and development. This discipline was of German origin and proposed the study and critical analysis of Jewish texts through the application of modern methodologies.40 It was in this Rabbinic College, where Luzzatto taught for nearly forty years, that the same rabbis who played a significant role in 1848, participating in the debates and struggles of the Risorgimento, had studied and formed their ideas.41 Though a faithful subject to the Hapsburg monarchy, Luzzatto considered the fight against foreign oppression to be “not a rebellion, but the hand of God.”42 He further believed that emancipation did not have to be experienced merely as the imitation of the outside world but should be experienced as “the acquisition of an inner freedom that liberates [Jews] from alienation and the humiliating enslavement to external influences.”43 40  On the origins, significance and events of the Science of Judaism, see Dictionnaire encyclopédique du Judaïsme, cit. pp.  1057–1064; Y.  H. Yerushalmi, Jewish History and Jewish Memory, Seattle, University of Washington Press, 1982; La Religion comme Science. La Wissenschaft des Judentums, Pardes,  edited by  J. Baumgarten and  Sh. Trigano, n. 19–20, 1994; M. A. Meyer, “Two Persistent Tensions within Wissenschaft des Judentums,” Modern Judaism,  24, n. 2, May 2004, pp.  105–119; A. Yedidya, “Orthodox Reactions to the Wissenschaft des Judentums,” Modern Judaism, 30, n. 1, February 2010, pp. 69–94; K. von der Krone and M. Thulin, “Wissenschaft in Context: A Research Essay on the Wissenschaft des Judentums,” Leo Baeck Institute Year Book, 58, Issue 1, 2013, pp. 249–280. See also the original article by Ismar Schorsch which brings to light the important contribution of Adelheid Beermann in the work of her husband Leopold Zunz (1794–1886), founder of the Wissenschaft, and approaches this movement through gender studies. I. Schorsch, “Wives and Wissenschaft: The Domestic Seedbed of Critical Scholarship,” in Gender and Jewish History, edited by M. A. Kaplan and D. Dash Moore, Bloomington and Indianapolis, Indiana University Press, 2011, pp. 27–43. 41  A. Ravenna, “La scuola rabbinica di Padova e il risorgimento italiano,” R.M.I., XXIII, n. 7, July 1957, pp. 315–316. 42  From a letter written in Hebrew dated April 1848 to the Hungarian David Schwarz, referenced by G. Luzzatto Voghera in “‘Primavera dei popoli’ ed emancipazione ebraica: due lettere dell’aprile 1848,”  R.M.I., LXIV, n. 1, January–April 1998, pp.  85–86. See also S. Wittmayer Baron, “The Revolution of 1848 and Jewish Scholarship,” Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research, XVIII, 1948–1949, p. 56. 43  R. Goetschel, “Samuel David Luzzatto et l’Emancipation,” in Politique et religion dans le judaïsme moderne. Des communautés à l’émancipation. Actes du colloque tenu en Sorbonne les 18–19 novembre 1986, Paris, Presses de l’Université de Paris-Sorbonne,  1987, p.  140 (“une libération de soi à soi qui délivre de l’humilité servile et l’aliénation à l’influence étrangère”). On the life and thought of S.D. Luzzatto, see J. Klausner, “Il carattere, le cre-

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Faithful to the tradition of maintaining a careful distance from any form of extremism, a distinctive feature of Italian Judaism, and well aware of the danger that Jews, “oppressed through time and vilified for their religion,” could be swept up in the rampant “irreligiosity” given their newly acquired status of equality, Luzzatto sensed the necessity of demonstrating how the Science of Judaism provided answers and appropriate tools for dealing with their new reality. After March 1848, Luzzatto undertook the publication of Il Giudaismo illustrato with the goal of promoting a deeper understanding of Judaism among his coreligionists. In the new periodical, Luzzatto affirmed the intimate connection between the people’s yearning for peace and freedom and the same principle in Judaism, as well as the universality of the fundamental principles that Judaism contained: Poets and prophets … all conclude that the happiness of the wicked is transitory and illusory, while the final reward of the righteous is joyful and glorious. The Divine Providence taught in Judaism does not concern only the Jews, but all nations, all men.… The cosmopolitan destination of Judaism is clearly expressed by the prophets, when they proclaim the joyful age when all people will beat their swords into plowshares and nation will not lift up sword against nation.… This future, longed for by the Jews, is the hope of all who have faith in the progress of civilization, which Judaism taught first of all.44

These words seem even more significant in the context of the revolution of 1848. Appealing to the idea of the brotherhood of humanity, Luzzatto attempted to harmonize Jewish cosmopolitanism with the concept of nationality. For the Italian Jews, as for many Jews in Europe, integrating into a national context implied a transformation in their previous group identity and posed the problem of the movement from separation to integration. The affirmation of those universal principles found in the Jewish tradition was not in contradiction with adhesion to a nation denze, le idee,” (1910), R.M.I., XXXII, n. 9–10, September–October 1966, pp. 64–102; M. Harris, “The Theologico-Historical Thinking of Samuel David Luzzatto,” Jewish Quarterly Review, LII, 1961, pp. 216–244; P. Slymovics, “Romantic and Jewish Orthodox Influences in the Political Philosophy of S.D. Luzzatto,” Italia,  IV, n. 1, 1985, pp.  94–126;  M.  Del Bianco Cotrozzi, Il Collegio rabbinico di Padova, cit., 216–227; M. Gopin, Compassionate Judaism: The Life and Thought of Samuel David Luzzatto, North Charleston, South Carolina, CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2017. 44  S. D. Luzzatto, “Essenza del Giudaismo,” Il Giudaismo illustrato, I, 1848, p. 3 and 6.

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founded on liberal values. Luzzatto wanted his message to reach the “many” who believed in the “antisociality and antipatriotism of the Israelites.” To this purpose, his declarations became an actual act of faith in his Italian homeland. He confirmed that the long-awaited liberation of the Jews was not only their physical reunion in Palestine, but the regeneration of the human race, … the end of every war—the foundation of a Jewish kingdom in Palestine … would not constitute the fulfillment of the prophesies for the Jews and the realization of their hopes—… if this Future will come to pass, no one should have cause to mourn, because this will be the golden age of the human family—and in any case, the Israelites have no other homeland but the one in which they were born, or the one in which they have established a home.45

As for the cultural and economic elites, in the years that preceded emancipation, they had already been involved in debates about the role that the Jewish community would play in a free nation. The assimilationist position of those who held that the Jews could achieve civil equality only if they overcame their peculiarity through a serious commitment to improving their civil and moral education and a commitment to the education of the proletariat in the ghetto was countered by those who claimed instead that the Jews had the right to equality without requiring that they renounce any part of their cultural or religious identity.46

45  S. D. Luzzatto, “Socialità del Giudaismo,” Il Giudaismo illustrato, I 1848 p. 25. On Luzzatto’s enthusiastic statements as an example of the Jewish patriotism that was the basis of the “sudden explosion of initiative, creativity, political and intellectual responsibility” that characterized the history of the Italian Jews after 1848, see A. Momigliano, Pagine ebraiche, cit., p. 150. On the reception of the Italian Jews under Habsburg rule to the fateful events of the two-year period 1848–1849, see also T. Catalan, “‘La primavera degli ebrei’. Ebrei italiani del litorale e del Lombardo Veneto nel 1848–1849,” Zakhor, VI, 2003, pp. 35–66. 46  A. Canepa, Emancipation and Jewish Response, cit., pp.  415–432. See also the special cases illustrated by T. Catalan, “‘La primavera degli ebrei’” cit.; Id. “Ebrei triestini fra ribellione e lealismo all’Austria nel 1848–1849,” in Studi in onore di Giovanni Miccoli, Trieste, EUT, 2004, pp. 229–247; C. Ferrara degli Uberti, “La questione dell’emancipazione ebraica. nel biennio 1847–1848: note sul caso livornese,” Zakhor, VI, 2003, pp.  67–91; U. Wyrwa, “Jewish experiences in the Italian Risorgimento: political practice and national emotions of Florentine and Leghorn Jewry (1849–1860),” Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 8, issue 1, 2003, pp. 16–35.

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This debate between opposing camps served as the backdrop for the process of modernization in the Jewish community, which had begun in the Napoleonic period and which the contractual nature of the emancipatory process helped to accelerate. This process aimed at providing the Jews with the necessary tools for adapting to new aspects of collective life. In the decades that preceded emancipation and in the period immediately following, the various Italian Jewish communities were engaged in an effort aimed at supporting and reeducating the most disadvantaged social classes. Numerous schools for arts and trades were established with the goal of directing the marginalized toward new occupations and giving them adequate preparation for undertaking all those professions that emancipation had now made accessible. There were several different ideas behind these efforts to justify this intense philanthropic activity: the program of reeducation of the masses was not only the practical implementation of one of the fundamental principles of the Haskalah, nor did it represent only a useful way to ease the financial burden on the communities from the great number of poor who had to be provided for through a tight network of organizations and institutions financed by well-to-do benefactors in the community. The institution of professional schools corresponded to the demands of the prominent members of the Jewish community who considered the economic and cultural liberation of the weaker segments of the community a necessary condition and a crucial issue of image for their own emancipation and for the emancipation of the entire Italian Jewish population, once the program of regeneration and self-­ improvement promoted by the most integrationist of the emancipators had been achieved.47 The defeat of the liberal democratic movement in 1849 deprived a large number of Jews of their freedom. In the years that proceeded Italian independence, however, the life and the destiny of the Jewish community and the wider Italian population were ever more tightly connected. As an oppressed group, the Jews continued to embrace the meaning of the Risorgimento message as a struggle for individual freedom and equality; as Italians, instead of limiting their action to improving the conditions of life in the specific States where they resided, they contributed to the national cause. Thus, Jews and Gentiles found themselves fighting for the same

47  A. Canepa, “Emancipation and Jewish Response,” cit., p. 418 and G. Luzzatto Voghera, Il prezzo dell’uguaglianza, cit., p. 124.

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objectives in a cultural and political context that strengthened their alliance.48 Emancipation for the Jews arrived when the process of forming their identity as Italians had already been completed:49 rather than emancipation being the force that formed that identity, it constituted the vehicle by which the Jewish community could finally express their desire and enthusiasm for participating as equals in social and political life. After an important period of economic and cultural apprenticeship, the Jews became part of Italian society, inserting themselves into the national context in a climate characterized by the absence of significant hostilities or prejudices. Some of them were immediately ready to fill a defined social and economic role. On the other hand, emancipation offered few guarantees of a balanced relationship between external allurements and cultural and religious identity. While Jews had been able to navigate this relationship harmoniously in the past, it was now destined to make a decisive impact on the cohesion of the community. This new existential dimension contributed to creating a new kind of Jewish individual, one for whom the characteristics and the connotations that had been considered essentially Jewish were, with the passage of time, losing their power and consistency.50 After the second half of the 1800s, this phenomenon found a certain limitation in the generation that retained a memory of the ghetto and that worked to preserve the vitality and effectiveness of Jewish institutions but who at the end of the century saw this phenomenon increase. Regarding the new existential dimension following emancipation, Attilio Milano has fittingly pointed out that The reaction against a life that had been trampled down across the centuries, the enjoyment of fundamental rights for every individual, but that were utterly new to the Jews, the attraction to Italian culture and history, which by now were more easily assimilated than their respective Jewish counter48  See M. Michaelis, “L’ebraismo italiano dallo Statuto albertino alla legislazione razziale,” in Saggi sull’ebraismo italiano, edited by F. Del Canuto, Rome, Carucci, 1984, p. 253. 49  It should be pointed out that Jews, in part through the practice of contracting marriages outside of their own region, had acquired a sense of belonging to a national context, albeit fragmented and divided, at a time when the majority of the Italian population was still divided by regional specificity. The Jewish community had therefore begun to move towards the acceptance of a concept of a unified social context many years before the actual construction of the Italian State. See S.  Della Pergola, Anatomia dell’ebraismo italiano, Rome, Carucci, 1976, p. 228. 50  See A. Milano, Storia degli ebrei in Italia, cit., pp. 370–371.

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parts, and not least of all, the ambition for personal success that had never been experienced before, in short time deteriorated what had been the unified body of Italian Judaism.51

New Historiographical Perspectives In this period of the history of the Italian Jews, their “uniquely successful”52 entrance into Italian society following their emancipation poses a historiographical problem of interpreting the meaning of “a history of the Jews in the absence of a positive or negative Jewish specificity.”53 The historiography of the Jews in this period, which has interpreted the history of the Jews as “the story of their ethnic and cultural selfannihilation”54 has not dedicated the necessary attention to the story of the microcosm of Jews in the years between the opening of the ghettos and the imposition of the racial laws in 1938. “Italian Judaism is culturally in crisis,” observed Renzo De Felice at the outset of the 1980s. For De Felice, this crisis was manifest in the absence of studies that examined the life of Jews after emancipation, their activities, institutions, and their internal debates over their entrance into the national context.55 As Mario Toscano affirmed, the 1980s thus revealed a persistent weakness in the awareness of the historical realities that formed the Jews as citizens, the means of their integration into the nation, the factors in their acculturation—such as the relationship between the dominant culture and the minority—the limits of “assimilation,” the role played by the construction of a national State on the one hand, and the development of Jewish life and culture on the other, in rich relationship between two “cultures.”56

 Ibidem, p. 371.  This definition of the process of Jewish emancipation is from M. Michaelis, Mussolini and the Jews. German-Italian Relations and the Jewish Question in Italy 1922–1945, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1978, p. 3. 53  M. Toscano, “Fermenti culturali ed esperienze organizzative della gioventù ebraica italiana (1911–1925),” Storia contemporanea, XIII, n. 6, December, 1982, pp. 915–961, now in M. Toscano, Ebraismo e antisemitismo in Italia. Dal 1848 alla guerra dei sei giorni, Milan, Franco Angeli, 2003, p. 70. 54  A. Canepa, “Emancipazione, integrazione e antisemitismo liberale in Italia. Il caso Pasqualigo,” Comunità, XXIX, n. 174, June 1975, p. 191. 55  See R. De Felice, “Prefazione” in M. Leone, Le organizzazioni di soccorso ebraiche in età fascista, Rome, Carucci, 1983, pp. IX–X. 56  M. Toscano, “Gli ebrei in Italia dall’emancipazione alle persecuzioni,” Storia contemporanea, XVII, n. 5, October, 1986, p. 905. 51 52

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However, this time also marked the beginning of a new era in historiography that was directed toward the themes Toscano delineates which attested to an innovative interest in Jewish culture in all its multiple aspects. This interest was sparked by the serious repercussions in Italy from the Arab-­ Israeli conflicts57 as well as the fiftieth anniversary marking the institution of the fascist racial laws. The historiography of Italian Judaism in the period following emancipation was thus enriched by a remarkable number of studies, distinct in their critical methods and interpretations, which proposed a more interconnected analysis of this essential period in the history of the Italian Jewish community. These studies placed emphasis on the various aspects and points of interaction between the Jewish minority and the wider national context. This served to overcome the interpretive approach of “self-annihilation,” an insufficient lens for the multi-layered configurations of emancipated Judaism, and the widening parameters in the hitherto unexplored fields of research.58 This is the case, for example, between integration, which can be understood as “the phenomenon of the Jews acquiring citizenship, the culture, and some forms of a civilization without renouncing some form of Jewish identity,” and assimilation which is instead seen as “the explicit 57  See G. Schwarz, “A proposito di una vivace stagione storiografica: letture dell’emancipazione ebraica negli ultimi vent’anni,” Memoria e Ricerca, n. 19, May–August 2005, p. 159. On 9 October, 1982 an attack on the synagogue in Rome caused the death of a two-year old child and the deaths of dozens of adults. G. Schwarz, Attentato alla sinagoga. Roma 9 ottobre 1982. Il conflitto israelo-palestinese e l’Italia, Rome, Viella, 2013. 58  See the extensive literature reviews and bibliographic information in M. Toscano, “Gli ebrei in Italia dall’emancipazione alle persecuzioni,” cit., pp. 905–954; Id., “Introduzione” in Stato nazionale ed emancipazione ebraica, edited by M. Toscano and F. Sofia, Rome, Bonacci, 1992, pp.  7–18; P. Bernardini, “The Jews in Nineteenth-Century Italy: Towards a Reappraisal,” Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 1, n. 2, Spring 1996, pp. 292–310. See also volume 2 of Annali in Storia d’Italia dedicated to the Gli ebrei in Italia. Dall’emancipazione a oggi, Turin, Einaudi, 1997 and the monograph of Quaderni storici,  XXXVIII, n. 3, December 2003, Ebrei borghesi, which include the valuable contributions of M. Scardozzi, “Una storia di famiglia: i Franchetti,” pp. 697–740 and L. Levi D’Ancona, “‘Notabili e dame’ nella filantropia ebraica ottocentesca: casi di studio in Francia, Italia, e Inghilterra,” pp. 741–776. See also G. Schwarz, “A proposito di una vivace stagione storiografica,” cit., pp.  159–174; A. Foa, “Il mito dell’assimilazione. La storiografia sull’Emancipazione degli ebrei italiani: prospettive e condizionamenti,” Storia e problemi contemporanei, n. 45, May– August 2007, pp. 1–13, and T. Catalan, “Les Juifs italiens et le Risorgimento: un regard historiographique,” Revue d’histoire du XIX siècle n. 44, 2012/1, pp. 127–137 and the extensive summary of studies edited by J. Druker and L. Scott Lerner, The New Italy and the Jews. From M. D’Azeglio to Primo Levi, Annali di italianistica, 36, 2018.

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renunciation of Judaism and identification with the group.”59 The relationship between integration and assimilation has made the question of identity one of the fundamental problematic issues in the history of the emancipated Jewish community and has generated the need to investigate its points of construction and formation, in this case the family. In particular, there is the need to take a closer look at the reality of those who, especially following the Jewish community’s acquisition of the right of citizenship, were called to play an essential role in this process, namely women. The necessity of investigating the experiences and choices of women has found further motivation and new legitimacy due to the evolution of Women’s and Gender Studies in Italy.60 Within those fields, the research on women’s associations in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was responsible for highlighting the prominent and important presence of Jewish women in the female emancipation movement, and in this way, establishing the experience of Jewish women as an autonomous subject for research and helping to initiate a field of critical inquiry in Italy that already possessed an established tradition in other contexts, such as the American one, for example.61  M. Toscano, “Gli ebrei in Italia dall’emancipazione alle persecuzioni,” cit., p. 916. On the relationship between integration and assimilation, see J. Eisenberg, Une histoire du peuple juif, Paris, Fayard, 1974, pp. 465–466. 60  On the development of Women’s and Gender Studies in Italy, see M. P. Casalena, “On the Institutionalization of Women’s and Gender History Studies,” in Women’s History at the Cutting Edge. An Italian Perspective, edited by T. Bertilotti, Rome, Viella, 2020, pp. 29–43. 61  “The complex interplay of gender, social class, and religious-ethnic culture shaped the ways in which Jewish women participated in the economic, cultural, religious, and political life of the immigrant Jewish community and U.S. society.” P.  Hyman, “Gender and the Immigrant Jewish Experience in the United States,” in Jewish Women in Historical Perspective, edited by J. Baskin, Detroit, Wayne State University Press, 1991, p. 223. American historiography has produced a series of studies about that interaction which allows us to reconstruct and reinterpret the experience of Jewish women not only in the United States but also in some European contexts, in their roles in the realms of the community, the family, religion, and work. These studies are included in the following bibliographies: The Jewish Woman: 1980–1985. A Bibliography, edited by A. Cantor  and  O. Hamelsdorf, New  York, Biblio Press, 1987; S. Levi Elwell, The Jewish Women’s Studies Guide, New York, London, Biblio Press, 1987; I. M., Ruud, Women and Judaism. A Select Annotated Bibliography, New YorkLondon, Garland Publishing, 1988; “Jewish Women in Europe, 1750–1932: A Bibliography Guide,” edited by D. Hertz, J. Arnold, J.H. Rubin, Jewish History 7, n. 2, Fall 1993, pp. 127–153; J. Baskin and S. Tenenbaum, Gender and Jewish Studies, A Curriculum Guide, New York, Biblio Press, 1994. Of particular note regarding the study of Jewish women during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, though in a different political and cultural scenario, see “Jewish Heritage,” The Jewish Family, special issue, 14, n. 2, Summer 1972. See 59

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Studying the changes in the female and family Jewish components and the transformations that Jewish emancipation and the new conditions of life had on the role and function of women and the family makes it possible to distinguish various stages in the integration process and to differentiate levels of acculturation within emancipated Italian Judaism, thus allowing a more comprehensive understanding and a more complex interpretation. The first important step in this direction was a study on the Jewish community in Turin, whose author stressed how the family unit at the end of the nineteenth century still constituted the dominant model of socialization for the Jews despite their rapid assimilation into the working, professional and intellectual world,62 and thus confirmed the existence of distinct also the work of C. Baum, P. Hyman and S. Michel, The Jewish Woman in America, New York, New American Library, 1975; L. Gordon Kuzmack, Woman’s Cause. The Jewish Woman’s Movement in England and the United States, 1881–1933, Columbus, Ohio University Press, 1990; D. Hertz, Jewish High Society in Old Regime Berlin, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1988; Id., “Emancipation through Intermarriage in Old Berlin,” in Jewish Woman in Historical Perspectives, cit., pp. 182–201; M. Kaplan, The Jewish Feminist Movement in Germany. The Campaign of the Judischer Frauenbund. 1904–1938, Westport (CT), Greenwood Press, 1979; Id., “Tradition and Transition: The Acculturation, Assimilation and Integration of Jews in Imperial Germany: A Gender Analysis,” Leo Baeck Institute Year Book, 28, 1982, pp. 3–35; Id., “For Love of Money: The Marriage Strategies of Jewish in Imperial Germany,” Leo Baeck Institute Year Book, 28, 1983, pp. 263–300; Id., The Making of the Jewish Middle Class: Women, Family, and Identity in Imperial Germany, New  York, Oxford University Press, 1991; P. Hyman, The Emancipation of the Jews of Alsace: Acculturation and Tradition in the Nineteenth Century, New  York, Yale University Press, 1991; Id., Gender and Assimilation in Modern Jewish History. The Roles and Representation of Women, Seattle-London, University of Washington Press, 1995; Id., “Gender and the Shaping of Modern Jewish Identities,” Jewish Social Studies, 8, Winter-­ Spring 2002, pp. 153–161. 62  See L. Allegra, “La Comunità ebraica di Torino attraverso gli archivi di famiglia,” in Ebrei a Torino. Ricerche per il centenario della sinagoga, Turin, Allemandi, 1985, pp. 31–36; Ebrei di Livorno tra due censimenti. (1841–1938). Memoria familiare e identità, edited by M. Luzzati, Livorno, Belforte, 1990, and the article by T. Catalan, “Il rapporto padre-figlia in una famiglia ebraica dell’alta borghesia triestina. Elio ed Emilia Morpurgo (1845–1849),” in Percorsi e modelli familiari in Italia tra ’700 e ’900, edited by F. Mazzonis, Rome, Bulzoni, 1997, pp. 165–186. These sources offer further examples of how examinations of the private sphere contribute to the reconstruction of identity for the entire Jewish community, and also bring to the forefront those aspects of Jewish identity in middle - class Jewish families whose daily lives were in many aspects similar to that of families in the same social class but of another religious orientation.

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periods in Jewish integration in the private and public spheres, therefore questioning “the accredited, though generic assertion regarding the rapid and incontrovertible assimilation of Italian Judaism.”63 The choice of the family and female world as a valuable field for investigation is reflected in the specificity of the characteristics and functions of the family and the female role in the Jewish religious and cultural tradition. The family constitutes one of the main institutions where Jewish identity is formed and plays a decisive role in the preservation and transmission of Jewish culture and tradition: “A Jewish home is where Judaism is at home, where Jewish learning, commitment, sensitivity to values are cultivated and cherished.”64 The sanctification of daily life, so present in traditional Judaism, occurs within the family and, consequently, religious practice represents another point of gathering in which family strength and solidarity are reaffirmed. Religious experience, in this sense, “is much more an integral element of existential reality than it is the fruit of elaborating on theological doctrines.”65 By analyzing the relationship that binds the family unit and the community, it is possible to establish to what degree each external factor influences the family and Jewish society as a whole. There is a relationship of mutual dependence between family and community. Every change that affects the family structure is destined to transform the Jewish community and society as a whole from within.66 It is therefore necessary to bear in mind the gap between expected standards and actual behavior and to verify to what degree, during the time period under examination, the family has performed all the functions assigned to it by tradition. With emancipation, the conditions were created for a radical change within the Jewish community, change that would also influence the dynamics of the family, its relationship with the community and, especially, the role that the family unit had traditionally been called to play.67 While the family still remained the fundamental  M. Toscano, “Gli ebrei in Italia dall’emancipazione alle persecuzioni,” cit., p. 910.  A. J. Heschel, “Celebration and Exaltation,” Jewish Heritage,  The Jewish Family, special issue, vol. 14, n. 2, Summer 1972, p.  7; see also S. Meghnagi, “Educazione ebraica,” in Enciclopedia pedagogica, edited by M.  Laeng, Brescia, Morcelliana, 1989, vol. 3, pp. 4153–4158. 65  S. Della Pergola, Anatomia dell’ebraismo italiano, cit., p. 226. 66  Ivi., p. 228. 67  The discernible changes in the Jewish family between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries must be examined in the light of the wider process of transformation that impacted the Italian family during the same period. On this topic see M. Barbagli, Sotto lo stesso tetto, Bologna, Il Mulino, 1984; La famiglia italiana dall’Ottocento ad oggi, edited by P. Melograni, Rome-Bari, Laterza, 1988; Storia della famiglia italiana, edited by M. Barbagli and 63 64

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sphere of socialization, at least until the end of the nineteenth century, it gradually lost its specific function as a protective entity where Jews could express their religious and cultural identity and provide an environment with which Jews found themselves in harmony. The dismantling of the ghettos freed Jews from oppression, but also entailed the disappearance of the conditions that promoted the presence of tradition in their daily lives. With the loosening of community cohesion, the family had to perform the function of preserving the Jewish religious and cultural heritage. Because of the strong centrifugal tendencies within the Jewish community, stemming from the increased socioeconomic mobility of its members, the community found it increasingly difficult to perform the same function of control over individual members that it had exercised in the past. The responsibility of creating a balance between Jewish values and the values and ideas coming from outside essentially fell to the family unit, which was called upon to attend to the careful task of mediating between the community’s need to keep its own religious and cultural specificity alive and active and the desire for legitimation and participation that directed the majority of Jews toward cultural models that were incompatible with Jewish tradition. Reconstructing the history of the various evolutionary stages of the family requires an examination of the persistence of Jewish subject matter and attitudes in the very area where, especially in the time period considered here, female reality was defined. Marion Kaplan’s observation on the experience of German Jewish women can in fact be extended to the Italian case: If there is one valid generalisation that can be made about Jewish women in this period, it is that the overwhelming majority of them were housewives. Single, married, divorced, whether they held paid jobs or not, they performed the tasks associated with running a home. Even if they hired other women to do the more menial chores, the responsibility of the home was theirs.68

Any study of the family must therefore focus on women, the fundamental support of the family structure and Jewish tradition. This need to shift the D. Kertzer, Bologna, Il Mulino, 1992; Percorsi e modelli familiari in Italia tra ’700 e ’900, edited by F. Mazzonis, Rome, Bulzoni, 1997. 68  M. Kaplan, “Tradition and Transition. The Acculturation, Assimilation and Integration in Imperial Germany,” cit., p. 9.

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focus finds further justification in the fact that, particularly in the aftermath of emancipation, women found themselves at the center of a complex debate on the future of the family and Jewish education for the rising generation who grew up under the new regime of freedom. At a time when Judaism was progressively beginning to lose its attribute of “all embracing influence dominating both social life and the conduct of the individual,”69 women would be asked to remain on the margins of process of innovation that came to affect the majority of the Jewish population and would be called upon to defend the family, mainly through religious observance, from the excesses of emancipation. In order to determine to what extent the female sector evaluated its existential choices in accordance with the expectations of the Jewish world or to what degree it disregarded those expectations, and to assess how much their specific context affected the condition of women, it is necessary to bear in mind those elements of tradition that define the position of women in Judaism.70 According to Jewish, Biblical, and Talmudic tradition there is a rigid separation between male and female roles.71 Compared to women, men have more possibilities and opportunities to define themselves from a social and religious point of view. Men have the responsibility of holding official positions within the community and directing the management and administration of community interests from which women are formally excluded. Only within the family environment are women allowed to express and define themselves. From the religious point of view, there is a profound distinction between the private and public duties and behaviors that Judaism provides for men and women. The Halakhah72 69  H. Greive, “Zionism and Jewish Orthodoxy,” Leo Baeck Institute Year Book, 25, 1980, p. 188. 70  See  The Jewish Woman, edited by E. Koltun, New  York, Schocken Books, 1976, and especially the articles by P. Hyman, “The Other Half: Women in the Jewish Tradition,” pp. 105–113 and S. Berman, “The Status of Women in Halakhic Judaism,” pp. 114–128. On the position of women in Judaism, see R. Biale, Women and Jewish Law: An Exploration of Women’s Issues in Halakhic Sources, New York, Schocken Books, 1984; for a more specifically feminist approach, see T. Ross, Expanding the Palace of Torah. Orthodoxy and Feminism, Hanover-­London, Brandeis University Press, 2004. 71  See A. Cohen, “Domestic Life,” Chapter 5, Everyman’s Talmud: The Major Teachings of the Rabbinic Sages, New York, E. P. Dutton, 1949, pp. 159–183. L. Scheer, “La femme juive à travers les siècles,” Les Nouveaux Cahiers,  XII, n. 46, Fall, 1976, pp. 24–35. 72  Halakhah (Hebrew) indicates the sum of religious law based on the Bible, the Talmud, and rabbinical interpretation. The Talmud is the compilation of Jewish oral law drawn up in Jerusalem and Babylon between the second and fifth centuries C.E. There are two Talmuds,

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exempts women from most of the mitzvot,73 the religious precepts, by virtue of the family commitments entrusted to them. Moreover, women cannot be part of a minyan.74 This distinction in the sphere of religion extends to that of law. Women are not granted full legal status and therefore cannot testify in a Jewish court or inherit to the same extent as male heirs; in the wedding ceremony they play a passive role, and they cannot initiate the proceedings for divorce. While a wife can appeal to the rabbinical court to put pressure on her husband and force him to grant a divorce, her legal requests are nevertheless subjected to a higher authority.75 Though confined to a secondary position with respect to men, and excluded de jure and de facto from much of the activity related to the community, within the family sphere, women regain to some degree the authority denied to them in the public sphere. And although Jewish law exempts the female sector from the study of the Torah76 and public religious duties, it is women who have the difficult and essential task of transforming into practice the formal adherence to the principles of faith and tradition, adherence which would be meaningless if enacted only for the sake of adherence.77 Women are the principal actors in that “domestic religion”78 whose role in the Jewish education of the younger generations, the Jerusalem Talmud and the Babylonian Talmud, the latter is the only text accepted by all Jews. See Dictionnaire encyclopédique du Judaïsme, cit., pp. 412–417 and 982–988. 73  Mitsvah, pl. Mitzvot (Hebrew): commandment, religious precept. The Bible contains 613. 74  Minyan (Hebrew): assembly of ten male adults necessary for the public enactment of Jewish religious rituals. See P. Hyman, The Other Half: Women in the Jewish Tradition, in The Jewish Woman, cit.,  p. 106; S. Berman, The Status of Woman, cit., pp.  114–128 and E. Guggenheim, Le judaïsme dans la vie quotidienne, Paris, Albin Michel, 1982, pp. 52–58. 75  The impossibility of women instigating divorce proceedings constitutes a significant problem, especially for Agunoth. This is the legal, Talmudic term for married women who have been abandoned, whose husbands have disappeared without a trace, therefore making it impossible to determine if the husband is dead or not. An agunah woman cannot remarry until the death of her husband is confirmed. In the case that the husband is still alive, the woman cannot remarry until the husband agrees to a divorce. See R. Biale, Women and Jewish Law, cit., pp. 102–120 and T. Ross, The Expanding the Palace of Torah, cit., pp. 17–19. 76  Torah in Hebrew means “the Law.” Strictly, this means the Pentuch. More generally, it refers to the whole of Jewish religious literature. See Dictionnaire encyclopédique du Judaïsme, cit., 1013–1025. 77  See S. Meghnagi, “Educazione ebraica”, cit., p. 4155. 78  This definition was articulated by B. Myerhoff, Number our Days, New York, Simon & Schuster, 1978, p. 234, cit. in N. Green, “La formazione della donna ebrea,” in Storia delle

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is no less important than that played by the school. “Jewish women, as in most societies, are those important figures who have and transmit a more informal knowledge and a more emotional religiosity, which their children often describe, once they become adults, as more important than the formal teachings of the Jewish school.”79 It has also been noted that belonging to Judaism is itself passed on to children through the maternal line.80 In traditional Jewish society, therefore, if men are assigned social superiority in public life, then woman are entrusted with the love, affection and, above all, the care and attention so that in the family, Jewish identity is not limited to a mere religious observance but is also translated into respect for those norms that “while apparently possesses nothing divine, nevertheless have an immediate and profound influence on the direction and habits of daily earthly life.”81 This study aims to trace the phases in the evolution of this religious and cultural model destined to confront the significant transformations that from the second half of the nineteenth century impacted both Jewish society and the Italian female experience. The emancipation of the Jewish community, the construction of the national state, and the assertion the female emancipationist movement all contributed a context in which being a Jewish woman is subject to formidable dynamics. The history of the Italian Jewish women’s reality is part of that same demanding mediation between Jewish and Italian identity, common to all emancipated Judaism, but charged with an additional factor: that mediation between expectations specific to the Jewish community and actual lived behaviors, and between emancipation as women and emancipation as Jews.

donne in Occidente, edited by G. Duby and M. Pierrot, L’Ottocento, edited by G. Fraisse and M. Perrot, Rome-Bari, Laterza, 1991, p. 211. 79  Ibidem. 80  For more on this topic, see R. Di Segni, “Il padre assente. La trasmissione matrilineare dell’appartenenza all’ebraismo,” Quaderni storici, XXIV, n. 1, April 1989, pp. 143–204 and S.J.D. Cohen, “The Origins of the Matrilineal Principle in Rabbinic Law,” AJS Review X, n. 1, Spring 1985, pp. 19–53. 81  S. Della Pergola, Anatomia dell’ebraismo italiano, cit., p. 158.

CHAPTER 2

The Emergence of the Jewish “Woman Question”

Emancipation and the New Way of Life In March 1848, Charles Albert granted emancipation to the Jews living in Piedmont, Italy. Thanks to a series of legislative measures that followed soon after the sovereign’s act of benevolence, professing a faith other than the Catholic religion ceased to be a source of discrimination. At last, Jews in Italy could enjoy civil and political rights, including holding public office, working in government administration, or serving in the military as equals with other citizens of the realm.1 The process of transforming Italian Judaism that began with the political modernization initiated by the Hapsburgs was further expanded under the French, who were the authors of the first emancipation of the Jews in Italy, and then received new force from the decrees by Charles Albert. In 1848 emancipation opened up new, wider opportunities for the Jews, but at the same time, it  It is important to remember that the emancipation of the Jews in Italy on March 29, 1848, was preceded by emancipation of the Waldensians in February of the same year. For further information regarding the process of emancipation for both of these two religious minorities, as well as the similarities and differences regarding their respective advancement following their departure from the “ghetto,” please see the collection of studies edited by A. Cavaglion, Minoranze religiose e diritti. Percorsi di cento anni di storia degli ebrei e dei valdesi (1848–1948), Milan, Franco Angeli, 2011. 1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 M. Miniati, Italian Jewish Women in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Italian and Italian American Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74053-5_2

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burdened the Jewish community with upholding and transmitting the religious and cultural inheritance because protecting the integrity and continuation of that tradition became far more difficult within the new social dimension of equality. It was a problem with no easy solution, destined to demarcate and characterize the life and evolution of Italian Judaism for many years to come. The political and legal equality that came with emancipation marked the beginning of a period of profound cultural, social, and economic transformation: accelerating the pace “of the progressive dissolution of the socio-economic difference between the Jewish community and those around them” and shrinking the “areas in which religious difference was followed by cultural difference,”2 the Jewish community entered a path toward progressive political, social, and cultural integration with the surrounding context in Italy. The Jewish community faced the difficult task of reconsidering and redefining its own role and its own space in the lives of its members, of reformulating a new equilibrium between tradition and modernization in the face of an emancipatory process that would inevitably affect its principal points of reference and sources of support, namely the synagogue, the school, and the family, thus changing the functions and the content of these institutions, which represented the foundation of the life of the Jewish community. Until the first half of the nineteenth century, Jewish life had been built upon a solid foundation of careful, harmonious negotiation between a specifically Jewish cultural and religious tradition and the appeal and values of an Italian cultural inheritance. The ghetto, aside from the obvious discriminatory purpose that it so dramatically expressed, had a “totalizing” dimension in that it functioned as a “filter,” averting or at least neutralizing messages and tendencies that were likely to injure the religious and cultural solidarity of the community. In the dark days of segregation, the Jews had structured their entire lives around those institutions that allowed the religious and cultural elites—who served as the spiritual guide for the community—to direct the lives of individuals so that they structured their existence on the principles of Judaism. Up until 1848, the synagogue had the honor and burden of being the center of gravity for 2  R. Bonfil, “La Sinagoga in Italia come luogo di riunione e di preghiera,” in Il centenario del Tempio Israelitico di Firenze (Atti del convegno), Florence, Giuntina, 1985, p. 40.

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Jewish life. As the authoritative administrator of religious life, as well as the social and economic life in the ghetto, the synagogue was the central government of the community and, as such, held all the power necessary to direct the Jewish community according to the proper moral directives, fully respecting tradition. In its double role as place of prayer—“Zion for the spirit”—and as gathering place where all questions relative to daily life found their proper context, “through centuries of isolation, the synagogue was able to impose this precept upon Italian Judaism: everything in the synagogue, nothing outside of the synagogue.”3 This steadfast centralization of power allowed the synagogue to counter external pressures and limitations with a unified community strengthened by its cohesion and moral rectitude. The prominence of religious values and the requirement of obedience guaranteed the Jews protection from any internal disintegration that would have rendered them an even more vulnerable target. Emancipation entered this picture, causing a reevaluation and redefinition of the synagogue’s traditional parameters. “Now the fateful limits of the circle have been removed, they are levelled: now Judaism no longer lives closed within itself but in the midst of a vast social field … now, unshackled and freed, it expands, it reaches beyond of itself. We are therefore, Jewish citizens.”4 In this new social context, where the barriers of the past were replaced by the wider spaces and many opportunities of a life now characterized by equality, it was the responsibility of the individual Jew, through personal conscience and identity, to find a balance between a legitimate desire to take full advantage of the opportunities offered by this “progress,” achieve social recognition, and yet still remain faithful to his or her own religious and cultural heritage. Separating what was “useful” from what was “harmful” became a difficult task, an undertaking rife with snares, even more so because maintaining a social life that was limited only to the Jewish context was becoming less possible than in the past. The relationships between coreligionists began to lose its exclusive character. Similarly, frequenting the places that had traditionally formed the bedrock of their lives was also destined to change in intensity and content. In addition to transforming  A. Milano, “Un secolo di stampa periodica in Italia,” La Rassegna mensile di Israel (hereafter R.M.I), XII, n. 7–9 April–June, 1938, pp. 96–97. 4  G. Levi, “Cittadino e israelita,” The Jewish Educator (L’Educatore israelita hereafter E.I.), X, January 1862, p. 6. 3

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the lifestyle of Jewish society, emancipation brought substantial changes to the role and functions of Jewish society’s most fundamental institutions, changes that ultimately served to reinforce their religious nature as opposed to their secular function. Whereas “the time in the Synagogue” had once been a secular time because the synagogue united all activities— religious and non-religious—that took place outside of it, that feature became a prerogative of the past. Traditionally, the synagogue had been a place of coming together, and not only for prayer, hence its “strong secular character.” However, for emancipated Jewish society, now their social context and time had become secular. Thus, when emancipation increased the spaces in which Jews could live their own legal, economic, and social lives, the synagogue came to assume an “exclusively religious character” because prayer became the exclusive motivation for gathering there.5 Emancipation brought Jewish society back to the dimension of “moral society,” of a “society based in an idea. Not an idea that was political or earthly, but divine.”6 Given that “it was nearly 2000 years since the Jewish State had been dissolved,” religion again became the essential constitutive element, the element that separated and distinguished the Jews from their surrounding context; that bound them to their history, their past; and that defined their identity. Emancipated Jews quickly came to “live within the world” and “live by themselves.”7 If one wished to “retain a distinction,” he or she had to unite with only one “flag,” one single “symbol … that was neither hostile nor contrary to that of general society.” This symbol was faith, distinct from “that nationality that ancient circumstances legitimized. … Recalled in this way to the first and true idea, which came from heaven and not from earth,” Jews had the duty to “imbue” themselves

5  R. Bonfil, “La Sinagoga in Italia,” cit., p. 42. Even the role of rabbi undergoes a transformation in this sense. From teacher, cultural organizer, and judge whose responses were destined to regulate relations within the community, the Rabbi sees his own area of influence become essentially limited to worship, guaranteeing proper performance of rituals, and serving as the caretaker of tradition. See G. Luzzatto Voghera, “I rabbini in età moderna e contemporanea,” in Le religioni e il mondo moderno, edited by G. Filoramo, vol. II, Ebraismo edited by D. Bidussa, Turin, Einaudi, 2008, pp. 532–538; Id. Rabbini, Rome-Bari, Laterza, 2011, in particular pp. 70–72. 6   See G.  Levi, “Il massimo problema del Giudaismo. Separazione-Assimilazione-­ Annichilimento,” E.I., X, March 1862, pp. 66–67. 7  Ivi. p. 69.

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with it and make it their rallying point, not in name only or habit or appearance, but from deep conviction.8 The return to a “true concept of faith” was not easily reconciled with the process of emancipation, which, having reduced the spaces and presence of religion in daily life, particularly interfered with the practice of religion. As for Judaism in Italy’s Piedmont region—the first area to deal with the “duality” of emancipation—it had to confront another phenomenon, that of the increasing secularization of the surrounding society.9 Religion belonged in the private sphere, which was rigorously separate from the public sphere. A Jew was first and foremost a citizen and, as such, was required to define himself or herself with respect to the “other.” The phenomenon of internal migration, which had increased significantly since the time of the second emancipation, contributed to the complexity of the situation. Migration to communities located in the more important Italian cities caused the numeric decline if not the entire disappearance of smaller Jewish communities.10 This phenomenon, which became a constant in Italian Judaism through the following century, was motivated mainly by the need for economic and religious stability. For sparsely populated Jewish communities, religious assistance from coreligionists could be secured only with difficulty. For the more devoted Jews, for whom it was essential that marriage choices be kept within the bounds of endogamy, an exodus to communities that were numerically stronger appeared to be the only practical solution. For the emancipated Jew, who did not conceal the personal ambition for integration and legitimization, Italy’s larger cities also offered greater possibilities of social and economic access.11 In the final decades of the nineteenth century, emancipation became a reality for all the Jews along the Italian peninsula. It was undoubtedly in this period that the combination of factors that had contributed to the 8  G. Levi, “L’ebreo del passato e l’ebreo del presente. L’ebreo del presente,” E.I., VIII, June 1860, p. 166. 9  This point is illustrated in G. Verucci, L’Italia laica prima e dopo l’Unità, Rome-Bari, Laterza, 1996, pp. 22–40. 10  See R. Bachi and S. Della Pergola, “Gli ebrei italiani nel quadro della demografia della diaspora,” Quaderni storici, XIX, n. 55, April 1984, p. 160. 11  See A. Milano, Storia degli ebrei in Italia, Turin, Einaudi, 1992, (second edition), pp.  378–379; E. Sabatello, “Trasformazioni economiche e sociali degli ebrei in Italia nel periodo dell’emancipazione,” in Italia Judaica IV.  Gli ebrei nell’Italia unita, Rome, Ministero per i beni culturali e ambientali, 1993, pp. 116–118.

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modernization of Jewish society was also revealed potentially to be a disruptor to Jewish society, subjecting the integrity and the cohesion of Italian Judaism to a sore trial. For a long time in the face of this problematic identity crisis, the Jewish community was unable to find a solution to the tension between “progress” and “tradition.” Thus, in the aftermath of the second emancipation, only some segments of the Italian Jewish community could enjoy the benefits of social equality. The memory of the ghetto—understood as a period of moral richness and intense spiritual life—kept the enthusiasm for the newly achieved liberty within the proper limits; but the foundation for the social and cultural structure of the community began to shake under the impact of the rapid interaction of Jewish society with the rest of Italian society.

A Point of Reference: The Jewish Press Even today it is not easy to reconstruct a precise sequence of facts and events for this period that would permit an exhaustive evaluation of the repercussions of emancipation on the religious and private life of Jews in Italy due to the scant number of autobiographical sources from the years immediately preceding and following the 1848 Emancipatory Statute.12 12  As observed by A. Cavaglion, “L’autobiografia ebraica in Italia fra Otto e Novecento. Memoria di sé e memoria della famiglia: osservazioni preliminari,” Zakhor, III, 1999, p. 172. A gap partially filled by the novel by Guido Artom, I giorni del mondo, based on the life of the author’s ancestors, Zaccaria Ottolenghi and Raffaele Artom. Their experience of freedom from living in the Napoleonic era as brilliant students of the Imperial High School of Asti, and then their forced return to live in the shadows of the ghetto, have a strong impact on their feeling and living the religion of their fathers. From the emancipation of 1848 onwards, this same impact was felt in the religious experience of a significant segment of the Jewish community. As for Raffaele, “What the rabbi had feared with his and Zechariah’s enrollment in a public school was the very thing that had happened in him: the Mosaic law, whose high moral inspiration he felt deeply was the source of all the great religions, seemed to him restrictive, nourished with pride and anchored in remote times and customs … detached by force from studies … found no comfort in ancient beliefs, respected in their spirit, but not … in every act of life”. In the same way Zaccaria wondered how his generation who “grew up during revolutionary leaps forward” and accompanied by reading works in which all religions were an obstacle to progression and to freedom, could remain faithful to a religion that imposed rules incompatible with the new times and with the coexistence of Gentiles. “However, that ceremony on Friday evening, around the sabbath lamp, …  [Zaccaria Ottolenghi] would not have missed for anything in the world: perhaps because it affirmed the unity of the family, the greatest strength of the Jews, perhaps because it transformed for a moment their home into a Temple, without rituals, without a celebrant who although …

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Some events from Jewish cultural life bear witness to the radical process of transformation taking place as well as to the crisis that arose from it. The birth of a Jewish press and the themes that it confronted provide concrete proof of the effects that legal and civil equality had upon the traditional balance between Jewish private and public life. By establishing this first expression of Jewish journalism, the Jewish community and in this case its  most attentive and aware segment, was responding to the need to maintain the educational role that Judaism had traditionally fulfilled. This role relied on the synagogue, school, and family, though changing lifestyle conditions had begun to diminish these institutions’ authority greatly. The published word thus assumed the task of “getting where the living voice was no longer able to reach.”13 Jewish journalism debuted in Parma in 1845 with a publication directed by Cesare Rovighi (1820–1890), a young doctor from Modena: The Jewish Review (La Rivista Israelitica) was the first periodical and first “voice” of the Jews of the Risorgimento.14 The Journal’s brief period of publication (1845–1848) marked a moment of considerable innovation and great internal debate in Italian Judaism. Not just those communities which were close to definitive liberation from an oppressive regime, such as those in Piedmont, but Jewish communities throughout the peninsula, were involved in efforts to reconsider and modernize their own institutions and improve the function of their own organizational apparatus. Jewish communities all along the Italian peninsula sensed that emancipation was coming. The possibility of a life of liberty and equality was both desired and feared; indeed, that possibility created tensions and misunderstandings among those who experienced contradictory feelings in the face of these new possibilities and reacted with widely varied attitudes, often pendulating between the desire for total being … a layman, a teacher, like the rabbis, often took attitudes similar to those of priests.” Guido Artom, I giorni del mondo, Brescia, Editrice Morcelliana, 2011, (second edition), pp. 49–50 and p. 81. On the activities of Zaccaria Ottolenghi (1797–1868) and Raffaele Artom (1795–1859) in the city and community of Asti see also M. L. Giribaldi and R. M. Sardi, Bele sì (proprio qui). Ebrei in Asti, Brescia, Editrice Morcelliana, 2014. 13  A. Milano, “Un secolo di stampa periodica in Italia,” R.M.I., XII, n. 7–9, April–June 1938, p. 97. 14  See ivi, pp. 99–102. On the history and content of La Rivista israelitica, see “Il giornalismo israelitico in Italia,” La Rassegna Nazionale, XLVI, 2a serie, v. XLVII, November 1924, p. 46 and, B. Di Porto, “La Rivista Israelitica di Parma. Primo periodico ebraico italiano,” Materia Giudaica, n. 5, 1999, pp. 33–45.

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assimilation and the most rigid orthodoxy, hostile and suspicious of any movement toward progress and change.15 In the fissure provoked by the divisive opinions that characterized the Jewish political and intellectual climate of the 1840s—“there was no middle ground, only extremes on one side, and extremes on the other”— the Journal attempted to position itself as the champion and reference point for those who aspired to find a common language that was understandable as well as acceptable to all. It was no coincidence that the Journal availed itself of the collaboration of two important teachers at the Rabbinical College of Padova, Samuel David Luzzatto and Lelio Della Torre (1805–1871), well-known figures in Italian cultural life, as well as Marco Mortara (1815–1894), Lelio Cantoni (1801–1857), and David Tedesco (1820–1849), all former students at the Rabbinical College. In their position as rabbis, and as men of great education, they actively worked for the advancement of the Jewish community, which they guided intelligently, and promoted the advancement of Judaism and Jewish culture. Faithful to the pursuit of emancipation “within tradition” promoted by the Padovan institution, to whose prestige they also contributed significantly,16 the editors of the Journal were all influential supporters of a “modernity” that was not necessarily injurious to the “old but still beautiful and majestic edifice prodigiously raised by Moses.”17 From the “stoic indifference that kills and annihilates” to the “fanatical zeal that corrupts and contaminates,”18 these leaders proposed a cultural and religious tradition effectively reexamined and readapted to the exigencies of current times. Thus adapted and modernized, Judaism, they felt, was still capable of offering the necessary tools for accessing a new dimension of

15  See A. Canepa, “L’atteggiamento degli ebrei italiani davanti alla loro seconda emancipazione. Premesse e analisi,” R.M.I., XLIII, n. 9, September 1977, pp. 419–436. 16  See M.  Del Bianco Cotrozzi, Il Collegio Rabbinico di Padova. Un’istituzione religiosa dell’ebraismo sulla via dell’emancipazione, Florence, Olschki, 1995, pp.  216–276 and 337–338. La Rivista israelitica also availed himself of the collaboration of Giuseppe Levi, another illustrious figure of Italian Judaism, who had trained at the Foa college in Vercelli, a city where a few years later he established the periodical, L’Educatore Israelita, a publication that would mark an important stage in Jewish journalistic production in the nineteenth century. See A. Milano, “Un secolo di stampa,” cit., p. 105 and S. De Benedetti, Giuseppe Levi. Ricordo biografico, Florence, Le Monnier, 1876. 17  D. V. Tedesco, “Delle riforme di culto,” Rivista Israelitica, (henceforth R.I.) I, n. 11, October 1847, p. 677. 18  Ivi, p. 675.

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life in the wake of emancipation without painful separations, lacerations of conscience, or fragmented identity. The Journal was characterized by its essentially doctrinal and moral direction. Time and again, the journal addressed issues relative to the crisis in religious feeling, the mounting indifference to religion evident in all social classes, and the lack of religious instruction. The Journal’s collaborators assigned a significant share of the responsibilities and even the blame for the difficult conditions into which Judaism had fallen to this lack of religious instruction as they sought to find a point of convergence between the “ultra-orthodox faction,” which perceived “a threat in everything that did not have a direct link to the past,” and the “youth faction,” which grew progressively more distant from religion, freeing themselves not only from Judaism’s external signs but also from the true essence of Judaism, abandoning themselves to an attitude of “blameworthy indifference.”19 The intent of the Journal’s collaborators was to unite the diverse moral and intellectual energies present in the Jewish world under a single flag, “the flag of a religious party,”20 and thus unite these energies into a single, collective force aimed at recreating the unity that emancipation risked compromising or at least risked hampering. Reaffirming and repeating the “national sentiment,” which was understood as the discovery of the history of the Jewish people, the journal’s authors promoted “religious education” in two senses: first, as the education of the heart and not merely indoctrinating the youth in a sterile form of observance that was lacking in any true emotional involvement and, second, as the restoration of respect for the “dignity of external religious practice” through a higher level of education for those responsible for religious rituals and observance.21 In this way, they sought to restore the necessary balance to the community in order to deal with the great challenge of emancipation.

An Imperative Necessity: The Education of Women The special attention the journal accorded to topics of great social and religious relevance did not prevent its contributors from examining issues that had a more limited resonance at the time but were nevertheless not 19  C. Rovighi, “Educazione popolare. Sentimento nazionale—educazione religiosa—dignità di culto,” R.I., I, n. 11, October 1847, p. 665. 20  See A. Milano, “Un secolo di stampa,” cit., p. 100. 21  C. Rovighi, “Educazione popolare,” cit., pp. 665–669.

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unimportant. The “woman question” was one such issue. Destined to quickly become a focus of interest in the Jewish community as well as the object and impetus for lively debate, the problem regarding the role and the future of women in emancipated or soon-to-be-emancipated Jewish society constituted one of the controversial aspects in the complex picture of the changing Jewish reality. In addition to being the first example of Jewish journalism with a “modern direction,”22 The Jewish Review (La Rivista Israelitica) was also the first publication that allowed the female experience to acquire its initial visibility and was the first to invite reflection on that experience from the Jewish community.23 The attention and interest for the female sphere did not represent a completely new phenomenon in the Jewish world. The Jewish community of Venice has the credit of publishing the journal The Education of Jewish Women (L’Educazione della femmina israelita, a periodical limited to only one issue) in 1821. Its purpose was to support women in their traditional mission to educate the youth. In addition to religion, women’s education was to include “wide scientific knowledge that would give to the youth a broad idea of things surrounding them” so that “women would not be disheartened before erudite people and the accusation of ignorance that some of the masculine sex have wrongly directed at them will be torn away once and for all.”24

22  P. Colbi, “Gli ebrei italiani alla vigilia del Risorgimento. Leggendo la ‘Rivista Israelitica’,” R.M.I., XXIX, n. 10, October 1963, p. 438. 23  The 1861 Census shows that the Jewish female population numbered 11053. It constituted 49.2% of the total Jewish population and one per thousand of the Italian population. See: Statistica del Regno d’Italia, Ministero dell’Agricoltura, Industria e Commercio, Censimento generale (31 December, 1861), vol. III, pp. 210–211. 24  L’educazione della femmina israelita. Giornale storico-morale-scientifico. Adorno di rami …Compilato da LeonVita Romanini, Maestro della Comunità degli israeliti di Trieste. See I. Zoller, “Il giornalismo israelitico,” cit., pp. 115–116. The quotations are not taken from the original because the only record is unavailable. It seems appropriate to point out that this first public reflection on the need for women’s education came at a time when the issue was not yet debated in the rest of Italy. It is not surprising that this initiative was conceived in Venice, given the more advanced positions on women’s education in the AustroHungarian Empire, to which the lagoon city belonged, than in the other States of Italy. See for example, M. A. Manacorda, “Istruzione ed emancipazione della donna nel Risorgimento. Riletture e considerazioni,” in L’educazione delle donne. Scuole e modelli di vita femminile nell’Italia dell’Ottocento, edited by S. Soldani, Milan, Franco Angeli, 1989, pp. 1–3; X. Toscani, “La politica scolastica nel regno Lombardo-veneto (scuole elementari),” in Chiesa e prospettive educative in Italia tra Restaurazione e unificazione, edited by L. Pazzaglia, Brescia, La Scuola, 1994, pp. 318–353.

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By the end of the 1840s the “woman question” no longer constituted an autonomous element of discussion and reflection but was treated as part of a more general concern, namely the decline in religious feeling and the adaptations in religious ritual and instruction arising from the “new social position of the Jews.” In the debate over the possible reforms to belief and religious instruction, a topic to which The Jewish Review dedicated ample space, women became the subject of new attention. Their mission as wives and mothers, as well as anchor and moral support of the family, required a firmer and more intentional religious education, one that would assign women a stronger Jewish identity and motivation and thus prepare them to cope with the impact of their encounter with a world that was foreign to their traditional domestic and cultural space. The sanctification of domestic life could expect a future with increasing obstacles. First of all was the absence of a family situation that was absorbed by commitments that increased the occasions to socialize outside of a strictly Jewish environment. Without an adequate cultural background that could provide traditional, as well as religious, justifications and motivations for women to carry on the duties of religious observance and in the absence of active participation by its members, the family risked failing in its fundamental function of sustaining and defending religious tradition and Jewish culture, despite being one of the principal institutions for assuring cultural continuity. Twenty years later, The Jewish Review renewed the proposal made in 1821 by The Education of Jewish Women, affirming the necessity of appropriate religious instruction for women. They are in great need of support in the midst of the seductions of this century, as a weapon against the force of passion; they also need to be the primary educators and guides for their tender offspring. It is time that they rise up against that religious debasement to which they have been condemned, not by the law of Moses, but by Rabbinical law beneath the influence of Oriental customs; now they find they are called to higher ideals of religion than ever before.25

In this first article in The Jewish Review in 1845, it seemed that an evaluation of women’s issues could be made exclusively in religious terms, and religion seemed to be the only arena in which these issues arose. Unlike 25  “Educazione ed istruzione. Sulla necessità di un nuovo metodo d’istruzione religiosa,” R.I., I, n. 2, June 1845, p. 97.

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the message in 1821, there was no specific reference to the possibility of making sectors of knowledge available to the female mind, certainly not any instruction that was an alternative to religious education, nor even supplementary or complementary to religious training. Even with the absence of any theoretical references about education for women, the fundamental attitude of the Jewish community nevertheless demonstrated a propensity for accepting a broader understanding of women’s education. Obviously, any formulation of women’s education would still need to remain within the limits allowed by the availability of resources, by preestablished purposes, and above all, by the Jewish and non-Jewish mentalities of the nineteenth century. It is true that priority was given to the role of religion. However, it is equally true that the desire to improve religious education for women was a legitimate. In the 1840s the religious instruction given to males was far superior in both quality and consistency to the instruction that was given to female students. Religious instruction for females was typically limited to reading Hebrew and translating prayers—that is, a superficial, mechanical knowledge. Male students, on the other hand, studied the readings of “Hebrew books edited with the punctuation and accents used in the Bible: music for prayers in the Temple”, and translated Hebrew. This allowed male students to explain the prayers and the Pentateuch, as well as learn Hebrew grammar.26 The call to Jewish communities issued by the journal in 1845 did not go unheeded for long. The following year, with the clear intent of giving greater significance to religious education, the Jewish community in Verona decided to institute a “religious graduation for young women,” which was even recognized with a solemn ceremony. In 1844, the Jewish community in Modena had also undertaken a similar initiative.27 Thus in Verona, the community had “the pleasure of seeing 18 girls … on the last Sabbath, which was the sacred anniversary commemorating the Maccabean Heroes, make the solemn profession of their faith.”28 26  There was also, of course, a higher level of teaching for those who wanted to undertake rabbinical studies. See E. Mayer, “Prospetto generale delle Pie Scuole Israelitiche di Livorno,” Guida dell’ educatore, VI, 1841, pp. 116–122. 27  See G. Luzzatto Voghera, “Cenni storici per una ricostruzione del dibattito sulla riforma religiosa nell’Italia ebraica,” R.M.I., LX, n. 1–2, January–August 1993, pp. 58–59. 28  “Prima iniziazione religiosa delle fanciulle,” R.I., I, n. 10, 25 September, 1847, p. 620. The author also congratulated the community of Verona for “having organized, according to the needs and spirit of the times, the schools of religion and Sabbath Doctrine for both

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Similarly, in terms of “civil” instruction, Jewish communities promoted a range of diverse initiatives. These initiatives responded not only to the desire to make female members more responsible from a religious point of view, nor only to give a practical form to a “universal” law that had been proclaimed and sanctioned from on high. Rather, these initiatives were dictated by necessities that were of a completely different order and nature, which constituted the motivation for, but also set the limits of, any program for female education. It must not be forgotten that in the aftermath of the Napoleonic period, the foremost problem in the Jewish world was that of poverty, and indeed, the forthcoming emancipation and especially its contractual nature, rendered a solution to the problem even more urgent and necessary. Thus, while the improvement of female education was part of an enterprise with wide-ranging effects aimed at improving the economic, social, and cultural status of the most vulnerable segment of the Jewish community, at the same time, this undertaking was endowed with all the force of solidarity, duty, and obedience to a religious imperative: Acts of charity for Jews are not just moral duties dictated by the heart and human expediencies, but are also a religious obligation imposed by the law which every believer holds to be divine … if we remove charity, we remove from Judaism what constitutes its very essence.29

Foremost was the need to lighten the financial burdens on the community. These had increased due to the great number of poor that had to be provided for by a tight network of groups and institutions that were subsidized by contributions from wealthier members. The initiative to make the poor more self-sufficient found its greatest support among the more integrationist emancipators who promoted a program of regeneration through self-improvement. The linchpin of that program was to encourage and prepare the lower classes to build a new economic stability for themselves, guaranteeing their dignity and independence. More from their bourgeois values than their role as benefactors, those who assumed sexes.” Ivi. The rite that celebrates the religious initiation of the girls, who must have reached age twelve, is called bat-mitzvah. The bar-mitzvah is the ceremony in a boy’s thirteenth year that marks his religious coming of age. During the religious initiation ceremony, both males and females are called to read a passage from the Law in the synagogue. 29  D. Castelli, Le opere di carità e beneficenza nell’Ebraismo, Florence, Tipografia Luigi Niccolai, 1893, p. 11 and p. 22.

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the responsibility of finding solutions to the poverty of their coreligionists were mainly the new middle class who had managed to obtain positions of prominence during the French period, positions they had absolutely no intention of surrendering. Intervening on behalf of the underprivileged sectors of the Jewish community to transform their economic and educational profile was seen by the Jewish middle class as an obligatory step of transition. Assisting the impoverished segment of the population was as necessary for the emancipation of the middle class as it was for the emancipation of the entire Jewish community; it was also a crucial question of image in order for the middle class to be recognized as members of the Italian administrative and economic elite.30 Toward the second half of the nineteenth century, the effort to rescue the Jewish poor was taken up again with renewed vigor, though other charitable movements had already been in existence for many years and had established important institutions.31 Voices came from many directions within Jewish communities demanding the creation of institutions of learning for girls, a need justified by the fact that institutions already existed for their young male coreligionists, and “it was impossible to let these young girls grow up abandoned, and leave them in danger of corrupting the morality of their own families and the morality of wealthy families in which they were placed.”32 Until approximately the end of the 1860s, the response to this demand in many communities was the creation of preschools, schools, and work houses that could offer young girls educational and professional training, though minimal. For example, in 1845  in Reggio Emilia, the financial contributions of the more well-to-do women of the community allowed for the establishment of an institute where “young girls” learned to read Italian and Hebrew, as well as needlework.33 In 1847 a “House of 30  See A. Canepa, “L’atteggiamento degli ebrei italiani davanti alla loro seconda emancipazione: premesse e analisi,” cit., pp. 419–421; Id., “Emancipation and Jewish Response in Mid Nineteenth-Century Italy,” European History Quarterly,  16, October 1986, p.  418 and  G.  Luzzatto Voghera, Il prezzo dell’uguaglianza. Il dibattito sull’emancipazione degli ebrei in Italia (1781–1848), Milan, Franco Angeli, 1997, pp. 123–124. 31  See M. Miniati, “L’insostituibile pesantezza del povero. La beneficenza ebraica fra tradizione e modernizzazione,” R.M.I., LXXVI, n. 1–2, January–August 2010, pp. 275–297. 32  “Di un istituto d’istruzione femminile in Reggio,” R.I., I, n.5, May, 1846, pp. 306–307. 33  As reported by the Rivista Israelitica in the same article of May 1846, the intervention of generous benefactors guaranteed eight months of education for eight girls. This was followed by the Community’s decision to allocate an annual sum to the Men’s Education Committee for the establishment of a school for “poor girls.” The article concluded with an invitation to wealthy “Israelite ladies” to “take this institution to heart and help it not only

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Industry” was already in operation within the community of Mantua where girls who had reached the age of fourteen could learn a skill.34 Also in 1847, The Jewish Review congratulated the Jewish community of Verona for being among the first to organize the Religious School for Women’s Work.35 The community in Venice, which already boasted one such school for young women,36 established scholarships for future teachers and apprentices so that “girls who are most inclined will complete training at with money, but with wise advice. May they become enamored of the sublime and sacred mission of making a whole generation of poor people cultured and virtuous.” The generosity of “correligious ladies” still had a noble example, the article continued, in the precious contribution of Marianna Foà Uzielli, originally from Reggio and resident in Livorno, to the good performance of the girls’ school in Livorno which took care of the education of 60 young girls. See “Di un istituto d’istruzione femminile in Reggio,” cit. 34  The Pia Casa di Ricovero had opened its doors in 1825. In May 1828 it was endowed with a building, the Casa d’Industria, to prepare females and males between the ages of 14 and 60 to work. Regolamento delle Pie Case Israelitiche di Ricovero e d’Industria in Mantova,  Mantua, Coi tipi dei fratelli Negretti, 1847, p.  28. The foundation of the Religious Houses was followed, in 1834, by that of the Pio Istituto Trabotti. The annuities from the considerable capital left by the generous Samuele Trabotti were also intended to support the studies of “three Jewish girls” between nine and eighteen years old, for as long as deemed necessary in public institutions or with good families. See Fondazione e Regolamento del Pio Istituto Trabotti contenuti nel Testamento 22 Febbraio 1834 del benemerito fondatore Samuele Trabotti, Mantua, Stabilimento Tipografico Mondovì, 1877, p. 6. 35  See “Prima iniziazione religiosa delle fanciulle,” cit., p. 620. The girls’ school was established in 1842 and greeted with words of praise for its promoter, Abram Grego (1817–1858), by Rabbi David Graziadio Viterbi (1815–1880) in his sermon, “L’educazione della donna.” On the same occasion Viterbi recalled the “higher zeal” with which Rabbi Abram Lattes (1809–1875) of Venice directed the school of “girls” (see note 37). Grego and Lattes, like Viterbi himself, had been students at the Rabbinical College of Padua. As Maddalena Del Bianco Cotrozzi remarked, one of the common denominators of several rabbis who graduated from the College was the attention given to the improvement of women’s education and instruction, “the fundamental basis of the material and moral well-being of the poor class, without which the other commendable efforts for her regeneration would be almost unsuccessful.” See David Graziadio Viterbi, “L’educazione della donna,” (1842) in Sermoni, Padua, Bianchi, 1854 (Annotazioni); Id., Organamento del Pio Istituto. Allocuzione inaugurale, in Id., Allocuzioni tre del Rabbino maggiore D.G. Viterbi dette nel Pio Istituto d’educazione e d’asilo delle fanciulle israelite, (1856) Padua, Bianchi 1861, p. 7; M. Del Bianco Cotrozzi, Il Collegio rabbinico di Padova, cit., p. 273 and Id., “Aspetti della modernità: l’impegno del rabbinato italiano dell’Ottocento nell’istruzione e nell’educazione,” Materia giudaica, XV– XVI, 2010–2011, pp. 129–137. 36  The school dates back to 1826. In 1838 it had complied with the “Regulations for Primary Schools in the Lombard Kingdom” and, consequently, it was equipped with “Licensed Teachers” who provided primary and religious instruction and “women’s work.”

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the major Teachers’ schools where they may learn more refined forms of women’s work and thus be prepared to be advantageously engaged in good homes to care for little children.”37 That same year, the community in Ferrara created a charity preschool where “poor children of both sexes could drink their first milk of moral, religious, and civil education from good and zealous teachers, and learn the elements of the Sacred Language, Italian, Handwriting, and Arithmetic, and the girls are further instructed in work befitting ladies.”38 In 1853 the administrative council of Asti’s Jewish community approved the program initiated by Rabbi Marco Tedeschi (1817–1869), who planned the creation of a school “for Jewish children of both sexes.” Although its principal objective was to train children to become good fathers and mothers, the institution provided young women with the possibility of attending the municipal school to be trained as teachers.39 In 1855 the Jewish community in Alessandria established a school for boys and girls above the age of five. “In an act of wise forethought, of liberal progress, and enlightened charity,”40 the school linked a solid religious instruction with a practical education aimed at forming “intelligent and hard-working male citizens of the State and virtuous female citizens to be unblemished and zealous mothers.”41 That same year the Jewish community of Padua opened the Holy Institute of Education for Girls (Pio istituto di educazione e di asilo delle fanciulle), with the intent to “provide free education, financial support, and placement in families for poor infants and young girls of the Jewish Community.”42 The institution, which aspired to train girls for See The regulation Adottato dalle Riunite sezioni nelli 4 Febbraio 1838, Archivio della Comunità Ebraica di Venezia, ACEV, busta 187. 37  The top students were also given a monthly stipend. See S. Ancona, “Istituto di beneficenza in Venezia,” E.I., II, September 1854, p. 281. 38  L. Ravenna, “Le scuole israelitiche ferraresi,” E.I. III, June 1855, p. 171. 39  The program also included a music school for boys and girls who had demonstrated singing abilities. See M.  L. Giribaldi-Sardi, Scuola e vita nella comunità ebraica di Asti (1800–1930), Turin, Rosenberg & Sellier, 1993, pp. 54–65. 40  D.  Ottolenghi, “Scuola israelitica in Alessandria,” E.I.,  III, May, 1855, p.  144. The school regulations provided for the appointment of female visitors to supervise the smooth administration of the girls’ school. Ivi, p. 145. 41  “Discorso di Donato Ottolenghi in occasione della Distribuzione dei Premi agli allievi della Scuola Israelitica d’Alessandria che festeggiavasi nel giorno 29 Agosto 1857,” E. I., V, September 1857, p. 2. 42  The institute was founded as the Pio Istituto Iacob Castelfranco and began operating in 1842. It was named for the generous benefactor who donated a large part of his patrimony

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domestic service,43 had the “holy purpose” of “training up good mothers from these young girls deprived of fortune, and to accustom them to work, to become teachers, governesses, and chamber maids.”44 Hebrew, Italian, arithmetic, handwriting, and “all forms of women’s work” formed the program of instruction. In Florence, a school for girls already existed, but in 1851, the Comitato della Scuola d’Arti e Mestieri, which had been operational since 1836 as a school exclusively for boys,45 proposed providing academic instruction for girls as well that went beyond the limits of “Elementary Education” and would allow them after graduation “to practice…an honest and advantageous profession.”46 Similarly, even before the 1840s, the Jewish to the education of underprivileged boys and girls. Legal problems related to the will of Castelfranco, who died in February 1841, delayed the school’s official opening. In that time the Institute was nevertheless operational thanks to the work of “very human ladies” who “paved the way for the steady progress that is reasonably expected of the institution, as it was now organized.” D. G. Viterbi, Organamento del Pio Istituto, cit., p. 6. The Institute, whose management and administration continued to make use of women’s work, provided free food and accommodation in addition to education and instruction. Every year a dowry was granted to underprivileged girls between 16 and 32 years old. See Regolamento per il Pio Istituto d’Educazione e d’Asilo delle fanciulle israelite di Padova, Padua, Bianchi, 1855, pp. 3–8. See D. G. Viterbi, “Le istituzioni educatrici della comunità israelitica di Padova,” from a lecture on February, 8, 1847 by Davide Graziadio Viterbi and published in Id., Sermoni, Padova, Bianchi, 1854, pp. 60–63; B. Terracini, “Il Centenario della Pia Società femminile Israelitica di Torino,” R.M.I., VII, July 1932, p. 98; Il tuo Pontremoli, “Istituzioni a Padova,” E.I., VI, January 1858, p. 13. 43  Ibidem. Graziadio Viterbi urged domestic training to solve the problem of wealthy members of the community seeking out service personnel “under another sky, on another ground,” while the daughters of their own people spent their time “wandering through the streets.” Likewise in Venice, as Luzzatto Voghera pointed out, the community’s commitment to give education to girls in disadvantaged conditions was not only a form of philanthropy but also an investment of the wealthiest families to secure a service staff capable of running a Jewish house, with its specific needs and food standards. See G. Viterbi, “Le istituzioni educatrici,” cit., p. 61; G. Luzzatto Voghera, L. Finzi, S. Szabados, “L’educazione del bambino ebreo,” in La scoperta dell’infanzia: cura, educazione e rappresentazione, edited by N.M. Filippini and T. Plebani, Venice, Marsilio, 2000; G. Luzzatto Voghera, “Gli ebrei,” in Storia di Venezia. L’Ottocento e il Novecento, edited by M. Isnenghi and S. Woolf, Rome, Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, vol. I, p. 645. 44  Il tuo Pontremoli, “Istituzioni a Padova,” cit., p. 13. 45  See M. Miniati, “L’insostituibile pesantezza del povero,” cit., pp. 281–282. 46  “In addition to providing young girls with the education to make them into good Mothers of the Family, the Committee intends to train the girls in those trades that their tendencies will allow at the school with the funds allocated to them.” Rapporto del Comitato d’Arti e Mestieri al Consiglio Governativo della Università Israelitica di Firenze, 22 June

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c­ ommunity of Livorno could boast having a preschool for the daughters of disadvantaged families as well as a school for girls. School hours were dedicated to the translation of Jewish sermons, reading in Hebrew and Italian, handwriting, and arithmetic, in addition to lessons in sewing, knitting, needlework, and mending.47 And lastly, in Turin, the Colonna and Finzi School, which had been founded in 1823 exclusively for the professional training of boys from age six, as of 1848 began dedicating a portion of its funds to elementary education for girls as well, given that boys were allowed to attend public school.48 In 1854 the community instituted a 1851, ACEF, B..40.1, Arti e Mestieri, 1851–1888. Regolamenti e Statuti. In 1859 the decision was finally made to admit young girls to the School of Arts and Trades and to place them “with skillful and honest Jewish Masters in those arts or trades that they would choose; and only at the request of their parents will they be placed with Catholic Masters.” See Istituzione d’Arti  e Mestieri tra gli Israeliti. Copia del Rapporto letto all’Adunanza solenne del di 16 ottobre 1859, ACEF, B.40.1, Opere Pie Arti e Mestieri, Rapporti. Regolamento della Istituzione d’Arti e Mestieri fra gl’israeliti di Firenze, Florence, Tipografia Barbera, Bianchi e C., 1859, p. 4. 47  See Primo rapporto e rendimento di conti a tutto Decembre 1835 dell’asilo livornese per le bambine povere israelite, Livorno, Dalla Tipografia e Litografia Sardi, 1836. The author of the report is the distinguished educator Samson Uzielli; see “Asilo di Livorno per le bambine povere israelite,” Guida dell’Educatore, II, 1837, p.  61. In 1840, the kindergarten was annexed to the “Charity Schools” for adolescents; S. Uzielli, “Discorso per la distribuzione dei premj nelle Scuole Pie Israelitiche di Livorno. Read in May 1842”, excerpt from Guida dell’Educatore, VII, n. 2, March and April 1842, pp.  1–7; E. Mayer, “Prospetto generale delle Pie scuole israelitiche di Livorno,” Guida dell’Educatore, VI, n. 2, March and April 1841, pp.  116–117; L. Funaro, “‘Compagna e partecipe’. Donne della comunità ebraica livornese nel secondo Ottocento,” in Sul filo della scrittura. Fonti e temi per la storia delle donne a Livorno, edited by L. Frattarelli Fischer and O. Vaccari, Pisa, Plus, 2005, pp. 324–325; I. Rignano, La Università Israelitica di Livorno e le Opere Pie da essa amministrate, Livorno, S. Belforte, 1890, pp. 50–51. The institution of the first kindergarten in Italy took place in the Jewish community. The Jewish University of Florence in 1735 established an association, Tree of Life, in charge of welcoming children who were not yet of school age to “begin them in the first rudiments of religious and civil life.” See Ferrante Aporti : Scritti Pedagogici e Lettere, edited by M. Sancipriano and S. Sirenella Macchietti, Brescia, Editrice La Scuola, 1976, p. 9. In 1838 the kindergarten in Florence began to take in girls as well as boys. See the message of March 11, 1839 addressed by M. Gentilomo, L.Mondolfi, D.S. Lampronti and D.G Levi Alle signore contribuenti alla scuola dei fanciulli poveri israeliti di Firenze, ACEF, B.44.1 Statuto Organico dell’Asilo Infantile israelitico di Firenze, Florence, Tipografia Cooperativa, 1891; L.  Viterbo, “Dalla parte delle bambine,” Shalom, XXIII, n. 11, 31 December 1989, p.  16; S. Guetta, “Le istituzioni ebraiche per l’infanzia a Firenze,” R.M.I., LVI, n. 1–2, January–August 1990, p. 115. 48  See L. Cantoni, “Emmanuel Colonna e Giuseppe Finzi,” E.I., I, May and June 1853, respectively pp. 145–148 and pp. 177–180. The College also admitted students, and then

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preschool for both sexes, which was attached to the Colonna and Finzi School.49 In 1855 a High School for Girls opened its doors, which was also attached to the Pio Istituto Colonna e Finzi. This initiative by Rabbi Samuele Ghiron (1828–1895) was met with words of praise: Every time that we see one such school open for our coreligionists, we welcome it with pleasure. Because our ensign is this: to bring education to our community that is at the rank of current learning and is equal to the progress of the times, but also whenever possible, up to a certain age, let such instruction be given in our schools, if we do not wish for the next generation, defrauded of every religious instruction, to grow up neither Jewish nor Catholic, but atheist.50

Because these institutions were established with the purpose of improving the future for disadvantaged girls and young women, the instruction offered and the level of education that could be attained were necessarily limited. Instruction benefited not only the girls, but their families as well, many of whom received financial support from the Jewish communities.51 Training for their daughters allowed poorer families to gradually become less dependent upon “the more immediate but limited income that small cottage industries often provide.”52 Traditional female tasks formed an integral part of the school curriculum. Teaching the art of sewing, knitting, embroidery, and other female labor was not only the prerogative of a pupils from upper-class families with payment of a tuition fee. See L. Vigna and V. Aliberti, Della condizione attuale degli ebrei in Piemonte, Turin, Tipografia Favale, 1848, pp. 154–155; P. Baricco, L’istruzione popolare in Torino, Turin, Tipografia Eredi Botta, 1865, p. 185. 49  See B. Terracini, “Il Centenario della Pia Società,” cit., p. 99; “Notizie Diverse. Italia. Piemonte,” E.I., II, March 1854, p. 95. 50   “Scuola Superiore Femminile Ebraico-Italiana in Torino,” E.I., III, December 1855, p. 365. 51  The families of the pupils benefited from “pecuniary aid” which was taken away from them if the girls transgressed the rules established by the school. The threat of a suspension of the financial contribution was aimed at urging the families to take an interest and participate in the educational effort and commitment that the community supported for their daughters: “Both the lack and the delay in intervening at the School, as well as any lack of subordination of the pupils to the teachers, will be punished in the pupils themselves, and in their parents, who will be responsible for carefully supervising the conduct of their daughters, and that as a consequence the missing pupils will be expelled from the School, and the suspension and removal of the pecuniary aid granted to the parents. See, for example, Strida da pubblicare nelle Scuole di Orazione la mattina del 4 giugno 1842, ACEV, busta 187. 52  S. Ancona, “Istituto di beneficienza in Venezia,” cit., p. 281.

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lower social class: even in the schools for “the daughters of the foremost Jewish families,” these domestic activities were considered the essential characteristic of education designed for women and were counted among the indispensable disciplines for accustoming girls to maintaining a modest and composed comportment.53 For the daughters of more prosperous families, a vast range of other teachings were added to these domestic disciplines because the class to which these young women belonged and the model of family life and the kind of social life for which they were destined demanded an education more befitting their station.54 For girls from underprivileged families, the industriousness and manual dexterity of traditional domestic tasks did not simply represent a method for combatting idleness and vice; the first duty of charity was to “dispense an education suitable to their respective conditions, and to the capacity of every individual, and that imprints upon them a love for work, and disgust for idleness.”55 In addition to providing a kind of moral safeguard, female textile production became an important source of income for girls which allowed them to morally and financially support their families. However, the main impetus that justified the establishment and development of a great number of the educational institutions for women was the idea that education would guarantee the girls a dignified future as mothers and teachers, because “for many unhappy families…, it could not possibly bode any good if the mother could not be 53  See I. Porciani, “L’educazione della donna: un oggetto di dibattito,” in Le donne a scuola. L’educazione femminile nell’Italia dell’Ottocento, edited by Id., Florence, Il Sedicesimo, 1987, p. 15. 54  See for example “Istituto privato per le bambine israelite diretto da Olimpia Paggi” and “Regolamento dell’Istituto per le bambine israelite diretto da Olimpia Paggi,” E.I. III, January and April 1855, pp. 28–29 and pp. 148–150. The institute, which enjoyed an excellent reputation, had been opened in Florence by Benvenuta Bemporad, wife of the distinguished Jew Angelo Paggi (1789–1867), and her daughter Olimpia. In addition to reading, Hebrew, calligraphy, arithmetic, Italian grammar, French, history and geography, and women’s handwork, the curriculum also included dance, elocution, and music. See L. Funaro, ‘“Lettere Sacre e profane.’ Angelo Paggi un maestro di cultura ebraica nella Toscana del primo Ottocento,” Zakhor, IX, 2006, pp. 118–120. Similarly, in order to meet the needs of a wealthy middle class eager to educate their daughters in the Jewish tradition, in 1859 in Turin, Rosina Cantoni opened a boarding school in her home for girls five years of age and older. The school included first, second, and third grades. “Ways, grace, chosen education,” the institute provided the teaching of Hebrew, Italian, French and women’s handwork. Dance and music were later added. See “Istituto Cantoni,” E.I. VII, October 1859, p. 288; XII, April 1864, p. 117, XIV, October 1866, p. 300. 55  A. Paggi, “La carità,” E.I. II, December 1854, p. 357.

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the teacher of an honest, civil life through her own counsel and the power of her own example.”56 At this point in time, it would be difficult to imagine that a woman could plan any future that could exist outside of the domestic walls. In the case of those women who out of individual or family necessity were steered toward employment, such as teaching, outside of the familial environment, this choice was accepted and tolerated to the degree that it was esteemed in terms as an extension of the domestic role of women and their maternal mission. Seen in the wider context of charitable and educational undertakings on behalf of the Jewish community’s needy children of both sexes, the limits of these early instances of education for women were revealed. Indeed, the educational efforts for boys were far more extensive and defined. The schools in Livorno are a representative case: because the economic activity of that city was tied to maritime trade, which would require specialized professional training, the Jewish community decided to adapt by gearing part of the educational curriculum for boys toward that sort of professional opportunity. The “disadvantaged young men,” after passing the high school exam, could enter a school for business in which it was expected that they would study foreign languages. For the Jewish community, the existence of this kind of instruction was justified not only due to the specific needs of the social and economic context where the community existed, but also due to a rigid and exclusive mentality—found within Jewish and non-Jewish society of the time—that excluded women from educational paths that were likely to guarantee reaching specialized or more prestigious employment.57

 “Di un istituto femminile in Reggio,” R.I., I, May 1846, p. 308.  See A.  Mayer, “Prospetto generale delle Pie Scuole Israelitiche di Livorno,” cit., pp. 119–120. Private men’s institutes were also respected for depth and variety of the teaching they gave. In Ferrara, for example, in the private school established by Leone Reggio (1808–1870), “civil studies” allowed “children” to dedicate themselves to commerce or literary activity and also gave ample space to scientific subjects such as physics, chemistry, and mechanics. See L. Ravenna, “Le scuole israelitiche ferraresi,” E.I., III, June 1855, p. 172. Also in the Talmud Torah of Florence, there was special instruction for young people who were interested in a career in business. See S. Guetta, Il Talmud Torà di Firenze dal 1860–1922, cit. See also, Regolamento per le pubbliche scuole israelitiche di Firenze, Florence, Tipografia Barbera, Bianchi e C., 1857, p. 3. 56 57

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Women as Benefactors and Educators Philanthropic activity, both in terms of financial assistance and education supported by communities to benefit the disadvantaged sectors and the underprivileged youth, responded to the specific necessities of Jewish social reality. It was also a reflection of the wider and more complex movement of the age to promote education among the disenfranchised and the “children of the people.” Several different sectors of society were engaged in this pursuit, particularly those of liberal-Catholic extraction, and most especially in Piedmont, Austrian Lombardy, and the Granduchy of Tuscany.58 This presence of socially engaged women as benefactors, organizers, directors, and teachers in educational and philanthropic pursuits59 was to some degree a clear sign of the similar directions and cultural contiguity between Jewish and non-Jewish Italian society. The participation of women in a multitude of initiatives undertaken by the community was attributable, at least in part, to the new vision of women’s roles that had been developing in the heart of the mainstream pedagogical movement of pre-Unification Italy. In fact, one of the distinctive characteristics of early nineteenth-century Italian history is the “educational fervor” that burned “in the best men of thought and deed of the period.” The years that 58  See G. Chiosso, Profilo storico della pedagogia cristiana in Italia (XIX e XX secolo), Brescia, La Scuola, 2001, pp.  29–32. See also Sulla Istruzione del popolo. Memoria di Raffaello Lambruschini letta all’Accademia dei georgofili nell’adunanza del 1831 and Della necessità di soccorrere i poveri e dei modi. Lettera di R. Lambruschini al Prof. Comm. Pietro Betti, Florence, Tipografia Galileiana, 1855; N. Tommaseo, “Educazione del popolo,” (1833) in Id., Dell’educazione. Scritti vari, Lugano, Gius. Ruggia, 1834, pp. 373–394. 59  See, for example, E. Mayer, “Asili di Livorno per le bambine povere israelite,” Guida dell’Educatore, II, 1837, p.  61; Id., “Prospetto generale delle Pie Scuole Israelitiche di Livorno,” cit., p. 121; Regolamento per il Pio Istituto d’Educazione e d’Asilo delle fanciulle israelite di Padova, cit., p. 8; L. Ravenna, “Le scuole israelitiche ferraresi,” cit., p. 171. See also the regulation Adottato dalle riunite Sezioni nelli 4 febbraio 1838 and L. Funaro, “Compagna e partecipe,” cit. The women’s contribution to the foundation and maintenance of the Jewish kindergarten in Florence before girls were admitted (December 6, 1838) was anything but minimal. On January 26, 1835, the committee promoting the kindergarten was made up of a few prominent members from the community who sent an appeal to their “coreligionists” to intervene “with money and work, to improve the fate of those who live unhappily.” ACEF, B.44.1, fasc.1. The women responded enthusiastically and in the years that followed there were many who took on the task of paying a monthly fee to support the kindergarten. See for example the letter dated September 2, 1838, to the Comitato di Direzione della scuola di Fanciulli poveri israeliti. Attached to this letter, signed by 14 women, is a list of 58 other women who undertook to make their contribution. ACEF, B.44.1, fasc.1. See also L. Viterbo, “Dalla parte delle bambine,” cit., pp. 16–17.

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preceded the process of Unification saw a proliferation of initiatives and writings all aimed at theorizing the best methods of education, at rendering the weaker sectors of society the beneficiaries of education, and at affirming the necessity of educational activity beginning with the earliest age possible. The conviction continued to gain ground that there could be no “political and civil redemption” without the effective involvement of education from early childhood.60 In order to give future Italy “an intelligent people, not misled by error, nor corrupted by vice, amenable to instruction, inclined to labor, sober managers of their own means … lovers of the domestic hearth, peaceful and useful citizens,”61 education was necessary. Considered to be even more essential was the instruction imparted by the child’s mother from the moment the child took its first steps. The woman who “carries in her heart those offices of guardian and teacher of that tender age” and who is endowed with “an inexhaustible capacity of self-abnegation”62 will— paraphrasing the words of Raffaello Lambruschini (1788–1873)—first forge the character and personality of the child; and that child who receives more love and tenderness in his or her first years of life will have a greater capacity for becoming an individual who is properly engaged from a social and civil point of view. In the course of the first half of the nineteenth century, inspired by Rousseau’s teachings outlining the natural predisposition of women for raising and caring for children, liberal Catholics valorized even more the maternal and educational function of the female citizen.63 Raffaello Lambruschini, one of the main authoritative voices in educational thought prior to Italian Unification, maintained that the civilization of Europe had already started down a path that imposed on women the obligation to exercise their “charitable” influence beyond the walls of their own home: 60  A. Gambaro, “Ferrante Aporti e gli asili nel Risorgimento,” in Ferrante Aporti. Scritti pedagogici e lettere, edited by M. Sancipriano and S. Sirenella Macchietti, Brescia, La Scuola, 1976, p. 3. 61  R Lambruschini, Sull’utilità della cooperazione delle donne bennate al buon andamento delle scuole infantili per il popolo, Milan, Presso Ant. Fort. Stella e Figli, 1834, p. 6. 62  Ivi, pp. 6–7. 63  I. Porciani, “L’educazione della donna: un oggetto di dibattito,” cit., p. 13. In the two year period from 1848–1849, the growing success of this new pedagogical concept would result in the creation of the first schools for teachers in Piedmont. The particular concern of these schools was to prepare good mothers of families. See G. Chiosso, “Le scuole per i maestri in Piemonte (1840–1850),” in Scuole, professori e studenti a Torino. Momenti di storia dell’istruzione, Quaderni del Centro studi Carlo Trabucco, n. 5, Turin, 1984, pp. 43–48.

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“Woman has acquired an indirect but by no means weaker social power: she has become a force that cannot adequately be recognized and appreciated. We will employ her, we will direct her, and she will labor with us for the order and prestige of the city.”64 Then appropriately supported by science, “the natural goodness of the female heart” could transform ­ women into “perfect instructors,” that is, into an indispensable instrument for the education of the disadvantaged elements of society. The establishment of preschools represented one of the principal objectives for political moderates, and women’s presence in preschools came to be seen as critical for several reasons. The women at whom Lambruschini aimed his words belonged to the upper class, endowed with the means and leisure necessary for carrying out charitable activities in institutes for children. And there was another consideration: their condition of privilege did not always prepare these women with the capacity to wisely direct the education of their own children. By lending their support to children’s institutions, women who were “well-born” would derive benefit by “carrying out an apprenticeship in education among poor children,” experience that they could then in turn pass on to their own children, in this way improving their own mothering capabilities.65 The intent of political moderates to enlist the cooperation of women of a solid educational and economic background pointed to another fundamental purpose, one that gave the contributions of women symbolic as well as social valence. Succoring the populace with “friendly action,” liberating the “downtrodden from the slavery of ignorance, passions, and poverty,” the feminine element of society could labor for the affirmation of the principle of universal brotherhood as well as for the “reconciliation of the mighty and the base, the rich and the poor,”66 thus favoring the attainment of social peace.67 It is true that, in the case of Jewish society,  R. Lambruschini, Sull’utilità della cooperazione delle donne bennate, cit., p. 12.  See ivi, pp. 8 and 12. 66  Ivi, pp. 13 and 15. 67  In 1833, Niccolò Tommaseo (1802–1874), a prominent figure of liberal Catholicism, entreated “well-born” women but in more severe tones. Aristocratic and wealthy women whose education, although “less ignoble,” needed even more noble nourishment. He implored them to live a more fruitful life, “seeking out the poor” rather than seeking pleasures, finding the good in these poor girls and especially persuading less wealthy women from the temptations of envy and imitation. “The confusion of social orders… operated by virtue, would be the greatest good, operated by necessity or vice, our evils multiply.” “Le donne italiane,” in La donna. Scritti vari con assai giunte inedite, Milan, Tipografia e libreria editrice Giacomo Agnelli, 1872, (second edition), pp. 233–235. 64 65

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the centrality of the maternal role in the education of children and the importance that this role had for the future of the entire community was definitely not a novel concept but rather was one of the cardinal points of a firmly rooted religious and cultural tradition. This explains the interest in the improvement of the education and instruction of women during the same period that changing social conditions attributed an even greater significance to mothers’ teachings in the home. But while the valorization of the maternal role did not represent a “modernizing” element in the social and cultural reality of the Jewish community, nor implied any change to the fundamental power structure within Jewish society, which continued to deprive women of all decision-making power,68 the participation of women in the charitable work for social assistance did constitute an aspect of “modernization” and its subsequent process of class distinction and social mobility, which in that moment impacted all of Italian society. Emancipation was contributing to increasingly sharp distinctions between wealthy Jews and those without means, unlike the time of segregation when the prevailing spirit of brotherhood prevented such distinctions from jeopardizing the cohesion of the community. The acquisition of the right to citizenship and the end of the regime of separation certainly did not bring about the birth of an actual class conflict within the Jewish community; rather, these factors accentuated the centrifugal tendencies of the privileged class, which, having all the economic and social requirements to rapidly integrate into the fabric of Italian society, seemed to want to forget its obligations to and solidarity with its brothers in the faith who were less favored by fortune. Aware of the problem that was being created, “the more open and hard-working souls” in the community intuited that charitable works not only represented an efficient means for healing social ills, but also served as an important tool for reconstituting the bonds that emancipation threatened to break.69 The “friendly actions” of women seemed therefore even more effective and necessary. Independent of the different roles that such actions could play in individual circumstances and different contexts, the female segment of society undertook the crucial 68  In the second half of the 1840s, the newspaper La Patria reported on the debate that had developed on the theme of emancipation. Among those who most insistently defended the “assimilationist” positions, there were some who proposed a more active participation of women in the community, in addition to other reforms that the community needed to undertake in order to adapt to the times. See S. Anau, “All’egregio dott. Grillenzoni,” La Patria, I, n.34, 10 October 1847. 69  B. Terracini, “Il Centenario della Pia Società,” cit., p. 97.

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task of bringing together two groups within the same universe who risked becoming increasingly more distant from one another.

Female Roles and Role Models The years that saw Jewish society adopt measures in favor of women were the same years that saw the rise of a literary production that served in certain aspects as the ideological framework of the community’s efforts. In 1846 The Jewish Review published a lengthy article by Cesare Rovighi in which the director of the journal reviewed the writings of three “Italian Jewish” writers: Graziadio Viterbi, Angelo Usiglio (1803–1875), and Lelio Della Torre. All three authors, through different methods and from different cultural frameworks, dealt with the role of the education of women and their relationship with the outside world. Rovighi opened his article with a citation from Melchiorre Gioja (1767–1829): “Give us, oh women, the tender spectacle of innocence and love; and may your beauty, rendered more lovely by your virtue, command men, who are happy in their submission, and great in their weakness.”70 Rovighi emphasized the complementary nature of female and male roles and the essential equality between men and women notwithstanding their dissimilar roles and duties, which had been established by family rules and, more generally, by the entire social context. The author’s efforts to expose myths and break down the walls of prejudice that had rendered women prisoners through the ages did not, however, prevent him from looking with hostility at any attempt to attribute to women those duties and powers that, according to Rovighi, did not belong to women. Rovighi, too, denounced ignorance, selfishness, and the rhetoric that “in every age, but especially in the modern age” had brought men to consider woman “only as an instrument of sensual passion …as a tool of reproduction…as a symbol of love.” His verbal darts, however, were also directed against all those who wanted women “sitting in the judge’s seat, mixed up with political diatribes, initiated into the mysteries of science, learned in fine arts and erudite literature,” a condemnation issued ostensibly out of fear of the dire consequences to the 70  M. Gioja, Dissertazione di Melchiorre Gioja sul problema dell’amministrazione generale della Lombardia. Quale dei Governi liberi meglio convenga alla felicità dell’Italia? (1797), Second edition based on the original, Italy, 1831, p. 195 cited in C. Rovighi, “Scritti di tre israeliti italiani intorno alla donna,” R.I., 1846, I, n. 6 and 7, p. 381.

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equilibrium in the family that would arise from women having careers, but which also found its raison d’etre in the hypocrisy of men who were eager to push women to broaden their horizons but then did not hesitate to punish them for choosing to do so. For Rovighi, keeping women from careers was intended not only to protect the family, but also to protect women from falling into the trap of illusion: “Do you not know that you will be censured for choosing a career by the very same people who did not hesitate to counsel you to pursue one?”71 It is therefore unsurprising that the work that merited Rovighi’s greatest approbation was The Education of Women (L’educazione della donna), one of Viterbi’s sermons.72 This text contains in a more elaborated form the same themes that the founder of the journal had dealt with in his review of works by Viterbi, Usiglio, and Della Torre. Viterbi’s treatise proposed a model of femininity that corresponded completely to the needs and expectations of the age among both Jews and non-Jews. The well-being of humanity derives principally from women. What happiness can men hope for on earth if his nearest association, that is, the sociality of the family, becomes for him a fountain of perpetual bitterness? … The importance of Woman is … immense. She has a home to direct, a husband to make happy, and little children to raise in wisdom and virtue.73

As for contact with the outside world, women required a certain degree of knowledge, and of course any benefit from that ought to promote the family. Education certainly had its usefulness and legitimacy but only insofar as it concerned the needs of women as wives and mothers. I would not care to see a woman excessively learned, but I would like to see her well-taught. … If women who are know-it-alls or encyclopedias simply seem to me more ridiculous than admirable, this does not mean that I value those who do not apply themselves, the unrefined. Extravagant learning is just as blameworthy in a woman as profound ignorance; because in this way, the defect of excess renders her less fit for her most serious duties, roles for  Ivi, pp. 382 e 384.  G. Viterbi, “L’educazione della donna,” (1842) in Sermoni, cit., pp. 157–178. Viterbi’s sermon was also the subject of study by M.  Del Bianco Cotrozzi, “Ebraismo italiano dell’Ottocento: ‘La educazione della donna’ di David Graziadio Viterbi,” in Donne nella storia degli ebrei d’Italia, edited by M. Luzzati and C. Galasso, Florence, Giuntina, 2007, pp. 329–345. 73  G. Viterbi, “L’Educazione della donna,” cit., p. 158. 71 72

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which she is destined by nature, namely to be the helpmeet of man and a mother.74

It was clearly understood that acquiring knowledge, which should still be limited, needed to conform not only to the role that women were destined to fulfill but also to the social class to which they belonged. A working-­ class woman required only “purely elementary instruction, the duties of her station, that will be enough.” However, the same could not be said for a “woman of a notable family,” for she was required to possess a more extensive understanding of the ways of government and business in order to be able to educate her male children “in their early years” and her daughters until they were married; she needed to be able not only to choose the best teachers for her children, but also to present a dignified figure in the drawing room. “Indeed, I find it decidedly critical for the happiness of a husband that he have no cause to blush because of his lady.”75 From outlining the “education of the spirit” Viterbi went on to describe the “education of the heart.” While studies of secular disciplines provided “intellectual elevation,” these could never transmit values, nor did they instill in women the internal strength that was indispensable for confronting the trials in life and that only a religious education could provide. Parents, and mothers in particular, were encouraged to carry out their duties: the responsibility lay with mothers to “train up” their daughters in religious observation, to “accustom” them prayer and to make them love those duties and observance that belong specifically to their sex, those rituals and ceremonies … that are repeated when these solemn rituals are renewed within the sanctuary of the domestic walls; rituals and ceremonies that capture the attention, that invite gathering together, and thus bind and involve all the family in the same hopes and emotions.76

In contrast to this traditional and “orthodox” image of life women’s duties, Angelo Usiglio’s text Woman (La donna)77 proposed an approach and interpretation of women’s experience that was decidedly more modern, though his ideas and innovations did not fail to give room to the ever-present stereotype of women as “the angel of piety” who was always  Ivi, pp. 159–160.  Ivi, p. 166. 76  Ivi, p. 175. 77  A. Usiglio, La donna. Racconti semplici, Brussels, Società Belgica di Libreria, 1838. 74 75

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ready to sacrifice intellectual benefits on the altar of love and emotion. In the first part of the volume, “Women and Love” (La donna e l’amore), the protagonists are in fact women who pay with their lives for an unrequited love or love betrayed by careless, selfish, or vain men. The scene of love that perhaps we men would recall with a smile only a few years later, for a woman extends into a drama that ends only with the grave … for a man, love is only an accident of life; for woman, love and life are mingled into one.78

Usiglio’s observations appear to sympathize with, but in actuality were a condemnation of the education that men imposed upon women, confining her to a cage of excessive sensibility that impeded her in “every form of development.” The exploitation of women’s moral qualities, which Usiglio considered to be superior to those of men, was not a foregone conclusion. “When the system has changed, and once the eminent qualities of women are directed toward social benefit, society will receive a new and powerful impetus, and society will improve as if by magic.”79 In the second part of the book, which is dedicated to “Women and Society” (La donna e la società), Usiglio denounces society that is intolerant, society that is saturated in a double standard that condemns any woman who has fallen into “error,” leaving her no possibility of appeal, while legitimizing “nearly all the faults and selfishness” of men.80 The open-minded aspects of Usiglio’s work are accompanied by an absence of any specific references to the religious and married life of women. While this was a source of disapprobation for the book’s reviewer,81 it does not arouse any particular surprise if understood within the political and cultural identity of the author. Usiglio is representative of Jewish society during the Risorgimento period, which felt no need to define itself or qualify its own religious and cultural specificity. Secular, culturally integrated, and a fervent follower of Giuseppe Mazzini (1805–1872),82 Usiglio analyzed the social status of  Ivi, p. 11 and p. 97.  Ivi, pp. 10–11. 80  Ivi, p. 174. 81  See ivi, p. 391. 82  “One cannot study the life of Giuseppe Mazzini in his first decade of exile without finding Angelo Usiglio next to him in every fact and every act: no one…in those years was closer to him, in a closer collaboration, in a more intense communion of spirit, of works, of life.” 78 79

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women by untethering it from its culturally specific religious context and confronting the question in its “universal aspects.” One could, however, consider the author’s interest in the “woman question” as tributary in some way to his political militancy. Beginning in the 1840s, Mazzini turned his attention to the condition of women and recognized the deplorable condition of inferiority in which women were kept.83 Though far from positing any actual, real solutions that would break with tradition—after all, Mazzini was famous for writing, “The guardian angel of the family is the Woman. Mother, wife, sister, the Woman is the gentle caress of life” (“L’Angelo della famiglia è la Donna. Madre, sposa, sorella, la Donna è la carezza della vita”)—nevertheless, the Genovese patriot inserted the issue of the condition of women into his own political program and placed hope in the innovative contributions of women to political life at least in their role as the teachers of future citizens.84 Most likely, the concern Usiglio demonstrated for the problems and difficulties faced by women was not brought to his mind by his political stance alone. One must wonder whether the fact that he belonged to a religious tradition whose mores dictated sexual equality between husbands and wives85 could have influenced his opinion. E. Artom, Un compagno di Menotti e di Mazzini. Angelo Usiglio, Modena, Società Tipografica Modenese Editrice, 1949, p. 5. Usiglio was one of the first Jews Mazzini approached who together contributed to the Genoese patriot’s abandoning the attitude of mistrust toward the Jews that had characterized his youth. See G. Bedarida, Ebrei d’Italia, Livorno, Belforte, 1950, p. 227. 83  In I doveri dell’uomo, and in particular in the pages dedicated to Doveri verso la famiglia, we find languages and reflections present in the work of Usiglio. See G. Mazzini, I doveri dell’uomo, (1860), Rome, 1903, XV edition, pp. 47–52. 84  Ivi, pp.  47–48. On Mazzini’s reflection on the question of women, see F. Pieroni Bortolotti, Alle origini del movimento femminile in Italia (1848–1892), Turin, Einaudi, 1975, (second edition), p. 25; M. A. Manacorda, “Istruzione ed emancipazione della donna nel Risorgimento. Riletture e considerazioni,” in L’educazione delle donne. Scuole e modelli di vita femminile nell’Italia dell’Ottocento, edited by S. Soldani, Milan, Franco Angeli, 1989, p. 7; M. P. Roggero, “La donna e la sua emancipazione nel pensiero di Mazzini,” Bollettino del Museo del Risorgimento,  XXIX–XXX, 1984–1985, pp.  81–89; L. Gazzetta, “‘Sposa, madre, cittadina impareggiabile’. In mazzinianesimo femminile tra maternità e cittadinanza,” in La repubblica, la scienza, l’uguaglianza. Una famiglia del Risorgimento tra mazzinianesimo ed emancipazionismo, edited by C. Bertolotti, Milan, Franco Angeli, 2012, pp. 45–64. 85  On this topic see D.  M. Feldman, Marital Relations, Birth Control and Abortion in Jewish Law, New York, Schocken Books, 1974; M. D. Tendler, Le Judaïsme et la vie conjugale, Paris, Fondation Sefer, 1981; R. Biale, Women and Jewish Law: An Exploration of Women’s Issues in Halakhic Sources, New York, Schocken Books, 1984. In the Jewish tradition, marriage is considered the exclusive sphere of sexual expression and activity. Unlike

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In 1846, with his treatise The Jewish Woman, Lelio Della Torre addressed a theme that he seemed to have held especially dear in multiple writings: the need to redefine the social role and duties of women while finding a balance between tradition and progress. In this treatise, Della Torre dealt with the problem of women’s status by proposing a detailed series of readings, which was accompanied by precise references with relevant commentary on the texts for the Bible and the Talmud. Della Torre’s intent was to demonstrate how in Judaism, the relationship between men and women was characterized and framed by the principles of equality and justice to the point that women, when necessary, could even participate in the “regulation of public affairs” (reggimento della cosa pubblica). It was sufficient to consider the biblical examples of Deborah and Miriam, Della Torre affirmed. Did not the courageous actions of these examples of “strong women” from the bible permit us to say that, In any nation where women such as these rise up, acting thusly and revealed themselves equal to men in courage, in heroic actions and in depth of soul, would not that nation certainly honor woman and therefore educate her so that she could give such signs of her worth so as to realize the injustice and error of those people who would see Woman as completely subjected or servant?86

In Jewish society of the past, respect for women went far beyond lauding the heroic acts of which women were capable. Even in the most traditional female spheres, such as marriage and home, women enjoyed the respect and trust of their marriage partners; and everything relative to the management, organization, and regulation of the nuclear family was the woman’s specific domain. In this respect, a woman’s life was not limited to the mechanical execution of duties but allowed for a certain degree of initiative and autonomy.87 In addition to serving as the administrator of the family’s finances, the woman fulfilled the equally important role of Catholic morality, Jewish morality recognizes the right of women to sexual gratification and does not reserve any position of privilege for men. The husband has the duty to fulfill his conjugal duties, and otherwise the wife has the right to seek a divorce. The sexual act is regarded as an asset in itself regardless of its reproductive function and the woman’s sex life is not reduced to procreation alone. See M. Livi Bacci, “Ebrei, aristocratici e cittadini: precursori del declino della fecondità,” Quaderni storici, 54, XVIII, n. 3, December 1983, p. 917. 86  L. Della Torre, “La donna israelita,” (1846), in Scritti sparsi, Padua, tip. P. Prosperini, 1908, p. 442. 87  The author is referring to the book of Proverbs 31:16, “He thinks of a field and buys it and with the fruit of his hands he plants a vineyard.” See L. Della Torre, “La donna israelita,” cit., p. 444.

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teacher to her children, who are commanded in the Bible not to disdain the word of their mothers.88 Regarding religious and “secular” instruction, inasmuch as women “needed to attend to the lessons of the cradle, the spinning wheel, and the spindle,” they should be “well-taught” in the “liberal arts” as well as in “religious doctrine.”89 And if their religious obligations were different from those of men, this difference was not to conceal any intent to discriminate but rather hinged on the respect for her duties as a mother. The Jewish woman was therefore not degraded or enslaved. Custom, laws, … raised her up to the same level of spiritual and moral dignity as that of men, … and inspired her with a noble love of her country, a profound religious devotion that elevated Woman to heroic and virile actions. But it is those sweet, amiable ... virtues, though modest and disregarded, that adorn her and enrich all humanity far more than those flamboyant characteristics. She is demure and chaste, domestic, frugal, hard-­working, a submissive daughter and beloved wife, a tender and wise mother.90

The words clearly expressed the model to which Jewish women were expected to conform at that time, a model of femininity very similar to the one required by the liberal culture of the time.91 This similarity illustrates the level of identification that Jews had with the values of Italy’s bourgeois class, of which they had started to become an integral part. Independent of its religious and historical orientation, Della Torre’s text contained an explicit message for Jewish women of his era: they must not pursue any recognition beyond that which history and Jewish tradition had already accorded to them. In the past, women had distinguished themselves in heroic and “manly” actions, but now another battle awaited them, less tumultuous but certainly no less significant. At this point in Jewish history, women had to wage war from within their own homes, consecrating themselves to the education of their children, working for the moral and spiritual well-being of the family, safeguarding and transmitting the inheritance of values and traditions whose disappearance would be equivalent to an attack on the integrity and salvation of the entire Jewish people. In order to be prepared for the difficult duties that awaited them, women  See ivi, p. 445.  Ibidem. The author is citing Proverbs 31: 19, 21, 22, 24. 90  ivi, p. 453. 91  See I. Porciani, “Il Plutarco femminile,” in L’educazione delle donne, cit., pp. 297–329. 88 89

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required the support of an education rich in “Israelite examples.” An education that would render women more “devout and intelligent” and not gratify the vanity “of making her a woman of the world, thus leaving her prey to the passions, the senses, and setting her on a path so slippery that she must inevitably stumble and fall.”92 “Woman of the world.” With this expression that was simultaneously ironic and pejorative, Della Torre pointed a finger at those “opulent women, whose increasing wealth corrupted their hearts and darkened their minds, as so often happens.”93 These women appeared more inclined than others to succumb to outside flatteries, forgetting their roots and their proper duties. The author perceived that for all women, not just those aspiring to the middle class, the threat loomed of a progressive loss of traditional values and lifestyle. Two years after Della Torre’s distressed appeal, the Jews in Piedmont were granted emancipation. The ongoing process of integration into non-Jewish society would impact the entire community in all its diverse social components.

Women, Family, and Marriage in The Jewish Educator  The evolution and modernization of Jewish society, which was particularly dramatic during the time span between the publication of Della Torre’s treatise (1853) and the birth of a unified Italian state, would undoubtedly have confirmed and justified the fears of the author. Little more than a decade later, a journal was established, The Jewish Educator (L’Educatore Israelita), in order to fill the void left by The Jewish Review (La Rivista israelitica). In its pages, the publication collected “an affectionate study of Jewish women” by Leone Ravenna (1837–1920), dedicated to a “young bride.” While his “affectionate study” referred to the joyous event of a marriage, it strikes a melancholy tone. Ravenna evoked the model of Jewish womanhood outlined by Della Torre and abandoned himself to the nostalgic memory of a by-gone era when “the religion of domesticity was not silent and senseless for Woman; every act had the highest significance  L. Della Torre, “La donna israelita,” cit., pp. 459–460.  Ivi, p. 453. A few years later Della Torre would express his blame for “those opulent Jews, few and rare, God have mercy, who believe they cannot make a better show of tolerance than by neglecting their own brothers.” See L. Della Torre, “Beneficenza israelitica,” E.I., II, June 1854, p. 181. 92 93

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for her, and from her excellent example, her children were thus educated, growing up in religion and patriarchal virtues.”94 The author demonstrated how the “deficiencies” in the education of “Israelite women,” which had been so feared and lamented by his illustrious coreligionist, were growing steadily worse. The Jewish  Educator created space for the “woman question” in the Jewish press and began to provoke interest and reflection once again. The Jewish Review had ceased publication in 1848,95 but the emancipation of the Piedmontese Jews had made the need more acute than ever for a voice that could express the views of the now-defunct journal and carry its religious and moral program forward. “It was essential that instruction and Jewish education came out of the ghetto alongside the Jewish people and brought them out into the free world that was opening up before them.” 96 It was to this end that the new journal The Jewish Educator was founded in 1853. The same intellectual elite that had previously offered their contributions to Rovighi’s publication now gathered around this new voice in the press, which showed every intention of pursuing the same ideological directives as its predecessor.97 From its earliest issue, The Jewish Educator distinguished itself for its “originality and dignity”98 and positioned itself as the bearer of significant proposals for reform in education and religion. Nevertheless, it still managed to maintain the same balance between rigorous religious observance and an open attitude toward progress that had characterized the earlier Jewish periodical.99  L. Ravenna, “La donna in Israello,” E.I., VI, October 1858, p. 299.  On that date Cesare Rovighi devoted himself entirely to the cause of the Risorgimento; he first served as secretary of the provisional government in his hometown of Modena, and later as an official and soldier. See B. Di Porto, “La ‘Rivista israelitica’ di Parma,” cit., p. 45. 96  A. Milano, “Un secolo di stampa”, cit., p. 101. 97  The Jewish Educator was founded in Vercelli in 1853 by Esdra Pontremoli (1818–1888) and Giuseppe Levi (1804–1874). The new journal had the signatures of Lelio Cantoni, Samuel David Luzzatto, Lelio Della Torre (former collaborator, with Levi, of The Jewish Review), Angelo Paggi and Elia Benamozegh (1823–1900) another prominent figure of Italian Judaism. See ivi, p. 105. Biographical elements from the editors of The Jewish Educator can be found in the aforementioned volume by M. Del Bianco Cotrozzi and in G. Bedarida, Ebrei d’Italia, cit. On Giuseppe Levi and The Jewish Educator, see S. De Benedetti, Giuseppe Levi. Ricordo biografico, Florence, Le Monnier, 1876, pp. 15–17. On The Jewish Educator see the detailed essay by B.  Di Porto, “Il giornalismo ebraico in Italia: L’Educatore Israelita (1853–1874),” Materia Giudaica, n. 6, 2000, pp. 60–90. 98  A. Milano, “Un secolo di stampa,” cit., p. 100. 99  This position is particularly relevant in the following articles: A. Paggi, “Le scuole israelitiche,” E.I., I, July and August 1853, respectively pp. 107–114 e pp. 242–246; M. Mortara, 94 95

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Like The Jewish Review, The Jewish Educator had to navigate the conflict between the “new generation” and “old generation” who, “regardless of the class they belong to, always unfortunately managed to form a group of malcontents.” While the “old generation” stubbornly fixated on a rigid attitude of rejection of the present, the youth showed “no regrets for a past that they had not lived”100 and were distinguished by their pointed refusal of tradition. Out of the need to move forward “with the good of the past, with the better of the present, with the best of the future,”101 the journal attempted to restore cohesion to the community. The dominant theme of the first articles to appear in the journal regarding the “woman question” carefully asserted that the originality and “modernity” of the Jewish tradition and religion could provide answers and a touchstone that were relevant to the times and safeguard Judaism from the risk of being diluted by its contact with current ideologies. Indeed, when this article is compared to the first articles that appeared in The Jewish Review, it was clear that the social and political context in which the messages of The Jewish  Educator had appeared had already registered several significant changes. As would be emphatically affirmed many years later, the journal “entered into families, spoke of religion, nation, duties and stood in the stead of the authoritative and enlightened word of the father and husband who were far from home.”102 Thus, with its messages and instructions, the journal helped to compensate for the absence of fathers, “the true priests of the family,”103 who had become increasingly immersed in public life. Because women seemed responsible for the task of keeping the flame of Judaism alive in the family by themselves, The Jewish Educator warned of the increasing urgency to open a dialogue, of the need to accompany women down this difficult path and watch over them so that no stumbling block obstructed the way and so nothing would obligate them to transcend the social limits allowed to women. “Sulla possibilità di operare una semplificazione nel culto esterno pubblico e privato degli israeliti conservandosi nei limiti della più rigorosa ortodossia”, E.I., II, May and June 1854, respectively pp. 129–134 and pp. 161–170; D. Ottolenghi, “Discorso intorno all’istruzione religiosa israelitica,” E.I., II, August 1854, pp. 238–242. 100  G. Levi, “ll passato e il presente,” E.I., IX, October 1861, pp. 338–339. 101  Ivi p. 340. 102  Bettina, “Vessillo pel suo cinquantenario di vita. Le donne israelite,” in Il Cinquantenario del Vessillo Israelitico, Turin, Stab. Doyen di Luigi Simonetti, 1903, p. 54. 103   G.  Levi, “Sulla educazione israelitica come creatrice e tutrice della famiglia,” E.I. 1866, p. 345.

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The honor and onus of assuming this arduous undertaking belonged to Lelio Della Torre.104 In 1857 Della Torre took up his proficient pen in order to scientifically refute some of the problematic considerations that had appeared in the Venetian Journal (Rivista Veneta) regarding the decadent and subordinate condition of women among the people of antiquity. He specifically addressed the accusation that the Jewish people considered and valued women only for their reproductive capacities.105 In order to prove that “Jewish women derived dignity not only from being mothers … but above all from their domestic and wifely virtues, their wisdom, activity, grace, and their devout and charitable souls,”106 the author returned to the argument, repeating the arguments that informed his earlier reflections.107 One year later, Della Torre was echoed in an article by Leone Ravenna mentioned previously.108 Ravenna started with an analysis of the female experience, mainly in historical and religious terms, before considering present-day matters. While insisting that Jewish law and tradition made no difference between men and women, “no advantage to one at the detriment of the other,” Ravenna nonetheless affirmed that it was “absolutely necessary to the order and well-being of the family that the supreme direction was entrusted to only one of its members, and that pre-­ eminence naturally fell to men.”109 This affirmation reflected one of the most deep-seated ideas of liberal culture. In order to validate this view, Ravenna cited the words of Caterina Franceschi Ferrucci (1803–1887): It is true, admittedly, that the woman’s soul is in its essential perfection equal to that of the man’s, yet it cannot be negated that the man is superior in the duties and offices of life. … Therefore, I maintain  that the wife,

104  L. Della Torre, “Nuovi studi sulla donna israelita,” E.I., V, May, 1857, pp. 129–136. The article is an earlier form of a broader and more detailed work that Della Torre would publish a few years later with the same title (Padua, Bianchi, 1864) and which was preceded by another work dedicated to the Jewish woman in antiquity: La donna di virtù dell’ultimo de’ proverbi, Padua, Prosperini, 1862. Della Torre’s research on women never ventured beyond the historical-religious context. 105  It was an article by the eminent pedagogue Aristide Gabelli, “Sul culto della donna,” Rivista Veneta, I, n. 16, August 3 1856, pp. 145–146. 106  “Nuovi studi sulla donna israelita,” cit., p. 131. 107  See L. Della Torre, “La donna israelita,” cit. 108  L. Ravenna, “La donna in Israello,” cit. 109  Ivi. p. 294.

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­ ersuaded by the excellence of those gifts that natural law granted to the p man, must with a devoted and submissive heart honor her own husband.110

The author’s reference to the thoughts of Franceschi Ferrucci went far beyond the simple desire to justify the rights of man in terms of “divine guidance.” Ravenna affirmed that not only was “the woman held in highest honor by Jews; of this our faith, the Bible, and our history all testify,” but also insisted that “now all will recognize her supreme importance to society, and succor will be poured out upon her so that she may fulfill the hopes that Judaism entrusts to her.”111 Underscoring the social importance of women, Ravenna was sharing the most interesting characteristics of Franceschi Ferrucci’s thought. These were common to the ideology so consistently reaffirmed during the Risorgimento period, which assigned to women “the first place in instilling the educational values of the nation.” The distinguished educator and learned Franceschi Ferrucci confirmed that maternity was indeed the natural and primary duty of women; however, at the same time, she recognized the centrality of women’s roles in the process of forming the 110  C. Franceschi Ferrucci, Della educazione morale della donna italiana, (1847) Turin, L’Unione Tipografico-editrice, 1855, p.  146. Maria Clotilde Barbarulli observes that Ferrucci’s work, centered on the principle of necessity and the possibility of giving women a national and patriotic education, marked a turning point for women’s education in the 1840s. Della educazione morale della donna italiana, was followed by the publication of Della educazione intellettuale: Libri quattro indirizzati alle madri italiane, Turin, Pomba, vol. I, 1849, vol. II, 1851, which did not fail to stir up some intense controversy in Catholic circles. In 1853, with Degli studi delle donne, Ferrucci continued to encourage women to develop their talents usefully and correctly, creating a female model as opposed to that of the frivolous and disinterested woman. See M. C. Barbarulli, “Della educazione intellettuale e Degli studi sulle donne,” in Le donne a scuola. L’educazione femminile nell’Italia dell’Ottocento, cit., pp. 16–17. Her profound convictions regarding female education made Caterina Franceschi Ferrucci an original author who distinguished herself from the prominent male thinkers of Risorgimento Italy. While these men may have agreed with Ferrucci on the importance of women’s education, they nevertheless looked with suspicion at the possibility of opening the doors of scientifically programmed and organized education for women. See M. C. Barbarulli, “Caterina Franceschi Ferrucci accademica della Crusca: il ‘sapere’ di una donna nell’800,” in La Crusca nella tradizione letteraria e linguistica italiana. Atti del Congresso internazionale per il IV centenario dell’Accademia della Crusca, Florence, presso l’Accademia, 1985, pp.  337–338 and L.  M. Gonelli, “Il 1848 di Caterina Franceschi Ferrucci,” in Fuori dall’ombra. Studi di storia delle donne nella provincia di Pisa (secoli XIX e XX), edited by E. Fasano Guarini, A.M. Galoppini, A. Peretti, Pisa 2006, pp. 64–67. 111  L. Ravenna, “La donna in Israello,” cit., p. 293.

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conscience of future citizens of Italy and therefore attributed a social and national dimension to the maternal function.112 She declared that “men will be good and disposed to receive the blessings of true civilization when they have been educated by sincerely good, civic-minded mothers.”113 Franceschi Ferrucci insisted on the necessity of guaranteeing to women a national and patriotic education, the same education that the “Jewish nation” advocated for the female sector of society in order to assure the integrity and continuation of Judaism and Jewish culture. As a fervent patriot, Franceschi Ferrucci trusted in the participation of women for the building of the Italian homeland. Likewise, Ravenna—and with him the “Jewish nation”—directed an appeal to Jewish mothers to raise their children not only to be good citizens in the future Italian nation but, above all, to be good Jews who were aware of their duty to their spiritual and ideal homeland. The first articles in The Jewish Educator about “the woman question” were characterized by an essentially historical-religious formulation; however, this did not preclude reflections that were more or less compatible with contemporary views of women. Beginning in 1860, when it was suspected that the consequences of the emancipation process (which were extending across the entire national territory) could potentially cause serious damage to the identity and survival of the Jewish community if not dealt with appropriately, the journal adopted a style that was more incisive and direct. Not only did it take a clear stand regarding the role and function of women, but it did not hesitate to raise debate regarding the condition of the family. A prime example is an article by Giuseppe Levi in which he exhaustively expressed the feelings of that segment of Jewish society who recognized the great value of emancipation but who nevertheless maintained a position of clear and measured objectivity. That objectivity was also expressed as a careful reflection on the future of Jewish society in Italy and on the approaches that needed to be undertaken so that their newfound equality would not translate into the loss of their spiritual and cultural identity. Levi’s text, structured as a series of nineteen points, did not offer an analysis of current problems but was more a diagnosis of those problems that the community would likely have to face in the upcoming

112  On this subject see G. Chiari Allegretti, L’educazione nazionale nella vita e negli scritti di Caterina Franceschi Ferrucci, Florence, Le Monnier, 1932. 113  C. Franceschi Ferrucci, Della educazione morale della donna italiana, cit., p. 8.

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years as well as a list of precepts that could remedy them. The author declared, As the sun is to fields, so are the counsels of God to the passing centuries: slowly His counsels mature the ages; but it is folly to hope to have them bear fruit in a single stroke. The guarantees that a century offers are worthy of trust so that every soul may confidently examine and contemplate that work that must inevitably come about in time. As a completely natural consequence it will come about equally, in attempting to understand the effects of the present century upon this generation of the Jews, to see these same, very common effects will become more pronounced and mature than they are at present. It remains nonetheless true that these are undoubtedly the symptoms and that the effects will be more prevalent and better understood once their cause is more common and better explained.114

With these words, Levi demonstrated his openness to modernity, without, however, renouncing his vigilant and critical attitude toward the phenomenon of emancipation. Given that “every unusual, great movement, every important crisis in the destiny of a society, even when it aims toward the good and the just, in order to bring about its mature fruits intact, must be thoughtfully and prudently guided.”115 At the same time, Levi made an explicit appeal to families, inviting them to take up their role as the spiritual guide for the Jewish people. He feared they had been overcome by the anxiety and enthusiasm for a life of civil equality and were ignoring the pain and heartaches that the wider society that they had waited to take part in for years held in store for them. With references that recalled the theories of social Darwinism, he described entrance into Italian society as a battlefield: entering into it signified not being able to withdraw from its harsh rules; the family needed to act as a refuge and “sanctuary” where the “Jewish generation” could spiritually renew itself “and go forth into a new society, strong in its faith, for drinking from that faith with love can only bring forth the fruit of love.”116 If the family needed to redesign itself as the “school of morals and faith,” this was above all for the good of the youth, who were considered to be vulnerable, susceptible to the disappointments that follow the superficial 114  G. Levi, “L’ebreo del passato e l’ebreo del presente. L’ebreo del presente,” E.I. VIII, June 1860, p. 161. 115  Ivi, p. 164. 116  Ivi, p. 168.

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enthusiasm for novelty, and frequently ignorant of the more painful aspects of the new life that attracted them. Through religious observance, families could recover their strength and cohesion. Structuring family life around religion meant orienting even insignificant daily tasks toward the noble ideal of preserving Jewish identity in order to strengthen and unify the youth; too often, they were carried away from the home to pursue their desires for change and participation in non-Jewish society. It was necessary to remember that the family was the symbol, the substance, the soul of true Jewish education117; this did not signify a desire to confine the family to a position of marginality or defensiveness in the face of modern changes, but on the contrary, it meant protecting the family through the most effective means possible—religion—in order to stave off “foreign elements.” And it was in these terms that Marco Mortara expressed himself a few years before the writings of Levi. Far from wanting to prevent events from following their natural course, Mortara affirmed that “progress itself, in fact, despite progress, much dross is mingled with gold and insidiously is infused in it.” If therefore progress and liberty were to become a font from which the youth could draw “spirit and life,” and not become a weapon used against the family, the royal road was religion, that “source of everything true and good.”118 The real process of erosion of Jewish identity involved a discourse that presented the preservation of the family, the centrality of the home, as the essence of Jewish tradition, as the principal instrument for obtaining the best that the new regime of liberty had to offer for the advancement of the entire Jewish community. From the writings of authoritative religious leaders of the time, it can be deduced that the family, with all of its inheritance of religious and cultural values, was redefined, at least partially: no longer the refuge from the pains and trials of a life marked by discrimination, the family now had to play an active role in the difficult and yet indispensable search for a new balance between the Jewish and the Italian dimensions of life. If emancipation reinforced the already intense bond between family and the Jewish nation, in the Italian context,

117  See G. Levi, “Sulla educazione israelitica come creatrice e tutrice della famiglia,” cit., pp. 339–340. 118  M. Mortara, La famiglia, Mantua, Stab. Di Pietro Prosperini, 1862, p. 4.

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this nexus was identified as an essential contribution to the process of building a unified Italian state.119 With the emphasis on the problems regarding the role and function of the family, the situation of women was destined to become caught up in the changes taking place in the community and continued to represent a high-priority interest for The Jewish Educator. The journal expressed the need to publicly affirm with even greater clarity the status of women in Judaism and the fundamental characteristics of women’s role in the family, and to comment on the terms of the relationship between the masculine and the feminine world. This was an attempt to delineate men’s and women’s respective roles, though without requiring exclusions. The opinions expressed in The Jewish Educator did not embody any new ideas, nor did they represent a break from the Jewish mentality at the time. Even less did they depart from the typical masculine views in general, which were reluctant to imagine a female existence in any context outside that of the family; still, the opinions offered in The Jewish Educator were not without a certain openness. Giuseppe Levi maintained that in Judaism men and women faced each other on equal terms120; however, he nevertheless recognized that the history of women through the ages was a chronicle “of actions that were pre-established by men and that subordinated the will of women to men.”121 In 1864 Levi authored an article that was not without originality, considering the time at which the text was published. The author referred to the “Christian Council” (Concilio Cristiano) that had convened twelve centuries earlier (in the year 585 CE) in the French city of Mâcon. During that council one of the participating bishops advanced a doubt about the idea that women did not have souls. “How could a woman infuse a soul into that creature called man if she too did not have a soul? … Why then has no woman been included in a discussion that had such importance for all women?” The absence of women in the debate that had lasted for centuries, Levi continued, had allowed the doubt to continue across time and 119  See I. Porciani, “Famiglia e nazione nel lungo Ottocento,” in Famiglia e nazione nel lungo Ottocento italiano. Modelli, strategie, reti di relazioni, edited by Id., Rome, Viella, 2006, pp. 16–53. 120  “Oh finally! Bones of my bones, flesh of my flesh!” (Genesis 2, 23) “It is not a master’s welcome to a slave; it is the greeting of a brother, a friend, a mother. With it, the man does not see in the woman a slave, but sees her on the same plane as himself whom he sees and likewise respects.” G. Levi, “L’origine della donna,” E.I., XII, July 1864, p. 202. 121  G. Levi, “La donna nella Bibbia e nel Talmud,” E.I., XII, May 1864, p. 139.

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had brought about “terrible consequences.”122 While it is true that this was an ancient tale, Levi’s time was not without its own distresses. Levi argued regretfully that during the era in which he was writing, “man is becoming ever more barbarous toward woman,” and that the French bishop’s insulting affirmations still found legitimacy “in certain modern minds.”123 Though Levi recognized the brutality of certain male attitudes toward women and the groundlessness of certain ideas (perhaps in the vein of positivism) that would deny women any autonomy or humanity, this did not prevent him from supporting the schematic division of gender roles— which were present in Catholic thought as well124—based on the idea that men were responsible for work, combat, and philosophy, while women were responsible for emotions. “Woman feels, man thinks,” Levi was to write just a few years later in what would be considered his lengthy reflection on the family and the role of women.125 It was a difference in role, Levi insisted, but a difference that did not place women in a position of inferiority. On the contrary, “Divine Providence” had united men and women in “sweet accord,” a harmony formed from “the spirit of the one and the heart of the other, and providing to both in equal part the honor of their holy office.” Levi therefore exhorted women to live by following their natural inclinations and leave “the fatiguing work of thinking” to men. “Women, train your minds with the thought of love, of sweet and sacred affection. The life of the soul is not full, is not alive without the treasure of your hearts.”126 In successive years, this invitation to women to dedicate all their energies to the moral and spiritual health of the family and to concentrate on making sweetness, mercy, and feeling (controlled, of course, within the proper limits) their principal virtues would be found in all the writings dedicated to the role of women.127 Due to their status as a minority group, the Jews felt the need for women to take charge of maintaining the  G. Levi, “L’anima della donna,” E.I., XII, November 1864, p. 321.  Ivi, p. 322. 124  A. Valerio, “Pazienza, vigilanza, ritiratezza. La questione femminile nei documenti ufficiali della Chiesa. (1848–1914),” DWF, 16, 1981, pp. 60–79. 125  G. Levi, Autobiografia di un padre di famiglia, Florence, Le Monnier, 1868, p. 25. 126  G. Levi, “L’anima della donna”, cit., p. 328. 127  See, for example, G. Levi, “Importanza sociale della donna,” E.I., XIII, February 1865, pp. 33–37; E. Pontremoli, “Consigli a mia figlia,” E.I., XVII, May, June, July, August 1869, respectively pp. 129–133, 161–167, 200–204, 230–233 and XVIII, March 1870, pp. 73–75. 122 123

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vibrancy of the family’s religious and cultural tradition. However, it was equally true that Jewish public discourse about women’s roles had developed within an educational process that had a wider purpose. It also contained an element of identifying with the middle class of the time: the Jewish woman was a Jewish mother but also a middle-class Italian woman. Although The Jewish  Educator represented women’s devotion to the domestic hearth as the product of a conscious choice and not merely the thoughtless conformity to preestablished norms, there were still occasional examples of rigid closed-mindedness from some contributors to the journal, especially regarding the possibility of domestic life not being a woman’s exclusive existence. There is, for example, the case of Rabbi Samuel Ghiron (1828–1895) and his vehement criticism of the public address at the end of the academic year given by Adele Levi, who codirected the Female Jewish Institute of Turin with Clothide Jarach. Adele Levi had affirmed that “a young woman is as esteemed as she is knowledgeable, and while once upon a time, for a woman to be learned was thought to be the least desirable part of her dowry, it is now the first and most important part,”128 attitudes that had developed from her own experience. As proudly reported in The Jewish Educator in 1863, after having brilliantly completed the exams at the Normal School for training teachers, whether out of choice, necessity, or for both reasons, Levi then followed those studies with professional employment.129 “Oh, my girls, study, study!” was not just Levi’s rhetorical recommendation but a concrete invitation to obtain an education. She valued education for girls not only as an aspiration or an end in itself, but also as a means for a young woman to acquire her own individual economic and intellectual future. Levi’s promotion of education that would potentially alter women’s roles explains Rabbi Ghiron’s condemnation. Ghiron resisted any 128  S. Ghiron, “Discorso letto dalla maestra Adele Levi per la distribuzione degli attestati alle allieve dell’Istituto Femminile Israelitico,” E.I., XVI, August 1868, p. 252. 129  In the exams of the Normal Schools, out of 150 “disciples,” Adele Levi was ranked second and awarded a certificate of excellence. See “Notizie. Italia. Torino,” E.I., XI, August 1863, p. 253. However, the obligation to teach the Catholic religion prevented Levi from taking part in a competition for the appointment of twelve teachers. On that occasion, The Jewish Educator (September 1863, pp.  286–287) posed the question of whether religious instruction should not hinder the work of those who had all the merits to exercise it. A problem destined to drag on at length. On Jewish women’s education and training institutions in Turin, see B. Maida, Dal Ghetto alla città, Turin, Zamorani, 2001, pp. 87–88.

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educational system in which the “regulation of the family” was not given the priority it merited. “No, and once again no! The realm of the woman is the home.” According to Ghiron, the only true reason for female education was to prepare girls for their mission as good housewives, respectful daughters, modest wives, and excellent mothers. Filling their heads with science, poetry, and other such nonsense only resulted in making them into “so many know-it-alls, monstrous abortions of scholars or scientists.”130 While there was the cultural tendency to consider it useless, if not dangerous, for women to expand their knowledge beyond the allowed limits, for those who believed that the improvement in women’s status was a necessity, Ghiron’s article constituted an exception in regards to the calm distance with which The Jewish Educator had dealt with the issue of women’s education over the course of the years. However, with the conflict intensifying between conservative forces and the growing interest in the integration of Jewish society into Italian society, the first signs became visible of a radical change that would come to characterize the opinions that appeared in the Jewish press during the final decades of the nineteenth century. In the press, the conflict in the heart of the Jewish community would translate into an intense aversion to the emancipatory exigencies of women. In addition, on the issue of mixed marriage, a phenomenon that was seen as a blow to the very heart of the integrity of the Jewish family and a threat to the bonds of cohesion within the Jewish community, The Jewish Educator did not attribute the responsibility to women alone. After emphasizing that a “dissonance of religious principles” was destined to create disagreements and serious discord at the heart of the family,131 the journal identified the main cause for mixed marriages among “Italian Israelites these days.” The Jewish Educator censured the male segment of the community for seeking endogamous marriages only with those young Jewish women provided with rich dowries, thus abandoning the economically weaker young Jewish women to marry men of different religious faiths if that choice was not prevented by their families. Therefore, the Jewish woman who married outside of her faith was not accused of breaking the rules that were so essential for the stability of Jewish tradition: rather, she was considered more of a victim of the contractual and economic conception of marriage. But if The Jewish Educator  S. Ghiron, “Discorso letto dalla maestra Adele Levi,” cit., p. 252.  “Sul matrimonio misto,” E.I., XX, September 1872, p. 261.

130 131

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appeared tolerant—though not justifying the choice of women to marry outside of the Jewish community—at the same time, the journal did not hesitate to express its disapproval for the damaging cooperation of the parents.132 One year after the publication of its first articles, The Jewish Educator returned to this problematic issue with the publication of a drama by Lazzaro Ottolenghi, The Mixed Marriage.133 Rather than publishing some lengthy treatise that would resonate with few readers, by publishing this drama, the journal sought to sensitize the community with a text that was accessible even to that segment of its readership that showed little interest in the issue of intermarriage. Ottolenghi, rabbi of the community of Acqui, introduced his play by asking several questions intended to provoke the reader to reflect on the nature and significance of a phenomenon that only a few decades later would assume significant proportions. “Is mixed marriage good or bad? Is mixed marriage the consequence of liberty, the basis of the prosperity of the people? Is mixed marriage the result of liberty that is employed well?”134 According to the play’s author, the tragic story of the protagonists David and Adele could provide the proper answers to these questions. David is Jewish, Adele a fervent Catholic. The deep love that unites them also gives them the conviction that they can overcome any religious or cultural barrier that divides them. But on the day of their wedding, unexpected feelings begin to grow in the hearts of both young people, a sense of homesickness and regret, a longing for their own religions and the beliefs in which they were raised and to which they are bound by their  See ivi, pp. 261–262.  L. Ottolenghi, “Il matrimonio misto. Scene di famiglia divise in otto quadri,” E.I., XXI, June 1873: “Le promesse,” pp. 163–171; July 1873: “Il matrimonio” and Marito e moglie,” pp. 193–203; August 1873: “Circoncisione e battesimo,” pp. 225–235; September 1873: Genitori e figli” and “Figli e genitori,” pp. 257–268; October 1873: “Malattia e morte,” pp. 321–329. 134  L. Ottolenghi, “Quesito che può servire di prefazione,” E.I., XXI, June 1873, p. 161. On the treatment of the problem of mixed marriages in the Jewish press see C. Foà, Gli ebrei e i matrimoni misti. L’esogamia nella comunità torinese (1866–1898), Turin, Zamorani, 2001, pp. 45–104. On the use of fiction narrative for pedagogical and moral purposes see C.  Ferrara degli Uberti, Fare gli ebrei italiani. Autorappresentazione di una minoranza (1861–1918), Bologna, Il Mulino, 2011, pp. 53–85 (English translation: Making the Italian Jews. Family, Gender, Religion and Nation, New York, Palgrave McMillan, 2016) and “Sperimentazione e normatività: Periodici ebraici italiani e letteratura tra Otto e Novecento,” in The New Italy and the Jews. From Massimo D’Azeglio to Primo Levi, edited by J. Druker and L. S. Lerner, Annali di italianistica, vol. 36, 2018, pp. 150–151. 132 133

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respective family memories. Despite their promises of mutual respect, Adele soon begins to act intolerantly toward her spouse, who, in turn, does not hesitate to reprove his wife for her excessive religious zeal and continual attempts to convert him to Catholicism. Their bond begins to fray and waver due to their frequent conflicts over religion. The birth of twins, Giuseppe and Mathilde, does not improve relations between the spouses: the decision about the religious future of the children intensifies the tension and disagreements. Before their wedding, the couple had agreed that their sons will be raised Jewish like their father and their daughters will be raised Catholic like their mother. Adele, however, cannot consent that her son, Giuseppe, will be taken from the church “to be given to the synagogue,” while David is disappointed and irritated by his wife’s inability to accept the sacrifices that their marriage requires. The years pass and living together becomes a torment. The conflicts, “the scandalous domestic scenes,” induce David, who still loves his wife, to separate from her. Adele, who until the last moment kept hoping that she could turn her husband into her “brother in Christ,” cannot tolerate the pain, becomes ill, and dies. Their mixed marriage thus was a mistake that is paid for with desperation, suffering, and finally death. Significantly, the debate over the best course and methods for preserving the Jewish identity of the family within the new, shifting cultural context quickly arrived at confronting one of the historically most important links in the relationship between integration and assimilation: endogamy.

CHAPTER 3

The Role of Women in the Process of Modernization

The Jewish Community and the National Community In the second half of the 1870s, when all of Italian Judaism had been definitively liberated from the regime of separation, the interest in the “woman question,” which had initially been delineated at the end of the 1840s, was taken up again with new energy. This interest constituted a central point in the wider debate developing within the Jewish community over the numerous problems relative to maintaining cohesion and the religious and cultural identity of the community in this period of increasing integration with the surrounding society. In the two decades that separated the emancipation of 1848 from the new limitations imposed on the Catholic church’s temporal power and from the attainment of juridical and civil equality for the Roman Jews (1870), the process of modernization and secularization of the Jewish community had taken a clear step forward in reaching a state that was quite advanced. The barriers that had separated their prospects from those of other Italians had come down, and numerous provisions that had repeatedly reinforced the conditions of disparity had been delegitimized. The Jewish minority had joined the rest of the Italian population, ready to contribute with their enthusiasm, resources, and abilities to their country’s progress, which they deeply felt and lived as their homeland. Their active contribution was the fruit of the fortunate concurrence of the emancipation guaranteed by the new legal © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 M. Miniati, Italian Jewish Women in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Italian and Italian American Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74053-5_3

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context, and the fact their group was modest in numbers, but endowed with “excellent prerequisites” that facilitated their integration. Even before Unification and the subsequent extension of civil and legal emancipation via the Albertine Statute to the Jewish communities along the Italian peninsula, the Jews were a population without an agricultural class, residing primarily in urban centers and having a high level of literacy.1 “Their natural ability … to adapt to every circumstance, to acclimate to all places without losing the characteristic zeal of the Jewish race that distinguished them” and that had “always aided the intellectual progress of the Jews in all the countries where they are granted Emancipation” was reinforced in the Italian case. Specific characteristics of the Jewish community were accentuated when interdictions ended, characteristics that allowed the Jewish minority to contribute to the construction and consolidation of the liberal state from a position of strength. “The emancipation resulting subsequently from the Piedmontese Constitution in all Provinces has already given good results and will continue to give many more,” stated a  M. Meriggi, “Bourgeoisie, Bürgertum, Borghesia: i contesti sociali dell’emancipazione ebraica,” in Stato nazionale ed emancipazione ebraica, edited by M. Toscano and F. Sofia, Roma, Bonacci, 1992, pp. 157–158. In 1861 only 5.8% of the Jewish population was illiterate while among the general Italian population, the percentage reached 64.5%. The care given by the community as well as the widespread practice of commerce, an essential tool for survival in the ghetto period, had helped to ensure that at least the elementary rudiments of reading, writing, and mathematics constituted a widely shared tradition of knowledge. “There was so much contempt for those who could not follow the recitation of the prayers in the book that the vast majority of men and a good number of women could read and write, at least in Hebrew characters.” A.  Sercia Gianforma, “Gli ebrei livornesi nel censimento del 1841,” in Ebrei di Livorno tra due censimenti: Memoria familiare e identità, edited by  M. Luzzati, Livorno, Belforte, p.  37. Even before 1848, Jews had managed to obtain “an excellent modern education” despite the legal obstacles. Sometimes, where the interdictions were particularly strict, as in Piedmont, for example, the families with the greatest means provided for their children to relocate to those cities, mostly under Habsburg rule, where they were allowed access to public schools and universities. As his daughter Gina tells us, Cesare Lombroso (1835–1909) was “not by chance born in Verona.” The mother of the distinguished scholar, Zefora Levi, considering the education of her future children, in 1832 abandoned Chieri, a small town in Piedmont, to move to Verona and marry Aronne Lombroso, a young man from an excellent family, chosen by her uncle and completely unknown to her. Even in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, ruled by Leopold II of Lorraine (1797–1870), schools and universities were open to Jews. See G. Lombroso, Cesare Lombroso. Appunti sulla vita. Le opere, Milan-Turin-Rome, Fratelli Bocca Editori, 1906, p. 8 and id., La vita del papà, Turin, Fratelli Bocca Editori, Milan-Rome 1909, p.  5; A. Momigliano, Pagine ebraiche, Rome, Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2016, (second edition), pp. 151–152; A. Milano, Storia degli ebrei in Italia, Turin, Einaudi, 1992, (second edition), pp. 354–355. 1

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report by Raffaello Ascoli about the condition of the Italian Jews for the Universal Jewish Alliance (Alliance Israélite Universelle) in January 1873. The new sense of dignity that the Jews feel within themselves, to be considered equal to others and to be able to say so with their heads held high, places them in a normal condition and to enjoy it worthily, they exert themselves to act superlatively well, and they succeed. … In their new condition in which political emancipation made them equal to other Citizens, Italian Jews are active participants in the civic life of their Country. They take part in the Military, the Courtroom, the Judiciary, Parliament, the Universities without forgetting the Sciences, Arts, and national and Jewish literature as well.2

Along with his testimonial, Ascoli offered extensive information about the process of social integration, which was notable in Italy for its pervasive  Memoire di Raffaello Ascoli all’Alliance Israélite Universelle. Livorno, 29 January, 1873. Archives de l’Alliance Israélite Universelle, Italie III B 21, Livorno. Comités Locaux et Communautés. “La faculté … naturelle de s’assimiler à tous les usages, de s’acclimater à tous les lieux, sans perdre ce cachet vigoureux de la race sémitique qui les distingue” che aveva “toujours aidé le progrès intellectuel des Israélites dans tous les pays où on leur accorde l’Emancipation.” “L’émancipation apportée successivement par la constitution Piémontaise dans toutes les Provinces a donné dejà de bons resultats et en donnera toujours de plus nombreux.” “C’est que la dignité nouvelle qui sentent en eux mêmes de pouvoir se considerer égaux aux autres, et pouvoir le dire hautement les place dans une situation normale, et pour en jouir dignement les Israélites font des efforts pour agir superbement bien et ils y reusssissent … On peut considerer de plus la large part qu’ont pris les Israélites Italiens dans tout l’Etat dans leur nouvelle situation qui les assimilait aux autres Citoyens, par l’émancipation politique. Ils ont pris part dans la Milice, dans le Barreau, dans les Tribunaux, dans le Parlement, dans les Universités, sans oublier les Sciences, les Arts, la littérature nationale et l’hébraïque.” Citation taken in part from Y. Colombo, “Gli ebrei d’Italia dopo l’emancipazione in uno scritto inedito di Raffaello Ascoli,” R.M.I, XXXV, n.6, June 1969, pp. 263–271. In 1873, l’Alliance Israélite Universelle made the decision to gather all the information available regarding the condition of Jewish communities across Europe were most recently impacted by the process of emancipation. As for Italy, the report was assigned to the Comitato livornese dell’Alliance and the case was given to Raffaello Ascoli who served as the secretary to the Comitato. As early as 1862 several Italian Jewish communities had joined the Alliance, which was divided into four committees: Livorno per Tuscany, Ancona per the regions of Le Marche and Umbria, Ferrara for Emilia, and Vercelli per the regions of Piemont and Lombardy. See T. Catalan, “L’organizzazione delle comunità ebraiche italiane dall’Unità alla prima guerra mondiale,” in Storia d’Italia, Annali, 11, Gli ebrei in Italia, vol. II, Dall’emancipazione ad oggi, Turin, Einaudi, 1997, p. 1248. 2

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upward mobility. In subsequent years, this upward mobility continued to be characterized by extensive Jewish participation in the professions, in culture, and most especially in places of learning and in public administration. This social advancement was facilitated firstly by the freedom of movement that Jews could at last have following emancipation. As the doors of the ghettos gradually opened, the Jews became the protagonists of a significant internal migratory movement, which was oriented toward the more developed urban areas, first on the regional level, but also on the national level, where the demand for commercial and professional services corresponded to their experience and educational level. This geographic redistribution thus effected a qualitative and quantitative evolution in the Jews’ traditional activities and, consequently, the attainment of positions of greater economic security and higher social prestige.3 In the years following emancipation, the Jews formed a group from which “a compact élite of families emerged” at its center with considerable fortunes; the group was “few in number” but “high in quality and importance,” though certainly their fortunes were not comparable to those of the élite Jewish families in France who contributed to the creation of the myth of a Jewish aristocracy. In Italy, their wealth was the product of their active presence in the world of trade and business, mainly branches of important commercial activities and to a lesser degree, the world of industry. These activities frequently constituted the foundation for a diverse range of occupations.4 Since the final decades of the nineteenth century, it was the case that “the children of many wealthy and well-to-do merchants,” rather than following the safe and secure professions of their fathers, frequently chose instead to study and follow other careers: From here … the vast number of Jewish professionals, not just in the field of medicine, which had been one of their preferences for centuries while 3  See E. Sabatello, “Trasformazioni economiche e sociali degli ebrei in Italia nel periodo dell’emancipazione,” in Italia Judaica, IV, Gli ebrei nell’Italia unita, Rome, Ministero per i beni culturali e ambientali, 1993, p. 118. 4  B. Di Porto, “Dopo il Risorgimento al varco del ’900,” R.M.I., XLVII, n. 7–12, July– December 1981, p. 21. For an overview of the economic status of the Italian Jewish community in the aftermath of emancipation, see F. Levi, “Gli ebrei nella vita economica italiana dell’Ottocento,” in Storia d’Italia, Annali 11, cit., pp. 1171–1210. See also the specific studies of G. Maifreda, Gli ebrei e l’economia milanese. L’Ottocento, Milan, Franco Angeli, 2000 and B. Armani, Il confine invisibile. L’élite ebraica di Firenze. 1840–1914, Milan, Franco Angeli, 2006.

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segregated by the ghettos, but also in the courtroom, the classroom, biological and physical sciences, journalism and music.5

The origins of this professional diversification were far less elitist than might be supposed. The push toward higher learning and professional activities affected far wider sectors of the Jewish population than just the exclusive circle of young men who were unattracted to the prospect of following the same path that had already been walked before. Despite the specific propensity among the Jews for intellectual pursuits and the traditional diligence with which the community had always fostered a high level of literacy among its members, their conspicuous presence in schools and universities was attributable to the “migratory dynamic” that had directed the Jews out of the ghetto and led to their immersion in “public life.” Jews had been “a kind of ‘emigrants within their homeland,’”6 and through education and instruction—resources that they already had to some degree—they found the essential means for improving and distinguishing their professional trajectory and acquiring more secure situations in life. The development of a scholastic and university curriculum resulted from a distinct agenda of investment on the part of Jewish families. Italy at the time was burdened by an illiteracy rate of disturbing proportions, and a high school diploma was still “a comparatively rare possession” that allowed one to widen one’s range of choices. These choices focused on executive professions, especially those in public administration. The success of Jews in this area was explained by the fact that, compared to other professional contexts, access to civil employment appeared far less dependent on 5  G.  Luzzatto, “Gli ebrei in Italia dalla marcia su Roma alle leggi razziali,” in Gli ebrei italiani durante il fascismo, Quaderni della Federazione Giovanile Ebraica d’Italia, Turin, 1961, p. 12. (Anastatic Printing Arnaldo Forni, Bologna 1980). On the professional composition of Italian Jews in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, in addition to the aforecited F. Levi, see also R. Bachi, “La demografia degli ebrei italiani negli ultimi cento anni,” in Atti del congresso internazionale per gli studi della popolazione, Rome, Istituto Poligrafico dello Stato, 1934, vol. VI, pp.  114–120; A.  M. Canepa, “Cattolici ed ebrei nell’Italia liberale 1870–1915,” Comunità, XXXII, n. 179, April 1978, pp.  46–48; A. Momigliano, Pagine ebraiche, cit., pp. 154–155; R. De Felice, Storia degli ebrei italiani sotto il fascismo, Turin, Einaudi, 1988, (fourth edition), pp. 11–15. See also C. Lombroso, L’antisemitismo e le scienze moderne, Turin-Rome, L. Roux and C., 1894, pp. 87–88. 6  L. Allegra, “La famiglia ebraica torinese nell’Ottocento: le spie di un’integrazione sociale,” in Il matrimonio ebraico. Le Ketubbot dell’Archivio Terracini, edited by M. Vitali, Turin, Zamorani, 1997, p. 98.

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belonging to longstanding social networks. In fact, considering the short time that Italy had been a unified State, the construction of its administrative apparatus constituted a “relatively innovative” sector of employment and was therefore more easily attainable by the Jewish circle who had only recently appeared on the national scene.7 Furthermore, the choice to join various levels of public administration and to directly participate in the construction of the unified state was encouraged and supported by the profound emotional and political affinities that bound the new Jewish middle class to the Italian leadership class, which was also in a developmental state. If in the past these affinities had become visible through the Jews’ intense emotional, intellectual, and economic participation in the Risorgimento, these same affinities subsequently devolved into an unconditional adhesion to liberal ideology and translated largely into an anxiety and desire on the part of the Jews to feel they were fully legitimate Italian citizens.8 In addition to emotional and political affinities, there were structural affinities as well. In post-Unification Italy, which was already behind in the move toward industrialization, the “humanist” professional middle class, in comparison with other groups of leaders, constituted the segment of society that was best equipped with the skills necessary to lead in the modernization of Italian society.9 The prominent Jewish participation in administrative as well as political activity—from local and provincial councils to the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies—was a reflection of public Italian life characterized by “the powerful connection between middle-class professions and the hierarchy of power.”10  See ivi, pp. 95–98; F. Levi, “Gli ebrei nella vita economica,” cit., pp. 1188–1190.  See D.V.  Segre, “L’emancipazione degli ebrei in Italia,” in Integrazione e identità. L’esperienza ebraica in Germania e Italia dall’Illuminismo al fascismo, edited by M. Toscano, Milan, Franco Angeli, 1998, pp. 102–109. 9  M. Meriggi, “La borghesia italiana,” in Borghesie europee dell’800, edited by  J.  Kocka, Venice, Marsilio, 1989, pp. 161–185. For an overview of the processes of liberal state building and the role of the bourgeoisie in Italy, see A. M. Banti, Storia della borghesia italiana. L’età liberale, Rome, Donzelli, 1996. 10  M. Meriggi, “La borghesia italiana,” cit., p. 169. A useful reference regarding the Jewish presence in public administration, politics, and culture is provided by the lists published by the journal The Jewish Banner (Il Vessillo Israelitco, hereafter V.I.). See for example F. Servi, “Deputati israeliti dalla proclamazione del regno d’Italia,” V.I., XXVIII, fasc. V.I, June 1880, pp.  179–182; “Senatori e Deputati israeliti,” V.I.,  XXX, fasc. XI, November 1882, pp. 349–350; F. Servi, “Gl’israeliti nei pubblici uffici,” V.I., XXXI, fasc. X, October 1883, pp. 311–313; “I giornalisti italiani israeliti,” V.I., XXXII, fasc. V.I., June 1884, pp. 184–188; “Israeliti che sono professori effettivi,” V.I., XXXV, fasc. III, March 1887, pp. 95–96. With 7 8

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It is true that the Jewish bourgeoisie, given the role they were was called upon to play in society, was more disposed to accept values and lifestyles that were unfamiliar to their tradition but common to other segments of the middle class. Thus, the modernizing effects of civil equality were able to have a greater influence upon the existential context of the Jewish middle class. Nevertheless, the emancipatory process also affected certain components of Jewish society whose economic and social profile had completely different characteristics. Despite the consistent number of Jews who managed to initiate a substantial qualitative shift in their existence, the poor remained a numerically significant segment of the community. The Jews in Rome undoubtedly constituted a particularly substantial and striking example of endemic poverty; “the effects are still felt from the condition of moral prostration to which the secular tyranny of catholic intolerance constrained the Roman Jews.”11 But the difficulty of extracting themselves from centuries of oppression and extreme poverty went beyond the borders of papal Rome. The multitude of charitable and social institutions created by various community organisms listed in the Census of Jews in the Realm at the end of 1881 (Censimento degli israeliti esistenti nel Regno alla fine del 1881) attested to a prevalent condition of poverty.12 Poverty was widespread, but the poor within Jewish ­communities were still protected by the group: this explains in part how regard to the considerable number of journalists and newspaper owners in the capital, the author of the article stressed how curious it was that “in Rome itself where not many years ago, the Israelites were held and treated with so much contempt and abjection, now many Israelites play an important part in journalism, which in turn plays a great part in social life.” “I giornalisti italiani israeliti,” cit. p. 186. On the participation of Jews in military life, see M. Michaelis, “Gli ufficiali superiori ebrei nell’esercito italiano dal Risorgimento alla marcia su Roma,” R.M.I., XXX, n. 4, April, 1964, pp. 155–171; M. Mondini, “L’identità negata: materiali di lavoro su ebrei ed esercito dall’età liberale al secondo dopoguerra,” in Gli ebrei in Italia tra persecuzione fascista e reintegrazione, edited by I. Pavan and  G. Schwarz, Florence, 2001 pp. 141–170. 11  R.  Ascoli, Memoire, cit. (“We still feel the effects of the state of moral prostration in which the secular tyranny of Catholic intolerance had forced the Roman Israelites”). As for the Jewish reality in Rome in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, see the studies of S. Caviglia, “Vita economica e sociale degli ebrei romani dall’emancipazione (1870) agli inizi del XX secolo,” R.M.I., LII, n. 1, January–April 1986, pp. 117–136 and id., L’identità salvata. Gli ebrei di Roma tra fede e nazione. 1870–1938, Rome-Bari, Laterza, 1996. 12  See Censimento degli israeliti esistenti nel Regno alla fine del 1881. See particularly Appendice al censimento degli israeliti. Cenni storici e statistici sulle comunità israelitiche di alcune provincie d’Italia, Annali di Statistica, s.III, v.9, 1884, pp.  143–207; F. Levi, Gli ebrei nella vita economica, cit., p. 1186. Useful testimonials and references can be found in

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the disadvantaged segment of the population—which continued to gravitate within the orbit of the community, perhaps even more out of economic than religious necessity—was still able to acquire signs of modernization. The specific characteristics of Italian Judaism played a fundamental role here, as well. The absence of illiteracy, the value of honor, and the emancipatory power accorded to education, patriotic enthusiasm, and the resultant fervent sense of belonging to a national context had contributed first of all to a drastic reduction in the alienation, ignorance, and abandonment that were so prevalent in the most impoverished segments of society.13 The electoral laws of 1882 granted voting rights to all men who could read, thus allowing even economically disadvantaged Jews to diminish the marginality of their position by participating directly in the life of the nation. In this instance, they “objectively received a ray of bourgeois light, a recognition for which the rural masses and also a good part of the Christian urban proletariat would wait even longer.”14 A convergence of factors had already promoted and would continue to promote the participation of the Jews in the process of integration and would positively influence directions chosen by the younger generation. Parents directed their children toward professional activities that were of higher economic and cultural value, which in turn led to more frequent contact with the habits and culture of the surrounding culture. In 1897, Carlo Levi, doctor and mohel,15 published a study on the conditions of his poorer coreligionists in the city of Modena, in the journal Social Reform (La Riforma sociale), which offers important insight into the situation. While emphasizing the physical condition of his coreligionists, which was still deeply marked by the unhealthy life of the ghetto, even at a distance of more than thirty years post-­ emancipation—“in general, individuals do not look well, an appearance of I. Rignano, La Università Israelitica di Livorno e le Opere Pie da essa amministrate, Livorno, Leghorn, S. Belforte, 1890. 13  As Esdra Pontremoli (1818–1888) affirmed in his article, “Gli asili infantili israelitici” : “Compared to Christians, we have no beggars; the food of our wretched brethren is always healthier, more abundant, more regular than that of any people, their dwellings lighter, their clothes more suitable for the seasons.” L’Educatore Israelita (from here on E.I.), XVII, November 1869, p. 328. See D.V. Segre, “L’emancipazione degli ebrei in Italia,” cit., pp. 90 and 104. 14  M. Meriggi, “Bourgeoisie, Bürgertum, Borghesia,” cit., p. 158. 15  The mohel is the circumciser. He is not necessarily a doctor, but he is required to complete an apprenticeship with a highly experienced mohel, who then has to judge the suitability of the student to practice this essential ritual of the Jewish tradition.

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good health is constantly lacking”—Levi equally highlighted characteristics that had contributed to modifying the physiognomy of the poorer segment of the Jewish community in Modena: Illiterate people cannot be found, on the contrary there is a noticeable tendency toward study where they easily rise due to their tireless efforts and intelligence; so much so that many pursue specialized professions and teaching with honor and profit, especially the women.16

In short, there was a move to depart from the traditional frame of life that informed the entire community in its diverse social components. As careful studies on Judaism in Piedmont have shown, “the break from claustrophobic anxiety” was particularly manifest in the access to professional sectors that had once been banned, in the widespread non-observance of the dietary code, in the end “of the onomastic autocracy” in favor of a social life built on increasingly frequent contact with environments of different religious orientation, and in matrimonial choices from outside the Jewish community, supposing these would lead inevitably to “an irreversible loss of identity.”17 The undoubted persistence of connections with the past did not, however, bar the way to numerous changes that influenced the lives of Jews and their relationship with the surrounding society during those years. These changes assumed the role of “disintegration” and “dispersion” of the Jew’s cultural and historical patrimony after coming “in contact with the ‘majority culture’ and the adjustment of the traditional structures and modes of expression to the new values emanating from a different social context,” which resulted in the progressive absorption of “the typical elements of national Italian culture in place of the traditional Jewish ways.”18 The situation of Italian Judaism in the period following emancipation therefore  C. Levi, “Gl’israeliti poveri nel comune di Modena”, La Riforma sociale, VI, vol. VII, October, 1897, p. 968. The author also pointed out that the high level of education was “symptoms of a careful instruction: the liveliest domestic affections and care,…a constant tendency to rise and especially to procure for the children, by whatever sacrifice necessary, the greatest well-being in the present and the future; the lively participation in public life in a predominantly liberal sense,…the ardent affection for the homeland and its glory.” ivi. 17  See L. Allegra, “La comunità ebraica di Torino attraverso gli archivi di famiglia,” in Ebrei a Torino. Ricerche per il centenario della sinagoga, Turin, Allemandi, 1985, pp. 31–36; Id., “La famiglia ebraica torinese,” cit., pp. 80–88. 18  M. Toscano, “Gli ebrei in Italia dall’emancipazione alle persecuzioni,” Storia contemporanea, XVII, n. October 5, 1986, p. 911. 16

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appeared complex. Among the many and diverse ways in which individuals expressed and lived their Jewish identity, their ties to the community and their coreligionists, those who attempted to lead the Jewish community spiritually and morally had first and foremost to provide valid reference points and find a unifying expressive formula that would bring Jews together under one banner despite their different ways of being and feeling Jewish, thus averting the danger of disintegration. This was a problem whose resolution was inhibited by the lack of a strong cultural and religious leadership at that time. Emancipation had opened a period of redefinition for community councils, reevaluating their own identity and internal politics. The liberal state, while protecting the religious freedom of all its citizens regardless of their affiliation, had deprived the Jewish community of its fundamental function of mediating between individuals and the state apparatus, which had in former times constituted one of the main features of its existence. The community thus transformed into an entity aimed mainly at carrying out worship or charitable activities. The state’s commitment to guaranteeing freedom of religion had the further effect of transforming Jewish community organizations into “free and voluntary associations … founded on spontaneous adhesion and not binding by way of birth or descent.”19 As to spiritual concerns, the extension of freedom was accompanied by a weakening of the natural cohesion that had characterized the Jewish community in the past. There was a loss of identity and power, intensified by the opposition of various communities to relinquishing their own administrative, religious, and social traditions for the benefit of a unified, organized structure and the creation of a centralized organizational body, as in the French and English models.20 Such a move would not only have reinforced the position of 19  E. Capuzzo, “Le cornici giuridiche dell’emancipazione ebraica,” in Stato nazionale ed emancipazione ebraica, edited by  M.  Toscano and F. Sofia, Rome, Bonacci, 1992, pp. 103–104. The Piedmontese law of 1857 (Rattazzi law), which reorganized the Jewish communities as required associations with the same privileges as the Municipalities, was extended at the time of Unification only to the regions of Emilia, the Marches and the Duchies of Modena and Parma. On the Rattazzi law and the problem of the legal diversity of the communities following emancipation see Id., “Sull’ordinamento delle comunità ebraiche dal Risorgimento al Fascismo,” in Italia Judaica, IV, Gli ebrei nell’Italia unita, Rome, Ministero per i beni culturali e ambientali, 1993, cit. pp. 186–205; M. F. Maternini Zotta, L’ente comunitario ebraico. La legislazione negli ultimi due secoli, Milan, Giuffrè, 1983, pp. 129–149. 20  See T. Catalan, “L’organizzazione delle comunità ebraiche italiane dall’Unità alla prima guerra mondiale,” cit in Storia d’Italia, Annali, 11, Gli ebrei in Italia, vol. II,

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Italian Judaism vis-à-vis the state but would also have bypassed the sort of power vacuum that had been created when the need increased for a spiritual guide that was capable of responding to powerful centrifugal forces. At the end of the 1870s, a profound change at the heart of the Jewish cultural and religious elite affected not only the authority of the individuals who were entrusted with guiding the community but also the quality, prestige, and content of the very instruments they drew upon in order to spread their message. This, however, did not mean that the community lacked spiritually and culturally prestigious eminent figures, but only that Judaism, scattered across many isolated voices, was incapable of following a defined course to gather and marshal its best forces. In 1874 with the death of that distinguished figure in Italian Judaism, Giuseppe Levi, the journal The Jewish Educator (L’Educatore Israelita), which he had directed for years, continued its publication but under the name The Jewish Banner (Il Vessillo Israelitico) and in a new place, Casale Monferrato, and under a new director, Flaminio Servi (1841–1904). Under Levi’s prior direction, the journal had offered examples of originality and intellectual stimulation with depth and scientific rigor for more than twenty years. While destined to become the widest-circulating and longest-running publication of Italian Judaism,21 The Jewish Banner undoubtedly represented a more modest theoretical and informational vehicle. Nevertheless, criticism of the journal—which was considered “notable only for its longevity” and “a vivid image of the religious and spiritual decline”22 of a wide segment of Italian Judaism in the period after emancipation—must be reevaluated and re-contextualized.23 The Jewish Dall’emancipazione ad oggi, Turin, Einaudi, 1997, spec. pp.  1245–1272; S.  Dazzetti, L’autonomia delle comunità ebraiche italiane nel Novecento. Leggi, intese, statuti, regolamenti, Turin, Giappichelli, 2008, pp. 3–11; Id., “Il problema dell’unificazione giuridica delle comunità israelitiche italiane dopo l’Unità,” in I Rabbini piemontesi e il Congresso Israelitico di Firenze (1867), edited by C. Pilocane and I. Zatelli, Livorno, Belforte, 2020. 21  The Jewish Banner (Il Vessillo Israelitico) was published regularly until 1922. In 1904, Ferruccio Servi, (1879–1949) Flaminio’s son, took over the direction of the periodical, an office he would hold until 1921, except from 1908 to 1911 when he was replaced by Dante Lattes (1876–1965). In the final year, Guglielmo Lattes (1857–1928) took over responsibility for the journal’s direction. See A. Milano, “Un secolo di stampa periodica ebraica in Italia,” R.M.I., XII, n. 7–9, April–June 1938, p. 107. 22  Ivi pp. 107–108. 23  This is Bruno di Porto’s analysis, pointing out that Attilio Milano’s “summary and unjust” condemnation of the journal, formulated in 1938, suffered from the painful disillusionment of Italian Jews in the face of a long history of integration that was about to be tragi-

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Banner was not a champion of assimilation. The gratification with which it regarded the process of integration, along with its unconditional patriotism—which in retrospect appeared as “a descent into assimilation”—did not prevent it from regarding the “assimilationist dissolution” that accompanied the emancipatory process with profound anxiety.24 However, it is likewise true that after the “golden period” denoted by The Jewish Educator, The Jewish Banner (as the central voice of the most conservative segment of Jewish society) initiated a season of cultural impoverishment in Italian Judaism, a “return to the separateness of formal ritualism.”25 Here we see the inadequacy of the parameters and devices chosen by the journal to redefine, preserve, and solidify the Jewish identity of individuals and the community. Indeed, the writings it published reveal an inability to conceive of any form of expression for Jewish identity that was not connected to religious practice. In this phase of the emancipatory process, religious faith constituted an essential element for Jews in defining their diversity: but it could be potentially risky to designate religion as the predominant instrument for guaranteeing the unity of the Jewish community, and maintaining Jewish identity, unless this was maintained and managed very deftly. Unlike the approach in the past, religious practice now was proposed neither as a dynamic component nor as an effective interpretive key for living a new way of life in harmony with history and Jewish tradition but, rather, religious practice was now proposed as a return to rigid observance. For The Jewish Banner, it was not so much about a “need for absolute order” or “a cosmic, universal need” but rather “pure external observance” and a “propensity for the ceremonial.”26 Therefore, religious commitment would not be satisfied by merely attending temple, which could be superficial in its meaning, but truly developed within the domestic walls within the cally denied. See B. Di Porto, “Il giornalismo ebraico in Italia. Un primo sguardo d’insieme al ‘Vessillo Israelitico’,” Materia Giudaica, VI, 1, 2001, p. 104. A similar commentary can be found in C.  Ferrara Degli Uberti, “Rappresentare se stessi tra famiglia e nazione. Il “Vessillo Israelitico” alla soglia del ‘900,” Passato e presente, XXV, n. 70, January–April 2007, p. 41. 24  See B. Di Porto, “Il giornalismo ebraico in Italia,” cit., pp. 104–105. 25  See A. Cavaglion, “Introduzione” in  G.  Levi, Autobiografia di un padre di famiglia (1868), Florence, Le Monnier, 2003 (anastatic printing), pp. XII–XIV. 26  An opposite path from the one advocated by Elia Benamozegh in a letter addressed to Samuel David Luzzatto in September 1863 and reproduced in E. Benamozegh, Scritti scelti, collected by A.  S. Toaff, Rome, La Rassegna mensile di Israel 1954, pp.  262–272 (from which the quotations are taken).

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sanctuary of the family. This, at least, is the model of life that The Jewish Banner proposed to its readers. The practical realization of such a model, however, was as complex as it was improbable, considering the changing times and the external pressures Jewish families were under. According to The Jewish Banner, every single “Israelite” should exercise a rigid separation between public and private life: as Italian citizens, they could freely enjoy all the rights and opportunities that their new status offered, but as Jews, they had the strict duty to keep their domestic lives far from any new emotions and ideas. Private life should be sealed off in an atemporal dimension, suspended in a space that was entirely dedicated to tradition and religious observance. This approach to life did not adequately take into account the climate of secularization that had pervaded all of Italian society for the past quarter century, including the Jewish community, which played an integral part in Italian society. The return to strict observance, to a style of family life that was rigidly structured around the norms dictated by tradition, fundamentally presupposed the presence and collaboration of women. Women were the essential element for family cohesion, given that conserving and guaranteeing religious and cultural inheritance was a responsibility delegated to women, most importantly through the education of their children. The Jewish world entrusted women with the difficult task of combatting the threat of its disintegration. But the equilibrium that female Jewish identity relied upon had not undergone the process of emancipation without being shaken. Although the family continued to represent the center point of existence for Jewish women—as for all women in that time period generally—the Jewish woman’s world at the end of the nineteenth century was in the difficult situation of having to contend with a double process of evolution: women were required to formulate a balance between two identities, the Jewish and the female, both of which were undergoing dramatic change. Women, at least initially, lived their experience of emancipation indirectly, when the work or scholastic endeavors of members of their families brought them into more direct contact with the external world. The family therefore had lost some of its connotations as haven, a place of emotional refuge from external humiliations; consequently, the daily practices that regulated and gave value to female existence during the years of closure in the ghetto assumed a different meaning. New models and rhythms of life were introduced to the protective familial sphere of yesteryear, which affected traditions, particularly those traditions that were

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understood as a code of behavior with which every moment of domestic life must comply. These required the constant effort and attention of women so that every detail of the family’s material organization and spiritual management was in complete conformity with religious and cultural dictates. That the family took priority in the daily life of Jewish women undoubtedly remained undisputed, but the role that women played within the family structure and the quality of the time that they dedicated to certain traditional pursuits were destined to change. As for women who entered the middle class, the solid economic position that they enjoyed allowed them to relegate the management of the household and, to a degree, caring for the children to others. Middle-class women could therefore dedicate a greater amount of time to the activities and commitments that their status required, rather than to religious practice. There were other factors external to the Jewish world that contributed to the growing crisis of the traditional model of femininity: Jewish women entered into Italian society at the end of the 1800s, the same time that organizations and movements were uniting in order to promote female emancipation, as well as the time when the revision of the principles and content of women’s role and presence in private and public life were being debated and reevaluated.27 In the Jewish community, these early attempts by women to affirm themselves as autonomous subjects within the family and within society were seen as a serious threat not only to the stability of the model 27  For an overview of the Italian female reality relative to emancipation see F. Pieroni Bortolotti, Alle origini del movimento femminile in Italia. 1848–1892; Turin, Einaudi, 1975, (second edition); Id., Socialismo e questione femminile in Italia. 1892–1922, Milan, Mazzotta, 1974. A. Buttafuoco, “Condizione delle donne e movimento di emancipazione femminile,” in Storia della società italiana, v. XX, L’Italia di Giolitti, Milan, Teti, 1981, pp. 145–185; Id., “Tra cittadinanza politica e cittadinanza sociale. Progetti ed esperienze del movimento politico delle donne nell’Italia liberale,” in Il dilemma della cittadinanza. Diritti e doveri delle donne, edited by G.  Bonacchi, and A.  Groppi, Rome-Bari, 1993, pp.  104–127; Id., Questioni di cittadinanza. Donne e diritti sociali nell’Italia liberale, Florence, Protagon editori toscani, 1997; M.  De Giorgio, Le italiane dall’Unità ad oggi, Rome-Bari, Laterza, 1992; C. Gori, Crisalidi. Emancipazioniste liberali in età giolittiana, Milan, Franco Angeli, 2003; L. Gazzetta, Orizzonti nuovi. Storia del primo femminismo in Italia (1865–1925), Rome, Viella, 2018. On the subject of the evolution of the family in Italy, see M. Barbagli, Sotto lo steso tetto, Bologna, Il Mulino, 1984; La famiglia italiana dall’Ottocento ad oggi, edited by P. Melograni, Rome-Bari, Laterza, 1988; Storia della famiglia italiana. 1750–1950, edited by M. Barbagli and D. Kertzer, Bologna, Il Mulino, 1992; Percorsi e modelli familiari in Italia tra ‘700 e ‘900, edited by F.  Mazzonis, Rome, Bulzoni, 1997, with an essay by T. Catalan on I Morpurgo di Trieste. Una famiglia ebraica fra emancipazione e tradizione (1848–1915), pp. 165–186.

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of womanhood, which the Jewish community believed should be immutable across time, but also as a threat to the religious and cultural integrity of the family and to the entire structure of Judaism, which had already been sorely tested by the emancipatory process. Pro-emancipatory movement was acquiring visibility, equipped with an independent press through which it attempted to educate women to a greater level of self-awareness and a greater understanding of their condition, their rights, and their responsibilities. This press was modest in its cultural reach, with publications of limited circulation, which were affordable only for a minority of the female world, most of whom were middle class.28 This new reality obliged the Jewish community to adapt to the changing times in some ways and to adopt more efficient methods to avert the danger that women would surrender to the allures of emancipation and abandon a lifestyle that was in harmony with tradition. To give greater credibility and focus to its message, The Jewish Banner decided to entrust itself to the pens of women, not a trifling innovation for the Jewish press. It is true that in 1855, in The Jewish Educator’s columns, the Rabbi Samuele Ghiron favorably received the announcement of Julienne Bloch’s participation with The Jewish Universe (L’Univers israélite). In fact, Ghiron had asked why female creativity must be limited only to needlework and not include expression “with the pencil, paintbrush, and pen.” Artistic creativity did not necessarily impede women from being good wives and mothers, for why “should we refuse…a stone for the great edifice of science merely because it is offered by a delicate, tender hand?”29 Praise like Ghiron’s for this kind of progress was sporadic30 and was reserved for exceptional figures like Julienne Bloch,31 rather than expressing  See A. Buttafuoco, Cronache femminili. Temi e momenti della stampa emancipazionista in Italia dall’unità al fascismo, Arezzo, Dipartimento di studi storico-sociali, 1988, p. 21. Between 1868 and 1876 several periodicals appeared dealing with the condition of women including La Donna (1868) directed by Gualberta Alaide Beccari, L’Aurora (1872), directed by Adele Woena, La Cornelia (1872), directed by Aurelia Cimino Foliero De Luna, La Missione della donna (1874), directed by Olimpia Saccati Mencato, La Donna (1876), directed by Adolfo Scander Levi. 29  S. Ghiron, “Bibliografia. Lettres parisiennes par Julienne Block,” (sic), E.I.. III, April 1855, pp. 116–117. 30  See the reaction of S. Ghiron, “Discorso letto dalla maestra Adele Levi per la distribuzione degli attestati alle allieve dell’Istituto Femminile Israelitico,” E.I., XVI, August 1868, p. 252. 31  Julienne Bloch (1833–1868) was the eldest daughter of Simon Bloch (1810–1879), founder and director of the L’Univers israélite. Julienne, who boasted an excellent religious 28

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a view that women should all be allowed to access a space outside of the domestic sphere. Rather than a recognition of women’s right to speak openly, this praise was more an attempt to direct the changes occurring among the female Jewish population. At the same time, the journalistic efforts of women seemed to pursue different goals from those of their French coreligionists. In her first contribution to The Jewish Universe, Julienne Bloch exhorted her female coreligionists not to remain silent spectators in men’s debates about women: In newspapers and books, they debate about our rights and our duties, our mission in the temple and the home, our emancipation and our minority status and we do not have a single word to say about all of these important issues that affect us so closely! Are we then like ill patients, surrounded by doctors who proclaim our death or our life but have no right to meddle in their prognosis? In France our entire role within Judaism seems to consist of asking for alms in the temple, or selling tickets for charity raffles, … and keeping quiet. … We are angels as long as we use our wings to collect the scattered coins that have fallen from the purses of the wealthy; we are female intellectual bas-bleus if we want use those wings to lift ourselves beyond the paternal or marital walls.32 and secular education, was among the first women to write in Jewish journals, gaining visibility in the public sphere, and one of the first teachers to give religious courses to Jewish girls. In her column “Lettres d’une Parisienne” she  pled the cause of offering a solid religious education for girls and a more meaningful presence for women in worship and the community. To this end, at the beginning of the 1860s she and her sister Pauline directed a school for Jewish girls in Paris, where the girls received an advanced level of religious instruction, “base de toute éducation israélite” (the basis of all Jewish education). This was accompanied by a serious “secular” teaching with the twofold aim of making of the girls “dignes membres du culte et de la sociéte” (worthy members of the religion and society). See “Institution israélite de Jeunes Demoiselles,” L’Univers Israélite, XVII, n.1, September, 1861, pp. 47–48. On Julienne Bloch, see the biographical outline by M. Bitton, Présences féminines juives en France. XIXe- XXe siècles. Cent itinéraires, Châteauneuf, 2 M éditions, 2002, pp. 190–192. 32  J. Bloch, “Lettres d’une Parisienne,” L’Univers israélite, v. 9, n. 11, July 1854, p. 482. “Dans les journaux et dans les livres, on discute sur nos droits et sur nos devoirs, sur notre mission dans le temple et dans la maison, sur notre émancipation et notre état de minorité et nous n’aurions pas le moindre mot à dire sur toutes ces graves questions qui nous touchent de si près! Sommes-nous donc des malades, entourées de médecins qui se prononcent sur notre vie et notre mort sans que nous ayons le droit de nous mêler de leur consultation! En France, tout notre rôle dans le judaïsme semble consister à faire des quêtes dans le temple, à placer les billets des loteries de bienfaisance et…à nous taire.…Nous sommes des anges tant que nous employons nos ailes à ramasser quelques pièces d’or tombées de la bourse des

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This challenging tone is completely absent from the articles by R. L., an anonymous female journalist who began to contribute regularly to The Jewish Banner at the end of the 1870s. Indeed, her first articles dispelled any doubt as to her desire to position herself as a voice of innovation. With her pedantic and prescriptive prose, R. L. revealed that her clear intent was to remain on the same plane as the rest of the journal and act as spokeswoman for the same bourgeois values.

Women’s Work and Women’s Duties in the Jewish Banner In 1879 a column appeared in The Jewish Banner under the title “Considerations of a Woman” (Considerazioni di una donna). The unknown author immediately showed herself to be a faithful spokeswoman for the most traditional values, echoing the dominant mentality. Her views would find support in positivist science and ideological alibis, removed from any reevaluation of the role and image of women, anchored in stereotypes that reinforced the ideal of women existing only within the walls of the home. In one of her first articles, R. L. aimed her first darts at those who encouraged the presence of women in those areas that were typically considered masculine realms, accusing them of distorting feminine nature, which was completely different from masculine nature in habits, aspirations, and desires. To imagine a future for a woman as an office worker, a lawyer, a journalist, or anything else was a ridiculous utopian dream if not an act of violence, because snatching her from the secure walls of her home to cast her forth into the jumble of society was to condemn her to an immoral life. “A woman needs a life of tranquility and love, indeed, a domestic life. In the home, she is the queen. In the world, she corrupts and is corrupted.”33 This disdain and alarm was excessive and unjustified, particularly when considered against the timid and uncertain steps with which Italian society at the time was moving toward conceding that women should be allowed to participate in the social and cultural life of the nation. As for the presence of women in the universities, post-Unification legislation was hardly consistent. The Royal Decree of October 3, 1875, signed by Minister Ruggero Bonghi (1826–1895), allowed women access riches; nous sommes des bas-bleus quand nous voulons nous élever avec ces ailes au-dessus du toit paternel ou conjugal.” 33  R.L., “L’emancipazione della donna,” V.I., XXVII, fasc. XII, December 1879, p. 373.

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to certain departments, but the persistence of deep-rooted prejudices in society, like those in the family, prevented the provision from producing high enrollments of women in university courses,34 which in many cases would have required young female students to move away from their places of residence. The principal barrier was, however, within the scholastic organization itself, which excluded women at the post-primary and secondary school levels, thus depriving them of the diplomas necessary for going on to the higher levels of study.35 Only in 1883, after overcoming the impasse of uncertain and contradictory legislation, were women granted the right to attend high schools and technical schools. Similarly, regarding her article “Women in Court,” it is unclear to what specific case R.  L was referring. The 1874 law regarding professions, and more specifically article 9, established that every citizen had the right to practice the legal profession. Because the text of the law did not contain any specific reference to the sex one had to belong to in order to benefit under the law, it appeared that women were also allowed to become lawyers. In reality, the Civil Code of 1865 included norms that designated the legal inability of women to carry out autonomous economic activities, thus precluding women from undertaking the profession of attorney. In this regard, the case of the Waldese Lidia Poët (1855–1949), who completed her degree 34  See V. Ravà, “Le laureate in Italia”, Bollettino Ufficiale del Ministero della Pubblica Istruzione, (Bumpi), XXIX, April 1902, pp. 634–641. Ravà highlighted the slow pace and delay in women’s access to the University. Female graduates, who had been completely nonexistent until 1877, were an exception until 1893: between 1877 and 1900, 257 degrees were awarded to women, 219 of which were awarded in the final seven years of the century. Taking into account those who had obtained a double degree, (31 out of 257), it is clear that the presence of women in the University had a strongly elitist character. See Le donne a scuola. L’educazione femminile nell’Italia dell’Ottocento, edited by I. Porciani, Florence, Il Sedicesimo, 1987, pp. 198–199. 35  See S. Ulivieri, “La donna e gli studi universitari nell’Italia postunitaria,” in Cento anni di università. L’istruzione superiore in Italia dall’Unità ai nostri giorni, edited by F. De Vivo and G. Genovesi, Naples, Esi, 1986, p. 224–226; T. Pironi, “La coeducazione dei sessi. Un emergente problema educativo e scolastico nell’età giolittiana,” in Educazione al femminile. Una storia da scoprire, edited by S. Ulivieri, Milan, Guerini Scientifica, 2007, p. 161–162. On the subject of women’s access to higher education and liberal professions, see M. Raicich, “Liceo, università, professioni: un percorso difficile,” in L’educazione delle donne. Scuole e modelli di vita femminile nell’Italia dell’Ottocento, edited by S. Soldani, Milan, Franco Angeli, 1989, p. 147–181; S. Polenghi, “’Missione naturale’, istruzione ‘artificiale’ ed emancipazione femminile. Le donne e l’università tra Otto e Novecento,” in L’altra metà della scuola. Educazione e lavoro delle donne tra Otto e Novecento, edited by Id. and C. Ghizzoni, Milan, Educat, 2016, pp. 283–311.

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in jurisprudence in 1883, is emblematic. In a display of the most confirmed prejudices, the ruling by the Turin Court of Appeals of 1883 denied her the right to practice the legal profession.36 Only in 1919 after the changes in mindset brought about by the Great War were women allowed to work as lawyers.37 The line of demarcation, however, was not that clear between the affirmations of R. L. and the considerations that developed in the atmosphere of female emancipation, which was certainly unpopular with the journalist. Whenever in the world would we recommend sending wives and mothers into the public square, into the courtroom, Parliament, the Chamber of Deputies, to leave her husband and her father within the domestic walls to carry out those duties that are not and cannot be his? Whenever in the world would we endeavor to estrange the soul of a woman from her lofty callings at the heart of her family? Is not our intent rather to prepare a young girl to be a true daughter, a true citizen, a true wife, and a true mother? And in order that she can become such, is it not appropriate that we earnestly think to elevate her condition?38  “It would be disgraceful and ugly to see women descend into the courtroom, to agitate themselves in the midst of public court arguments, to become heated in discussions that easily become extreme, and in which even, in spite of themselves, they could be drawn beyond the limits that the gentler sex would be better suited to observe.” The opinion can be found in its entirety in R. Canosa, Il giudice e la donna. Cento anni di sentenze sulla condizione femminile in Italia, pp. 27–28. On the “Poët case” see also, M. Fioravanzo, “Sull’autorizzazione maritale. Ricerche intorno alla condizione giuridica della donna nell’Italia unita,” Clio, XXX, n. 4, October–December 1994, pp. 641–725.; M. De Giorgio, “Donne e professioni,” in Storia d’Italia, Annali 10, I professionisti, edited by M. Malatesta, Turin, Einaudi, 1996, pp. 463–469; C. Bounus, “Lidia Poët: una valdese impegnata nei diritti civili tra Ottocento e Novecento,” in Le donne delle minoranze. Le ebree e le protestanti d’Italia,  edited by C. Honess and V. Jones, Turin, Claudiana, 1999, pp. 255–261. On the widely debated question of “women lawyers” see F. Tacchi, Gli avvocati italiani dall’Unità alla Repubblica, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2002, pp. 262–303; Id. Eva togata: donne e professioni giuridiche in Italia dall’Unità a oggi, Torino, UTET, 2009. On women’s struggle to enter the legal profession in the wider European context, see J. C. Albisetti, “Portia ante Portas: Women and the Legal Profession in Europe,” Journal of Social History, 33, n. 4, Summer 2000, pp. 825–857. 37  Ivi, pp. 294–299. For an overview of the legal status of women in post-unification Italy, see M.G. Manfredini, “Evoluzione della condizione giuridica della donna nel diritto pubblico,” in L’emancipazione femminile in Italia, Florence, Società Umanitaria, 1963, pp.  171–193; A. M. Galoppini, Il lungo viaggio verso la parità. I diritti civili e politici delle donne dall’Unità ad oggi, Bologna, Zanichelli, 1980; M. Fioravanzo, “Sull’autorizzazione maritale”, cit.. 38  C. Levi, “Alle mie sorelle,” La Donna, III, n. 134, 6 November 1870, p. 534. Cesira Levi had made her first journalistic-literary debut in 1868, on the pages of L’Educatore Italiano edited by Cesare Cantù (1804–1895), with the publication of a drama and some 36

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It was in these terms that Cesira Levi, a teacher from Mantua and coreligionist of R. L., some years earlier had responded to criticisms aimed at the pro-emancipation movement by an unidentified female writer. Levi’s rejoinder appeared in the pages of Woman (La Donna), one of the first periodicals and the most important in promoting emancipation, founded in 1866 by the feminist and fervent supporter of Giuseppe Mazzini, Gualberta Alaide Beccari (1842–1906).39 Her coreligionist, Erminia Diena, echoed Levi’s views in the pages of The Dawn (L’Aurora) in 1873: “Woman … was born to live in the sanctuary of the family, and she must be the guardian angel of the home, and by wanting to point her to a different mission from the one for which she was created, she would leave her natural habitat.”40 The project of emancipation included no subversive design to turn women from their sacred duties. On the contrary, the woman as mother was a powerful paradigm. Rather, the idea was to tip the scales regarding

short stories (mostly focused on female figures) and four Lettere. In one of these, “Norme d’insegnamento della Geografia da adottarsi nelle classi elementari”, had defined teaching (Cesira was a primary school teacher) “the most useful” and “the most sublime occupation.” L’Educatore Italiano XIII, n. 6, 11 February 1869, p. 44. In 1869 she contributed “Lettere pedagogiche” to La Famiglia (The Family), a Florentine periodical directed by Teresa Mannucci De Gubernatis (1832–1893) (see “Consigli a un’amica sull’educazione della figlia,” La Famiglia I, n.10, 6 March 1869, p. 39). In 1870 she published “Emancipation of Women” in La Favilla, a political journal published in Mantua, and directed by the patriot Paride Suzzara Verdi (1826–1879). In the article, she defended women’s right to free choice in the intellectual and work field, a theme that was later taken up in her article published in La Donna. See “Emancipazione della donna,” La Favilla. V., n. 163, 9 July, 1870, pp. 655–657. 39  On the figure of Gualberta Alaide Beccari, and the periodical La Donna, see F. Pieroni Bortolotti, Alle origini del movimento femminile in Italia, cit., pp.  116–127; B. Pisa, Venticinque anni di emancipazione femminile in Italia, Gualberta Alaide Beccari e la rivista ‘la Donna’ 1868–1890, Quaderni della Fiap, n. 42, (no date); G. Biadene, “Solidarietà e amicizia: il gruppo de ‘La Donna’,” DWF, n. 10–11, January–June 1979, pp.  48–79; A. Buttafuoco, Cronache femminili. Temi e momenti della stampa emancipazionista in Italia dall’Unità al fascismo, Arezzo, Department of Social-Historical Studies, 1988, pp. 25–41; M. Schwegman, Gualberta Alaide Beccari, Pisa, Edizioni Offset Grafica, 1996; L. Gazzetta and M. T. Sega, “Movimenti di emancipazione: reti, iniziative, rivendicazioni (1866–1914),” in Donne sulla scena pubblica. Società e politica in Veneto tra Sette e Ottocento, edited by N.M. Filippini, Milan, Franco Angeli, 2006, pp. 142–151. 40  E.  Diena, “Sull’emancipazione della donna,” L’Aurora, II, n. 11, 15 November, 1873, p. 500.

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maternity in favor of motherhood’s “emancipatory potential,”41 namely, recognizing its high social value.42 As the educators of future citizens, women played an important role in the construction of the new State and therefore had the right to claim the spiritual and educational tools necessary for the fulfillment of that role, including the instruction and training befitting their calling. “How can a woman living in degradation understand the importance of her duties and fulfill them whole-heartedly without any effort?”43 Cesira Levi queried, referring to the morally and intellectually deficient education and instruction available to women. “See to it that a woman is well-taught, that her heart is educated to virtue, and then you shall see how much good she can do in society as a daughter, as a wife, and as a mother,” Erminia Diena affirmed. Though approaching the issue of emancipation from a more moderate stance, Diena held that it was an act of justice to open the doors of humanistic and scientific knowledge to women, particularly to those who, due to their social class and their own intellectual gifts could “elevate themselves above others.” She believed that women would possibly choose to scale the peaks of medical knowledge for the noble cause of healing their sisters.44 In any case, Diena added, consecrating themselves exclusively to the family did not mean walling themselves up inside the home and caring only for domestic tasks. A woman also needed to dedicate her time to study, music, art—in short, to everything that could elevate her spiritually and intellectually. But regarding “civil assignments,” Erminia Diena aligned herself with positions very similar to those of the conservative R. L., in the name of a feminine nature whose appointed place was the family, not the courtroom or the Chamber of Deputies.45 Cesira Levi, on the other hand, had developed a decidedly more progressive viewpoint. She denounced the “barbarity” of constraining women to express their talents only within the profession of teaching, thus depriving them of the freedom that men enjoyed in choosing their profession: “A professional 41  A. Bravo, “La Nuova Italia: madri fra oppressione ed emancipazione,” in Storia della maternità, edited by M. D’Amelia, Rome-Bari, Laterza, 1997, p. 142. 42   On the valorization of motherhood according to emancipationist opinion, see A. Buttafuoco, Cronache femminili. Temi e momenti della stampa emancipazionista in Italia dall’unità al fascismo, cit., especially p. 44; Id., “‘In servitù regine’. Educazione ed emancipazione nella stampa politica femminile,” in L’Educazione delle donne, cit., pp. 363–391. 43  C. Levi, “Alle mie sorelle,” cit., p. 534. 44  E. Diena, “Sull’emancipazione della donna,” cit., pp. 499–500. 45  Ivi, pp. 500–501.

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woman, is that not the same, identical thing whether she is in a schoolroom or a courtroom?”46 Just a few months prior to the appearance of R. L’s opinion in the pages of The Jewish Banner, Nina Modona Olivetti (1817–1904), an “ardent proponent of female emancipation”47 and Paris correspondent for Woman (La Donna), asserted that there was no direct cause-and-effect relationship between a woman’s public activities and a home life in disarray; rather, this argument was adopted as a “weak excuse” to deprive women of the rights that were their due. “There is time enough for everything if one knows how to use it intelligently.” As for the needed improvements in women’s education, Modona Olivetti polemically maintained that improvements would make sense only if women were also granted citizenship, which women lived now through an intermediary as mere shadows of male citizenship. What purpose does it serve to educate a woman if she herself is deprived of every civil right? If, when married, she is always considered to be a perpetual juvenile before the law, would it not make her enslavement more unbearable? I do not want women to govern the world, but that they be allowed to govern themselves, to manage their own property, to direct their own families, things that are now forbidden to them under the current laws.48  C. Levi, “Alle mie sorelle,” cit., p. 534.  O. Greco, Bibliografia femminile italiana del XIX secolo, Venice, Presso i Principali librai d’Italia, 1875, p. 368. 48  N. Modona Olivetti, “Delle condizioni della donna in una società in piena democrazia,” La Donna, XI, n. 8, May 6,  1879, pp. 113–114. Born in Livorno, after the marriage and the birth of her daughters, Nina Modona Olivetti moved to Paris where she worked as an artist, writer, and journalist. Between 1874 and 1884, Nina contributed regularly to La Donna with her reports on the most important cultural events in the capital, without, however, forgetting to include careful observations regarding the condition of women. See A. Keilhauer, “Un regard transculturel sur le journalisme féministe. (France et Italie, seconde moitié du XIX siècle),” in Les femmes entre violences et stratégies de liberté. Maghreb et Europe du Sud, edited by C. Vauvy, M. Rollinde, M. Azzoug, Saint-Dénis, Éditions Bouchène, 2004, pp. 57–68. See also F.S., “Una illustre italiana a Parigi,” V.I. XL, fasc.I, January 1892, pp. 9–10. In her capacity as correspondent, she was part of the Italian delegation at the First International Women’s Congress held in Paris from 25 July to 10 August, 1878. See F.  Pieroni Bortolotti, Alle origini del movimento femminile in Italia, cit., p.  148. In the article referred to above, Modona Olivetti decried how in France, middle-class women were still considered “a luxury object” and how many of them were not yet aware of the “vileness of their condition.” Modona Olivetti referred in particular to the noose of marital authority (Article 217 of the Napoléon Code) by which her Italian sisters were also dangled. On the model of the Napoleonic Code, the Civil Code of the Kingdom of Italy of 1865 had introduced the principle of marital authority (Article 134), which sanctioned the legal inability of 46 47

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Cesira Levi, Erminia Diena, and Nina Modona Olivetti were not the only Jewish women engaged in the effort to improve the condition of women. In the pro-emancipation periodicals of the time, articles authored by Jewish women were not a rarity. In the careful but not exhaustive list of female “Israelite” writers and the works they produced and published in part in various journals and periodicals recorded in 1875 by The Jewish Banner,49 alongside their names are listed Carolina Coen Luzzatto (1837–1919),50 married women to participate in commercial and professional activity or management of marital property. This principle, provided for by all the French-inspired laws of the nineteenth century, heavily conditioned women’s lives even outside the family, since access to professions, and therefore autonomy, depended on the husband’s will. See M. Fioravanzo, “Sull’autorizzazione maritale,” cit.; G. Galeotti, “L’autorizzazione maritale nel primo codice civile unitario: un istituto ‘estraneo’alla tradizione italiana?,” Dimensioni e problemi della ricerca storica, n.2, 2005, pp. 155–182. On the question of marital authority, there are a few references in: P. Ungari, Storia del diritto di famiglia, cit., pp. 162–163; C. Saraceno, “Le donne nella famiglia: una complessa costruzione giuridica,” in Storia della famiglia italiana, cit., pp. 110–111; S. Rodotà, “Le libertà e i diritti,” in Storia dello Stato italiano dall’Unità a oggi, edited by R. Romanelli, Rome, Donzelli, 1995, pp.  305–306. As for the right to administer one’s own property, a subject also mentioned by Erminia Diena (“Sull’emancipazione della donna”, cit., p.  500), from medieval to modern times Jewish women had enjoyed greater autonomy than Catholic women. See G. Todeschini, “Osservazioni sul patrimonio femminile ebraico alla fine del Medioevo,” in Padre e figlia, edited by L. Accati, M. Cattaruzza, M. Verzer-Bass, Turin, Rosenberg & Sellier, 1994, pp.  31–40; L. Allegra, Identità in bilico. Il ghetto ebraico di Torino nel Settecento, Turin, Zamorani, 1996, pp. 165–208. See also C. Galasso, Alle origini di una comunità. Ebree ed ebrei a Livorno nel Seicento, Florence, Olschki, 2002. 49   “Bibliografia femminile israelitica italiana,” V.I.,  XXIII, fasc. VIII, August 1875, pp. 234–238. The list presented by the journal was taken in part from O. Greco, Bibliografia femminile italiana del XIX secolo, Mondovì, Tipografia Gio Issoglio, 1875. 50  Born in Trieste, Carolina Sabbadini married Girolamo Coen Luzzatto (hence her move to Gorizia), brother of Leone, maternal grandfather of Carlo Michelstaeder. A children’s writer, Carolina distinguished herself mainly for her journalistic activity which culminated in the collaboration and then the direction of the Corriere di Gorizia (1883–1899). On the pages of this periodical Carolina gave voice to her fervent irredentism that came to assume a tone of a violent anti-Slavism. See T. Catalan, “Linguaggi e stereotipi dell’antislavismo irredentista dalla fine dell’Ottocento alla Grande Guerra,” in Fratelli al massacro. Linguaggi e narrazioni della Prima guerra mondiale, edited by Id., Rome, Viella, 2015, pp. 59–63; Id., “The Construction of the Enemy in two Jewish Writers: Carolina Coen Luzzatto and Enrica Barzilai Gentilli,” in The Construction of the Enemy in two Jewish Writers: Carolina Coen Luzzatto and Enrica Barzilai Gentilli, in Rethinking the Age of Emancipation. Comparative and Transnational Perspectives on Gender, Family, and Religion in Italy and Germany 1800–1918, edited by M. Baumaster, P. Lenhard, R. Nattermann, New YorkOxford, Berghahn Books, 2020, pp. 353–375. On Carolina Luzzatto see R. Curci and G. Ziani, Bianco, Rosa e Verde. Scrittrici a Trieste fra ‘800 e ‘900, Trieste, Lint, 1993, pp. 187–190 and D. Redivo, “Segni d’insofferenza: dal mito asburgico al mito irredentista,” in Il segno degli Asburgo.

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Eugenia Pavia Gentilomo (1822–1893),51 and Fanny Tedeschi,52 all contributors to Woman. Not all of their writings dealt with the debate over Oggetti e simboli dalla regalità al Quotidiano, Exhibition Catalogue, Gorizia and Cormons, 14 March-17 June 2001, Gorizia, Musei provinciali, 2001, pp. 111–112. M. del Bianco, “Luzzatto Coen Carolina,” in Nuovo Liruti. Dizionario Biografico dei Friulani, 3, L’età Contemporanea, edited by C. Scalon, C. Griggio and G. Bergamini, Udine, Forum, 2011, pp. 1986–1989. 51  Described as “Israelite in every way,” by R.L. in “Le donne poetesse”, “V.I., XXIX, fasc. VIII, August 1881, pp. 247. Born in Milan in 1822, Eugenia Pavia Gentilomo Fortis was a poet and translator. At the suggestion of Samuel David Luzzatto, with whom she had regular correspondence (see: S. D. Luzzatto, Epistolario italiano francese latino, 2 vol. Padua, Tip. alla Minerva dei fratelli Salmin, 1890), Eugenia worked on the translation of numerous Jewish poems of the Middle Ages. “If there is one writer who has applied her great intelligence to the beauty of our poems, it is Eugenia Pavia Gentilomo,” F.S.  “Eugenia Pavia Gentilomo Fortis (necrologio),” V.I., XLII, fasc. I, January 1894, pp. 29–30. 52  Before contributing to La Donna (after 1875), Fanny Tedeschi, daughter of Abramo Tedeschi who was the editor of La Favilla (1863–1864), a literary journal with liberal, secular, anti-Austrian ideological leanings (see S. Monti Orel, I giornali triestini dal 1863 al 1902, Trieste, Lint, 1976, pp. 47–48) was a member of the editorial staff of Libertà e lavoro, a periodical founded in 1867 and directed by Giuseppe Caprin from Trieste after 1868. Caprin not only took an interest in issues related to the proletariat, the education of the poor and education, but also addressed the issue of women’s emancipation. See R. Curci and G. Ziani, Bianco, Rosa e Verde, cit., p. 71. The list drawn up by The Jewish Banner did not include all the names of the women who collaborated with the emancipationist press. The anonymous editor of the bibliography also dedicated a few words to Erminia Fuà Fusinato (1834–1876), poet, scholar, and pedagogue, also a contributor to La Donna, though from a more conservative position. Like her coreligionist Eugenia Pavia Gentilomo, Erminia Fuà Fusinato authored poetic compositions along patriotic themes (see L. Gazzetta, “Figure e correnti dell’emancipazionismo post-unitario,” in Donne sulla scena pubblica. Società e politica in Veneto tra Sette e Ottocento, edited by  N.M. Filippini, Milan, Franco Angeli, 2006, p.  152). Erminia Fuà converted to Catholicism in 1856  in order to marry the patriot Arnaldo Fusinato, a man of letters with whom she had shared revolutionary activity. (See N. M. Filippini, “Donne sulla scena politica: dalle Municipalità del 1797 al Risorgimento,” in ivi. p. 125). “We would have gladly claimed Fuà Fusinato for she was born ours: but love stole her from us and her writings and her name, deservedly celebrated, we applaud with all our heart, but with a sorrowful heart.” “Bibliografia femminile israelitica italiana,” cit., p. 238. As Gabriella Romani points out, the conversion of Erminia Fuà Fusinato arose from a practical necessity. Before 1861 there was no civil marriage. Conversion was therefore the only means by which the Jewish partner of a religiously mixed couple could get married and obtain official registration of the marriage. Fuà Fusinato never embraced the Catholic religion (her husband was devoutly anticlerical), nor did she ever sever ties with Judaism, which played an important role in her private and professional life, as Romani has shown. See G. Romani, “Erminia Fuà Fusinato: A Jewish Patriot in Rome (1871–1876),” in The New Italy and the Jews. From Massimo D’Azeglio to Primo Levi, edited by J. Druker and L.S. Lerner, Annali di Italianistica, vol. 36, 2018, p. 154-174. On the figure of Erminia Fuà Fusinato, see M. C. Leuzzi, Erminia Fuà Fusinato. Una vita in altro modo, Rome, Anicia, 2008; M. T. Mori, “Figlie d’Italia. Poetesse patriote nel Risorgimento (1821-1861),” Rome, Carocci, 2011, N. M. Filippini, “Erminia Fuà Fusinato, ‘La poetessa del cuore’,” in L’altra metà del Risorgimento. Volti e voci di patriote venete, edited by Id. and L. Gazzetta, Verona, Cierre, 2012, pp.  63–65; Id., “Amor di patria e pratiche di disciplinamento. Erminia Fuà

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emancipation. Frequently, their articles were of literary, historical, or pedagogical interest. These articles also attested to their authors’ connection to a new discourse on femininity, as well as a new desire to support a journal with more advanced positions in comparison to other pro-­emancipation periodicals of the time. Beccari’s journal claimed a different position for women in the family and in society, supported an education that would grant women access to practice professions, and opposed finding economic autonomy through recourse to a loveless marriage, which she referred to an economic proposition. Woman discussed issues such as the abolition of the husband’s authorization for his wife’s civil actions, divorce, a woman’s right to verify paternity,53 and the right to vote. In sum, “simply pronouncing” all those women’s rights “was in itself a revolutionary concept.”54 The participation of Jewish women at this first stage in the process of the construction of Italian womanhood was clearly a reflection of the far greater contribution that Jewish men had offered in this same period of constructing Italy and the Italians. This occurred thanks to the same factors that facilitated the entrance of the Jews on the national scene: their

Fusinato,” in Di generazione in generazione. Le italiane dall’Unità a oggi, edited by M. T. Mori, A. Pescarolo, A. Scattigno, S. Soldani, Rome, Viella, 2014, pp. 74–86. 53  Article 189 of the Civil Code of 1865 prohibited the investigation of paternity, except in cases “of sexual assault and violent rape, when the timing of the act corresponds to conception.” This provision guaranteed the stability and security of the property of middle-class families, whose heads of families could with impunity take advantage of their workers and servants without assuming responsibility. For unmarried mothers, women of very modest conditions and without education, the only options were abortion, abandonment of the newborn child, infanticide and suicide in the most extreme cases, and, far from infrequently, prostitution. Despite the long struggle of the women’s movement, it was only in 1975, with the new family law, that the declaration of paternity was authorized. See, S. Bartoloni, “Il movimento delle donne e la filiazione naturale nell’Italia liberale,” Genesis, XVII, n.1, 2018, pp. 81–103. 54  B. Pisa, Venticinque anni di emancipazionismo femminile, cit., p. 24. In the mid-1870s La Donna addressed the controversial subject of prostitution by launching a campaign for the repeal of the laws that regulated it. (See, G. A. Beccari, “Un dovere imprescindibile,” La Donna, VIII, n. 256, 25 May 1875, pp. 2197–2199). This initiative led some subscribers to abandon the newspaper for fear of being overwhelmed by the wave of hostile reactions that the abolitionists and La Donna were subjected to. See B. Pisa, Venticinque anni di emancipazionismo femminile, cit., pp. 29–31; A. Buttafuoco, Cronache femminili, cit. p. 22. On the abolitionist campaign, see R. Macrelli, L’indegna schiavitù. Anna Maria Mozzoni e la lotta contro la prostituzione di Stato, Rome, Editori Riuniti, 1981; M. Gibson, Prostitution and the State in Italy, 1860–1915, London, Rutgers University Press, 1986.

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higher level of education55 and their intense desire to actively participate in the life of the nation. The dedication of Jewish women to the female cause could likewise be ascribed in some measure to their cultural and religious background. Refinement, education, and the social value of motherhood were essential elements in a new  way of thinking about women that in certain ways forged a connection between emancipationist movements and the Jewish religious and cultural tradition, which for centuries had attributed a social dimension to the maternal role in addition to the moral and educational functions of motherhood. It is true that all women, regardless of their religious identity, were obliged to deal with a State and a society that were still far from recognizing their legitimacy and autonomy. However, Jewish women seemed able to draw on additional resources that rendered them culturally more prepared to understand and support women’s demands for greater rights. At the same time, R. L. and the Jewish women “on the other side” of the argument evaluated their commitment based on the same legacy of values, though their messages were directed at a different sector of the female world, who were in a different situation culturally and religiously, and their efforts were confirmed by reaching opposite goals. R. L. exhorted Jewish women to continue to evaluate their existence according to religious and cultural dictates, invoking the social value of their mission as wives and mothers, that same social value that many women still did not understand and that the women in favor of emancipation (whether Jewish or not) dedicated their actions to affirming. In short, motherhood was a collective “treasure” for R. L., one that marked Jewish difference and “separateness,” whereas for her progressive coreligionists, it represented a vehicle for their greater social integration as Jews and emancipation as women. In 1876 another voice emerged in support of the rights of women. Baron Adolfo Scander (Alessandro) Levi (1853–1912) established the new journal A Woman (La Donna) in Florence. The publication was directed at an international audience—every article was translated into multiple languages56—and claimed to function to advance “the moral and 55  In 1861 the rate of female illiteracy in Italy was 81%. See D. Marchesini, L’analfabetismo femminile nell’Italia dell’Ottocento: caratteristiche e dinamiche, in L’educazione delle donne, cit., p. 39. 56  The choice to publish in multiple languages was due not only to the cultural cosmopolitanism that characterized Florence in the 1870s (see: S. Rogari, Cultura e istruzione superiore a Firenze dall’Unità alla Grande guerra, Florence, Centro Editoriale Toscano, 1991), but also to the magazine’s founder himself. Adolfo Scander Levi was descended from a cultured

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i­ntellectual development of women” so that “they could be admitted into every endeavor, albeit material or moral,” and to demonstrate “with facts that every time a woman undertakes a noble or artistic enterprise, she distinguishes herself in every class.”57 Employing the cases of women working in public offices in other European countries58 and Italian women working in factories, as well as and wealthy family, originally from Venice, whose commercial, banking, and financial activities, even before the mid-nineteenth century, had extended beyond the borders of the peninsula into Austria, England, France, and even Egypt. Angelo Adolfo Levi (1812–1883), father of Adolfo Scander (Arabization of the name Alessandro), and his brother Giacomo Giorgio (1849–1936) reached Alexandria, where they lived from 1849 to 1861, to escape Austrian retaliation after the fall of the Republic of Venice, which they had supported. In Egypt the two brothers distinguished themselves for their successes in the economic and financial field and for their work on behalf of the Italian expatriate community, which earned them the title of Barons (in 1864). S. Schaerf, I cognomi degli ebrei d’Italia: con un’appendice su le famiglie nobili ebree d’Italia, Firenze, Casa Editrice «Israel», 1925, p. 77; P. Pellegrini, “Jews Ennobled by the Savoys,” in The New Italy and the Jews, cit., p. 312; M. Cammarata, Angeli, Margherite, Mandolini e altri Levi erranti. Una grande famiglia veneziana dal ghetto al mondo, Trieste, Lint, 2016, pp. 39–41. (Unlike Pellegrini, Cammarata gives the end of 1847 as the date of the Levi brothers’ arrival in Egypt). Back in Italy, the two brothers settled in Florence. Adolfo Scander Levi, “philanthropist and feminist,” (M. Cammarata, Angeli, Margherite, cit.,  p. 63), was also very attentive to the problem of childhood poverty. In 1884, together with other coreligionists, he promoted a society for the protection of children of all religions in Florence. Among the patrons of the new society was Enrichetta Levi (née Vivante 1858–1901), wife of Adolfo Scander. (See “Notizie Diverse. Italia. Firenze,” V.I., XXXII, fasc. 5, May 1884, p. 175). In 1890 in Florence, he founded l’Alleanza universale per l’infanzia which was intended to educate children and to urge parents to provide the best possible care for their physical and intellectual development. In 1896, by his initiative and presided over by him, the First International Children’s Congress took place, again in Florence, to promote a joint action aimed at the “physical, intellectual and moral improvement of childhood.” See G. Di Bello, “L’infanzia italiana nei progetti di legge e di riforma del secondo Ottocento,” in Itinerari nella storia dell’infanzia. Bambine e bambini, modelli pedagogici e stili educativi, edited  by C. Covato  and S. Ulivieri, Milan, Unicopli Editions, 2001, pp. 190–191. On the figure of Adolfo Scander Levi and his cultural and philanthropic activity see M. Cammarata, Angeli, Margherite, cit., pp. 63–71. On La Donna, see Giornali delle donne in Toscana. Un catalogo, molte storie (1770–1945), edited by M. T. Mori, vol. I, 1770–1897, Florence, Leo S. Olschki Editore, 2007, pp. 257–259. 57  La Direzione, “Programma,” La Donna (A. S. Levi) I, n.1, 26 December, 1876. 58  In the final decades of the nineteenth century, women were present in the French, English, and German civil service not only as teachers but also as post office employees, albeit at a modest level. In Germany the feminization of this sector occurred later: it essentially took place during the first decade of the twentieth century. On this subject, see P. Pezerat  and D. Poublan, “Femmes sans maris. Les employées des postes,” in Madame ou Mademoiselle? Itinéraires de la solitude féminine. 18e–20e siècle, edited by A. Farge and Ch. Klapisch-Zuber, Paris, Montalba, 1984, pp. 117–162; D. Bertinotti, “Carrières féminines et

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the courageous examples of female figures from the Bible such as Deborah and Esther, Levi (while remaining firm in his respect for the sanctity of the family and his aversion to masculine women)59 came out in strong support of extremist proposals that were not so different from those advanced by Beccari’s journal. Levi claimed for women not only the freedom to pursue advanced studies and to choose “that work for which she seems most fitted” but also the possibility of exercising all civil and political rights.60 They say that women do not have sufficient judgement. In France they are novelists and politicians.…In England, for example, a woman rules. God himself permitted that a woman was covered by his divine mantle.…and she was the prophetess Deborah. Another woman was born to save the people of Israel, and she was Esther.…So if God finds women worthy of being prophetesses, we would put ourselves above them to call them rare cases. And in this way, we prevent women from working.61

In this case, Jewish tradition and culture offered a starting point for those who were in favor of a female existence delineated by the principles of carrières masculines dans l’administration des postes et télégraphes à la fin du XIX siècle,” Annales ESC, 40, n. 3, May–June 1985, pp. 625–640; S. Bacharach, “La féminisation des PTT en France au tournant du siècle,” Le Mouvement social, n. 140, July–September 1987, pp. 69–87; U. D., Nienhaus, “Technological Change, the Welfare State, Gender and Real Women. Female Clerical Workers in the postal Service in Germany, France and England, 1860–1945. Report on Research project in progress,” Internationale wissenschaftliche Korrespondenz zur Geschichte der deutschen Arbeiterbewegung, Internationale wissenschaftliche Korrespondenz zur Geschichte der deutschen Arbeiterbewegung, n. 2, 1987, p. 223–230; M. Zimmeck, “Jobs for Girls: The Expansion of Clerical Work for Women, 1850–1914,” in Women’s Employment in England, 1800–1918,  edited by A. John, New York, Basic Blackwell, 1986, pp. 153–177. In Italy, the first public competition for women seeking positions as telegraph operators was announced by the Ministry of Public Works in 1873. Until that year, the presence of women in telegraph offices had been limited to widows, orphans, and the sisters of employees who were respected or who had died. Very simple tasks were usually entrusted to these female workers. See L. Savelli, Autonomia femminile e dignità del lavoro. Le postelegrafoniche, Pisa, Felici Editore, 2012, pp.  49–50. See also M. L. Odorisio, “Le impiegate del Ministero delle Poste,” in Il lavoro delle donne, edited by A. Groppi, Rome-Bari, Laterza, 1996, pp. 398–420. 59  In the emancipationist press of the time there were frequent references to the distinction between the educated woman and the “man-woman,” the latter being understood as the one who “avails oneself of emancipation to free oneself totally from the family and to take on all the vices of men.” La direzione “Programma,” La Donna, (A.  S. Levi) I, n. l, 26 December, 1876. 60  A.S.L., “Dell’emancipazione delle donne o ammissione delle donne al lavoro,” La Donna, I, n. 1, 26 December, 1876. 61  Ibidem.

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equity and justice. There was a way to merge tradition and modernity, a possibility that was completely ignored on the official level. Over an extended period of time, in the writings of an anonymous contributor to The Jewish Banner, which punctually appeared every month on the journal’s pages starting in the mid-1880s, there was rarely any change of opinion or even an attempt to accept and understand the reality and new demands placed upon Jewish women. Jewish women underwent a process of transformation that was as intense as it was complex, and invested as they were in their identities as Jews and as women, it was impossible not to view the surrounding outside world and choose instead a path of isolation. The articles by R. L., even in their generic, superficial tone, managed to portray a sufficiently exhaustive portrait of a female world that longed for a change in lifestyle and was inattentive to the duties of religious observance. The same journalist at times showed she was aware of how often a dialogue, such as the one she attempted to establish with her readers, devolved into a sterile monologue, inevitably headed toward a brick wall of disregard, if not indifference. R.  L.’s repeated appeals to Jewish mothers not to neglect their duties and to acknowledge their proper role alternated regularly with the writer’s expressions of distress over the fact that many of these mothers were not up to fulfilling the important task that Judaism had entrusted to them of the religious education of their children: I simply cannot understand how some women can forget themselves and at the same time make their children forget that faith must be declared overtly, that without nurturing certain religious practices in young, tender hearts, it is impossible for children to grow up Jewish … and if in childhood and adolescence they have not learned … to have a clear understanding of our principles, farewell to religion, farewell to doctrinal understanding.62

This observation touches on one of the problematic points in Jewish integration, namely, the difficulty of reconciling tradition and the “doctrinal understanding” with liberal individualism, which is essential to critical understanding. Despite ascertaining the changing attitudes of women, even within the family itself, R. L. did not engage in a deeper analysis of the facts or come to an understanding these new attitudes; rather, with blind obstinacy, she continued to promote a very rigid model of womanhood and to suggest to all women a rigid and schematic  R.L., “Le feste in campagna,” V.I., XXVIII, fasc. IX, September, 1880, pp. 293–294.

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organization of their time and responsibilities, which culminated in religious observation: I am a Jewish mother. I rise at 7 to take care of my children…they fulfill their religious duties for I am the one to set the example for them…once they are all at school, I take care of all the needs of the home. In human existence, order is everything…and when my children need to find their prayer books, they know where to look.63

As for married life, R. L. was aware that, most importantly, this involved men as well. Distracted by their responsibilities at work, men were even more likely than women to harbor lukewarm attitudes toward religion. She therefore urged women to call their companions back to the faith with their good examples and sweet tempers: “That indescribable sweetness that only a devout and gentle woman can give.…Let us work for this goal and we will be blessed.”64 This ideal picture of family life outlined in greater detail in R. L.’s writings, did not however, reflect reality. And while her writings were repetitive and frequently moralizing, they offer important evidence regarding the evolution of the Jewish family toward a new lifestyle. By confining tradition to an increasingly narrow space, this lifestyle ultimately demonstrated a negative influence on the religious education of Jewish children. R. L. missed no occasion to lament the unseemly practice in many families of sending their offspring to be educated in private boarding schools. This choice not only meant children were far away from their homes, risking their becoming estranged from their parents, but also involved placing children in an environment of different religious orientation. This phenomenon affected a vast number of families who were predominantly from various levels of the middle class, and it can be attributed mainly to the increased integration of the Jews into outside society. However, there were other reasons that moved parents toward educational choices that were not orthodox. The first was that not all Jewish communities could provide a school, and even when they could, these schools most often were meant for the children of economically disadvantaged families. Jewish schools were essentially “institutes for the poor,” with all of the circumstances that involved, on both an intellectual and a  R.L., “Un bilancio presuntivo,” V.I., XXIX, fasc. I, January 1881, p. 20.  R.L., “Racimoli,” V.I., XXX, fasc. IX, September 1882, pp. 285–286.

63 64

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moral level. “The level of intelligence in a classroom of poor children, taken as a whole, could not be very high.” For those who came from a family situation burdened by struggle for day-to-day subsistence, “even if gifted with natural intelligence,” it would be “difficult to develop and nurture it; extraordinary strength of will notwithstanding.” Furthermore, it was a short step from poverty to poor behavior. Among the male students in particular, “morals and virtue” were in short supply, so that “the moral atmosphere” at Jewish schools was considered “hardly very healthy.”65 Organized mainly in terms of utility, the instruction at Jewish schools focused essentially on preparing for a trade. Those who aspired to a broader educational formation would have to seek elsewhere. While it is true, as R. L. pointed out, that there were private boarding schools for boys and girls that had Jewish directors, not all families were able to afford the cost or would consent to sending their children far away to school. Hence the recourse to collegi-convitti, a designation that included categories of institutions as varied as the institutions themselves: charitable works, charity schools, lay and religious schools, and public and private schools. At the same time, especially in terms of instruction for females, the State was a “silent participant,”66 and therefore those families who could not afford a private tutor had to turn to institutions directed predominantly by staff who were not of their same religion. “Do you not think that in an environment where the Director, the teachers, the other students, are all of a different faith, one would no longer seriously consider the Jewish faith?” R. L. observed. She exhorted parents to take seriously the grave repercussions of their decisions in terms of the belief and the observance of moral and religious principles among the generation that was destined to become the future guardians of Judaism. “What can a Jewish child raised in a Catholic Boarding School remember of his faith, what principles can he profess when he enters the world, and what will he teach to his own children one day?”67 65  E.S. Artom. La scuola ebraica in Italia. Relazione letta al II Convegno giovanile ebraico (Torino 24 dicembre 1912). Florence, Tipografia Giuntina, 1913, p. 12. 66  See S. Franchini, “Gli educandati nell’Italia postunitaria,” in L’educazione delle donne. Scuole e modelli di vita femminile nell’Italia dell’Ottocento, cit., p. 58. 67  R.L., “I fanciulli nei Collegi Convitti,” V.I.,  XXVIII, fasc. II, February 1880, p.  50. Even in Jewish schools the situation was far from rosy. The choice of families was decided not so much by their desire for their children to receive an adequate Jewish education as by the material advantages they could obtain. “For our poor families it is of no importance that their children benefit from school: it is enough for them to have them out of the house for a good

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As a possible solution for this problematic issue, R.  L proposed that collegi-convitti—even those with a significant number of Jewish pupils— call for the assistance of a religion teacher “ad hoc”, paid for by the Director (and not by the parents),” R. L. clarified. This specification likely arose from a sincere desire for equity but perhaps also betrayed what little faith the anonymous journalist had in parents to undertake such an initiative. R. L. insisted that the schools must respect “in all things …, I say, in all things, the freedom of religious choice, which means that each observes the faith in which he was born, and not bend to the principles and demands of the majority.”68 While at times R. L. felt the need to appeal to both parents and subject their actions to her negative judgment without specifically blaming and enumerating each parent’s sins and individual responsibilities, it was certainly clear that the chief target of her articles was women, and her principal objective was to prevent the danger that they would succumb to the temptation of outside influences: “For the love of heaven, let us remain steadfast in our place and not be swept away by the seductions of new things! The life, the education, the faith of future generations is in our hands.”69 The model of womanhood and femininity proposed in her writings was undoubtedly narrow and restricted in its perspective. Every new possibility in a woman’s world was rejected out of hand by the author, in part due to her propensity for identifying progress with frivolity: “If we are intent on our domestic cares, we are women who dedicate heart and soul to the family; if we are intent on fads and hobbies, if we are so-called women of progress, we neglect the most important part of our mission which is to improve men, improve children, improve all those around us.”70 R.  L.’s pronouncements left little doubt as to who exactly were the “women of progress.” R. L. was referring to women in conditions of privilege: their solid economic footing and the wide network of social relations that resulted from it apparently made these women attuned to and interested in other demands that were irreconcilable with tradition and religious observance, in the author’s opinion, to the point that they would part of the day without any expense, and, what is more, to receive some subsidy in terms of money, clothing, or so forth.” This state of affairs risked negatively affecting the formation of those who would in the future direct the community intellectually and spiritually. E.S. Artom, La scuola ebraica in Italia, cit., pp. 13–14. 68  R.L., “I fanciulli nei Collegi Convitti,” cit., p. 51. 69  R.L., “Le feste in campagna,” V.I., XXVIII, fasc. IX, September, 1880, p. 294. 70  R.L., “Questioni varie,” V.I., XXVIII, fasc. I, January, 1880, p. 22.

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neglect religious practice and the education of their children. The author considered any interest or initiative that could distance women from a lifestyle that was defined by religion and familial concerns frivolous and morally unacceptable. The attitudes of modern women were not the only target for her darts: she spared no criticism for those of the female population who deserted the domestic sphere because they were prompted by the noble purpose of wanting to enhance their education and acquire the necessary tools for following a profession. The anonymous R. L. disputed “the practice…of sending girls to high school for a classical education so that one day they could become doctors, lawyers, professors, etc.”71 She considered great evils not only the relatively high enrollment of “Israelite maidens” in school but also their subsequent successes that distinguished them from their “fellow students.” Furthermore, the structure of public school required female students to attend courses alongside male students, “youngsters who are not all and not always the flower of virtue.”72 This “promiscuity” and the incompatibility of academics with the “special mission” that women were called to fulfill as wives and mothers constituted the fundamental contention R. L. cited to justify her aversion to a serious, organized intellectual program for girls: If she attends post-secondary or high school, how can she find time to undertake female duties such as sewing, crochet or such things (indispensable skills for a well-educated young woman)? It is not right to alter the order of nature. Woman was born for the home, for family affections, not to give lectures from a professor’s chair, not to argue a case in the halls of justice, or to undertake an arduous career in medicine…the human mind bends, transforms according to its occupations, duties, rights and positions, it is true, but this is always an affront to nature. And Nature will take her harsh vengeance.73

R. L. was far from being an isolated voice. Nor would it be accurate to ascribe this attitude of rejection exclusively to R. L.’s religious views. The defense of femininity (understood as the predominance of sentiment over reason), the fear that the intellectual emancipation of women would in some way compromise the institution of the family, the corrupting influence of study, and last of all, the “unbecoming promiscuity” of coeducation formed the ideological foundation in Italy at that time for those who  R.L., “Le donne alle scuole pubbliche,” V.I., XXX, fasc. XI, November 1882, p. 358.  Ibidem. 73  Ivi, p. 359. 71 72

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looked with suspicion and apprehension at the possibility that women would become independent not only culturally but also economically and legally and who endeavored to keep women in their place in a state of intellectual subordination.74 The author did indulge in one concession, namely, women’s access to the study of medicine. She maintained that as long as the schools where they studied admitted only female students, as in some foreign universities, and as long as some women were endowed with this vocation, the female contribution to medicine could be important. R.  L.’s favorable opinion was not necessarily surprising, since even in the heart of male society—which was generally averse to professional careers for women— there was little resistance to allowing women the possibility of entering into certain branches of medicine. Specifically, it was believed that women serving as pediatricians and gynecologists could be of benefit to their sisters and to children. Female patients would be more willing to confide in and be examined by someone of their own sex, and women had the “innate” capacity for love and devotion, as they proved in the family.75 74  See D. Bertoni Jovine, “Funzione emancipatrice della scuola e contributo della donna all’attività scolastica,” cit., p. 225. On the problems and debate relating to coeducation at the end of the nineteenth century and in the early twentieth century, see M.  De Giorgio, Le italiane dall’Unità ad oggi, Rome-Bari, Laterza, 1992, pp. 430–435; A. Buttafuoco, “Per un diritto. Coeducazione e identità femminile nell’emancipazionismo italiano tra Ottocento e Novecento,” in Educazione al femminile: dalla parità alla differenza, edited by E. Beseghi and V. Telmon, Florence, La Nuova Italia, 1992, p. 13–30; T. Pironi, “La coeducazione dei sessi. Un emergente problema educativo e scolastico nell’età giolittiana,” cit.; S. Soldani, “S’emparer de l’avenir: les jeunes filles dans les écoles normales et les établissements secondaires de l’Italie unifiée (1861–1911),” Pædagogica Historica, 40, n.1–2, April 2004, pp. 123–142; Id., “Chequered Routes to Secondary Education: Italy,” in Girls’ Secondary Education in the Western World from the 18thto the 20thCentury, edited by J. C. Albisetti, and J.C. Goodman, R. Roger, New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010, in particular pp. 61–65; T. Pironi, “La questione dell’istruzione secondaria ‘mista’ nel decennio bolognese de La donna (1877–1887),” in Le italiane a Bologna. Percorsi al femminile in 150 anni di storia unitaria edited by F. Tarozzi and E. Betti, Bologna, Socialmente, 2013, pp. 54–64. 75  For this reason, in the second half of the nineteenth century, in many countries medicine was the gateway through which women entered the university. The need to safeguard modesty and reaffirm the maternal role in the care of children were the basic arguments which  overcame the obstacles posed by those who opposed women’s access to university studies. In the United States, the first post-secondary school was the Female College of Medicine opened in Boston in 1848. Also in the United States, the 1870 census showed that as many as 525 women were practicing medicine. In Europe, with the exception of Germany, which for a long time maintained a hostile attitude to the matriculation of women, universities with more ancient traditions such as Cambridge, Paris, London, and St. Petersburg

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Her devotion to respectability, which was rooted in solid, bourgeois assumptions, made R.  L. unwilling to believe that women needed to become economically independent even without the threat of poverty. She also seemed to forget the social distinctions that characterized the totality of the Jewish community, and she appeared unaware that the reality for many young Jewish girls was that, without a solid family inheritance to count on, applying themselves to study was the one way to obtain a better future. A letter addressed to the director of The Jewish Banner in response to a controversial article by the journalist gave rise to an exchange of opinion that encapsulated how the same issues of female access to education and professions widely debated in Italian society were reproduced within the microcosm of the Jewish world.76 The author of the letter, Salomone Vitale, was the father of one of these young women whose future was being debated. The reaction of the indignant reader makes evident how the theoretical positions of The Jewish Banner did not correspond to the practical reality, nor consider the current tendencies developing in the Jewish community  and Italian society. Vitale responded resolutely to R. L.’s assertions: Whether it is good or bad to send girls to secondary school is not for me to decide…that sending them is an absolute evil, I deny; and I give little weight to the highly questionable reasons adopted by the author of the article. The modesty and reserve that is the adornment of women is not lost by sitting a few hours on a bench in a high school class when the girl has a good began to slowly admit women. See M. Raicich, “Liceo, università, professioni,” cit., pp. 155–156; B. Dalla Casa and F. Tarozzi, “Da “studentinnen” a “dottoresse”: la difficile conquista dell’istruzione universitaria tra ’800 e ’900,” in Alma Mater Studiorum. La presenza femminile dal XVIII al XX secolo. Ricerche sul rapporto Donna/Cultura universitaria nell’Ateneo bolognese, Bologna, Clueb, 1988, pp. 161–162; G. Vicarelli, Donne di medicina. Il percorso professionale delle donne medico in Italia, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2008, especially pp.  17–58; P. Govoni, “Challenging the Backlash: Women Science Students in Italian Universities (1870s – 2000s),” in Sciences in the Universities of Europe, Nineteenth and Twentieth centuries, edited  by A. Simões, K. Gavroglu, M.P. Diogo, Boston,  Springer, 2015 in particular pp. 72–76. For a detailed survey of women and the study of medicine in the United States and Europe, see T. N. Bonner, To the Ends of the Earth: Women’s Search for Education in Medicine, Cambridge, Massachusetts, London England, Harvard University Press, 1992. 76  See S. Soldani, “Lo Stato e il lavoro delle donne nell’Italia liberale,” Passato e presente, X, n. 24, September–December 1990, pp. 23–71 and Id., “Cittadine uguali e distinte. Donne, diritti e professioni nell’età liberale (1865–1919),” in Percorsi di lavoro e progetti di vita, edited by L. Savelli and A. Martinelli, Pisa, Felici editore, 2010, pp. 89–120.

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nature…in fact, I would dare to affirm that the very fact that these girls know that they are under scrutiny by others imposes upon them the modesty and reserve that R.L fears they are losing.77

Academic pursuits, Vitale affirmed, did not preclude the possibility that a woman would become a good mother to her family in the future, while the “essay” and “crochet” could live side by side in harmony without Nature “paying dearly or cheaply.”78 The author of the letter agreed with the columnist of The Jewish Banner regarding greater opportunities for girls to attend special schools separately from the other sex, but at the same time, he reasoned that because such institutions did not exist and economic conditions did not always allow for private institutions, it would be more damaging to deny girls adequate academic preparation. It would be even more ill-advised to require that girls dedicate themselves to intellectual activities only after having completed all the duties that their future as women required. This reasonable father further claimed the right to study for all girls, regardless of whether they were endowed with special talents: If other fathers think as I do, we only wish that our girls who are not rich can rise above the turbid mass of elementary school teachers, many of whom if they are Jewish cannot find a position; we only wish them to have a diploma with which they can find better employment of their talents and their person.79 77  S. Vitale, “Le donne alle scuole pubbliche. Risposta alla signora R.L.,” V.I., XXX, fasc XII, December 1882, p. 386. 78  Ivi, p. 387. 79   In 1859, the Casati law, decreed in Piedmont and then extended to the other regions of the Kingdom, provided for the establishment, in equal numbers, of male and female Normal Schools for the training of primary school teachers. In reality, already at the end of the 1860s, women’s schools were more numerous than men’s and so were the number of “licenses” obtained by female teachers. The high presence of female teachers testified to the demand from young female students to be able to access secondary education even if not necessarily aimed at teaching. See T. Bertilotti, “La formazione degli insegnanti e la riforma delle scuole normali,” Annali dell’educazione e dell’istituzione scolastica, 2003, 10, pp.  37–55; Id., “Normalizzare il reclutamento: lo Stato e le ‘maestre dei tempi nuovi’,” in Per le strade del mondo. Laiche e religiose fra Otto e Novecento, edited by S. Bartoloni, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2007, pp. 129–151; Id., “Protagoniste ai margini: le donne nel sistema scolastico nazionale,” Nuovi Annali della Scuola speciale per archivisti e bibliotecari, XXVI, 2012, pp.  109–122; C. Covato, “Maestre d’Italia. Uno sguardo sull’età liberale,” Storia delle donne, 8, 2012, pp. 165–184.

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The observation of this father about the difficulties for Jewish girls in finding occupation as elementary school teachers offers a point for reflection. It is well known that in the nineteenth century, the working conditions for female teachers were extremely grueling, not only due to the penurious pay—which by law was one third less than that salary paid to their male counterparts—but also due to the unhealthy environment of schoolrooms as well as the restricted social context in which they were forced to operate. The Coppino Law of 1877 had established a two-year compulsory elementary school instruction, increasing the urgency of ensuring that elementary schools had adequately prepared teaching personnel. Given the impossibility of recruiting on site, many female elementary teachers were forced to move far from their family’s place of residence and go to a village where they found themselves “strangers in their own country,” in a completely different environment in terms of mentality, lifestyle, and language, and where they were frequently met with indifference and hostility.80 First of all, the Catholic clergy viewed the teacher’s work as evidence of the “destructive” secularizing action of the State. If the teacher was young and unmarried, she was frequently frowned up by the local families and often became the target of the unwanted, inappropriate attentions of the mayor or school inspectors who did not hesitate to subject her to humiliating sexual harassment.81 A young Jewish girl, especially if she found herself teaching in some tiny country school where the dominant religion of the townspeople, being different from hers, drifted into prejudice and bigotry,82 was likely to suffer affronts to her  S. Soldani, “Maestre d’Italia,” in Il lavoro delle donne, cit., p. 372.  It was the duty and prerogative of the mayors and school inspectors to issue the certificate of morality without which a teacher could not work. See I. Porciani, “Sparsa di tanti triboli: la carriera della maestra,” in Le donne a scuola,cit., pp. 172–173. On the difficult living and working conditions of the teachers see, moreover, G. Bini, “Romanzi e realtà di maestri e maestre,” in Storia d’Italia, Annali 4, Intellettuali e potere, Torino, Einaudi, 1981, pp.  1197–1224  and, id., “La maestra nella letteratura: uno specchio della realtà,” in L’educazione delle donne. Scuole e modelli di vita femminile nell’Italia dell’Ottocento, edited by S. Soldani, Milan, Franco Angeli, 1989, pp. 331–362; L. Scaraffia, “Essere uomo, essere donna,” in La famiglia italiana dall’Ottocento ad oggi, edited by P. Melograni, Rome-Bari, Laterza, 1988, especially pp. 232–234. 82  The final decades of the nineteenth century was a season of renewed Catholic anti-­ Semitism, upheld and encouraged by the Jesuits of La Civiltà cattolica.” See A. Canepa, “Cattolici ed ebrei nell’Italia liberale,” Comunità, XXXII, n. 179, April, 1978, pp. 53–109; R. De Felice, Storia degli ebrei italiani sotto il fascismo, Turin, Einaudi, 1988, (fourth edition), pp. 31–42; G. Luzzatto-Voghera, “Aspetti di antisemitismo nella ‘Civiltà cattolica’ dal 1881 al 1903,” Bailamme, I, n. 2, dicembre 1987, pp. 125–138, G. Miccoli, “Santa Sede, 80 81

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­ rofessionally, as a woman, and to her faith.83 In addition, the reasons p that deterred schools from employing a Jewish teacher were fundamentally financial. Because elementary school teachers were responsible for religious instruction, the village leadership was required to entrust that task to another person if the teacher belonged to a religion different from the Catholic faith, which entailed another expenditure from an alreadyslim budget. At the conclusion of his letter, Salomone Vitale felt to reprimand R.  L. not only for the inappropriately ironic tone she used to treat the issue but also for the lack of “patriotic feeling” she showed, which could be understood as a rightful pride in the successes of her coreligionists: As for those snide remarks aimed at future female doctors and lawyers, such women are the architects of progress, so much so that countries beyond questione ebraica e antisemitismo,” in Storia d’Italia, Annali, 11, Gli ebrei in Italia, vol. II, Dall’emancipazione ad oggi, cit., particularly pp. 1394–1430; R. Taradel and B. Raggi, La segregazione amichevole. La Civiltà Cattolica e la questione ebraica, Rome, Editori Riuniti, 2000; A. Di Fant, L’Affaire Dreyfus nella stampa cattolica italiana, Trieste, Eut, 2002. 83  As shown by the interview with Mrs. Maria Luisa Minerbi, the young Ida Ottolenghi (1871–1959), mother of the interviewee, born in Fiorenzuola d’Arda, obtained a teaching post near her country of origin as soon as she graduated in 1888, but the hostility of the local people forced her to give it up. “My mother, who had graduated as a teacher, had a place in a village near Fiorenzuola.…My grandfather had thought of accompanying her, so he took his carriage and went with her. When she arrived at the first houses in the village, she heard the bells sounding the alarm, so she stopped the horse and asked the first farmer she found on the road: What is happening? Why are they ringing the bells?…A Jewish teacher is coming and we don’t want her!” (Interview with Mrs. Maria Luisa Minerbi, Rome, November 1989). In 1902 Guglielmo Lattes published a story in The Jewish Banner that was probably suggested to him by such examples of intolerance. Una maestra rurale ebrea tells the story of Matilde, forced to struggle against poverty, the unwanted attentions of the mayor, as well as the hostility of the whole town deviously stirred up by an “intolerant and belligerent monk” and the mayor himself, who was unwilling to accept the rejection by the unfortunate teacher. (See V.I., L, fasc. VI, June 1902, pp. 188–190, fasc. VII, July 1902, pp. 229–233 and fasc. VIII, August 1902, pp. 261–264). For the most significant case of material and psychological pressures on teachers, see the case of Italia Donati related in G. Bini, “Romanzi e realtà di maestri e maestre,” cit., and then taken from E. Gianini Belotti, Prima della quiete. Storia di Italia Donati, Milan, Bur Rizzoli, 2013, (third edition) The young Donati taught in Porciano, a small town in the Pistoia area. The mayor of the town, a well-known womanizer, forced her to live near his house. Gossip and slander soon spread, encouraged by the mayor. The city council took up the defense of the teacher who moved to Cecina to escape the tumult that had been created around the case. However, the rumors became more persistent and cruel, to the point that Donati drowned herself on June 1, 1886, leaving her brother a letter in which she proclaimed her innocence, later confirmed by the autopsy.

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Italy have many of these female graduates, nor, to my knowledge have they merited any criticism, and also because, if it is true that there are many Jewish woman among them in Italy, this should be, in my opinion, a distinction of honor.84

The articles signed R. L. cannot be considered as merely one highly personal point of view or as an exception in the journal’s offerings. Their tone of moralistic respectability reflected the social and political orientation of The Jewish Banner. The journal functioned as the faithful emissary for the most conservative portion of Jewish society, which fundamentally rejected every perceived innovation that came from the outside and was likely to disturb the peace and tranquility of families that respected Jewish tradition. The deep conservatism that R. L. frequently sustained did not prevent the anonymous author from speaking up for women (though infrequently and without thoughtful reflection or a real attempt at offering alternatives) by pointing out specific prejudices present in general society as well as within the Jewish community that diminished the value of women and their work. In an article dated June 1881, R. L. seemed very reluctant to accept without question the widespread mentality that rigidly separated the roles of men and women and defined masculine nature in terms of reason predominating over feeling and female nature as the superiority of the “heart” over the “head.” The author opposed this distinct division and confirmed that the responsibilities women carried as wives and mothers required them to call upon not only all their emotional resources but all their intellectual capabilities as well. For R. L., the heart could not have a separate “life” from the head, and the same actions that were dictated by goodness and generosity required both thought and reflection. The female readers of The Jewish Banner were therefore exhorted to cultivate their own intelligence and to continue to use it as a wise guide and counselor for their actions. So that it will no more be said of us that we have lots of heart, but few brains. Let us show our lordly husbands that we have as much intelligence as they have, and in many cases, more. It all depends on us.85

 S. Vitale, “Le donne alle scuole pubbliche. Risposta alla signora R.L.,” cit., p. 387.  R.L., “Cuore e cervello,” V.I., XXIX, fasc. VI, June 1881, pp. 175–176.

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R. L. also lamented the fact that the Jewish religion has no special ritual for celebrating the birth of a baby girl. The journalist certainly had no wish to initiate a debate over the age-old tradition that conferred upon a man, for the sake of perpetuating his family name, the privilege of giving his name to his children, though she considered it an unfair tradition in some ways. However, she maintained that this tradition in no way justified denying girls the same honor that usually was granted to boys when they joined the ranks of the community. Indeed, the tradition seemed to somehow, for some parents, reinforce a negative attitude toward the birth of a daughter, which was considered to be more a source of worry for all the problems it would bring about rather than a moment of happiness and peace. Once she became an adult, a daughter would require a dowry in order to be married, which created a financial burden on the family whereas a son would independently provide for himself as well as benefit from his right to control his wife’s money. Here R. L. rose up to show parents how the cost of a dowry was equivalent to the amount of money they spent providing their sons with an education, hobbies, “vices,” and “entertainment” and demonstrated how a daughter was equally capable of recompensing her parents for all the sacrifices they had made: So tell me then, for that tiny sum that you wouldn’t bestow on your daughters…what great blessings would daughters be to their parents, a hundred times greater than some reckless, careless boys?86

Reminding readers that religion itself recognized that women had determined roles and functions, the author invited families and the entire community to joyfully welcome the birth of a baby girl: Our religion does not want women to be treated badly. Our faith has written, “It is not good for man to be alone; woman must be a helpmeet and comfort to him.” So offer congratulations for us females as well, celebrate our arrival on the stage of life where we too have a great part to play, and cast aside the idea that every female is a nightmare…Don’t receive us coldly, but present us at the temple, have us blessed at home, and joy will be in your heart as well as on your lips.87

 R.L., “Auguri e feste per la nascita dei figli,” V.I., XXXI, fasc. III, March 1883, p. 87.  Ibidem.

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The “Woman Question” and the “Religion Question” The difficulty in redefining the religious function of women in Judaism doubtlessly constituted one of the most controversial aspects of the “woman question,” and a robust debate developed around it. Beginning in the 1880s, articles and discussions appeared on the pages of The Jewish Banner regarding the possibility and opportunity for expanding the participation of women in religious functions. From the second half of the nineteenth century, some rabbis, in an attempt to increase the involvement of women in the spiritual life of the community and in order to form a generation of mothers who were aware of their proper role and duties as the teachers of Jewish cultural and religious values, had instituted a rite of passage—the religious coming-of-­ age—that had traditionally been reserved for male children only.88 Confronted with increased religious apathy89—the distressing inheritance of emancipation—this innovation proved insufficient for forming and reinforcing the religious commitment of women, especially given that between 1800 and 1900, not all the Jewish communities were accustomed to this new practice.90 The way this initiation was celebrated and the level of religious preparation of the girls were the source of great controversy for those, like Rabbi Alessandro Zammatto (1844–1916), who considered the ceremony completely contrary to the nature of Judaism and to be extracted from the example of other religions, specifically the Catholic ritual, though his article had no specific references in that direction. Jewish integration into the surrounding society was also evident in a cumulative ceremony in great pomp, in a form that is completely different from the Jewish way, with that procession of little girls all dressed in white— and sometimes carrying lighted candles in their hands…it is a spectacle that  It is the Bat-mitsvah. See Note 28 to Chapter 1.  See for example, R.L., “Divagazioni,” V.I., XXX, fasc. III, March 1884, pp. 84–86. 90  See E. Boghen Conigliani, “Iniziazione religiosa delle fanciulle,” V.I., XLVII, fasc. VI, June 1899, pp. 185–186. The author of the article, reporting an accurate chronicle of the ceremony that had taken place in the community of Modena, expressed her approval not only for the initiative of Rabbi Giuseppe Cammeo, but also for communities in Ferrara, Venice, Milan, Rome, and Trieste that had followed his example, also hoping that the “new, refined womanly celebration” would become “a general practice.” See also B. Levi Allara, “A proposito dell’iniziazione religiosa delle fanciulle,” V.I., XLVIII, fasc. XI, November 1900, pp. 376–377. 88 89

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leaves no trace in the hearts of those little girls, whose only other religious instruction is knowing how to recite well or badly the Shema,91 and having some notion of catechism that they learned in a few days and will forget in a few days more.92

As for The Jewish Banner, the journal was aware of the urgent necessity of making women a vehicle and an instrument for reviving religious feeling in the family. But beyond high-flown statements of principle, the journal struggled to become the bearer of innovative ideas that could effectively draw women back to religious observance. Despite its attitude of censorship toward any element of the female experience that it judged to be overly attracted to modernity, at times the journal softened its usual intransigence and gave space to attitudes of benevolent comprehension and tolerance in its attempt to forge an alliance with women to combat the religious indifference that was threatening to disintegrate the Jewish world. The journal reaffirmed not only that Judaism held women in the highest esteem, but also: In our day, it is upon women that the dearest hopes rest for progress and for the triumph of the faith of our fathers which was handed down to us through countless sacrifices, and made martyrs of so many of our ancestors; women as mothers, as wives, as sisters, and also as daughters can exert the healthiest influence on the hearts of sons, husbands, brothers, and fathers.93

 Shemà Israel (Hebrew): “Listen, Israel!” It is the beginning of the fundamental prayer of Judaism. 92  A. Zammatto, “Sulla cerimonia della maggiorità religiosa delle fanciulle,” V.I., XLVII, fasc. VII, July 1899, p. 221. This phenomenon was not the exclusive prerogative of Italian Judaism. In 1854, Julienne Bloch had already written explicitly about it on the pages of L’Univers Israélite. Bloch proposed replacing the white “uniforms” usually worn by the girls, which she thought is preferable to avoid, with dresses of any other color: “Puisque nos petits garçons ne viennent pas au temple nu-tête avec un cierge à la main, il ne faut pas non plus que la jeune fille israélite se croie une imitation de la jeune fille catholique”. (Since our children do not come to the temple with their heads uncovered and a candle in their hands, it is not necessary for the Israelite girl to believe herself an imitation of the Catholic one.) J. Bloch, “Lettres d’une parisienne,” L’Univers Israélite, IX, n. 11, July 1854, p. 484. On the influence of Catholic ritual on the ceremonies and customs of the French Jewish community, see M. R. Marrus, The politics of assimilation. A Study of the French Jewish Community at the time of the Dreyfus Affair, New York, Oxford University Press, 1971. 93  L. Racah, “La donna secondo i libri biblici e tradizionali,” V.I., XXVIII, fasc. VIII, August 1880, p. 239. 91

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But the journal was also ready to recognize that the causes for the decadence of Judaism were to be found “in the nearly complete lack of a true and proper religious instruction for women.”94 R. L.’s assertions echoed these sentiments, and R. L. held that among women, faith was vibrant and religious feeling profound; if some women were guilty of indifference or neglect, it was upon men that the weight of blame should fall, for the scanty concern they gave to granting religious instruction to women. “While we see nearly all the Communities provided with Jewish schools for boys, how many are there for girls?”95 The journalist’s question in no way detracted from her conservative approach, nor did it prompt initiatives from within the community aimed at reconsidering the participation of women in the carrying out of certain religious offices, much less within the institution itself, nor did she intend to reform certain aspects of the Jewish religion that were more discriminatory toward women.96 In November 1879, The Jewish Banner published an article by its director, Flaminio Servi, who was responding to recent events. He had seen an unspecified Jewish community in France utilize a choir composed of “robust youths” and “charming maidens” in the observance of a solemn religious holiday97 and took the opportunity to voice his hostile opinion regarding the possibility of enacting similar religious reforms and allowing women a more active participation in the observance of religious ceremonies. Clearly, rigid orthodoxy and the persistence of strong prejudices, not to mention the inability to see the relationships between adolescents as anything other than potential seduction or romantic tension (the latter especially being true according to the mentality of the time), formed the basis of Servi’s refusal to accept such new practices, which had opened the door to lively controversies in France:  Ivi, p. 237.  R.L., “Un po’ di confessione,” V.I., XXVIII, fasc. XI, November 1880, p. 354. Finding the community  schools inadequate for their needs, the young women who aspired to a higher level of education, or wished to achieve a teacher’s certificate, had to rely on schools outside of the community, to the detriment of their religious formation. On the question of the Jewish school system, see E.S. Artom, La scuola ebraica in Italia, cit. 96  On this issue see P. Hyman, “The Other Half: Women in the Jewish Tradition,” in The Jewish Woman, edited by E. Koltun, New York, Schocken Books, 1976, pp. 105–113. 97  The director of L’Univers Israélite, author of the article from which Flaminio Servi drew the information, made no mention of the city where the community was located. See L.  Wogue, “Un cas de conscience,” L’Univers Israélite, XXXV, n.3, 15 October 1879, pp. 71–75. 94 95

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Is there anyone who does not know that according to ritual, women must remain separate from men during prayer in Jewish worship? And this is not due to some inferiority that Judaism has assigned to the gentle sex, as some say, but…for morality. A man, even if he is virtuous, even if he is learned…is always vulnerable.…The power of certain glances, the fascination of certain voices, is such that even the presence of a passing maiden is enough to make him forget the sanctity of the holy place, especially for the youths whose hearts are always susceptible to quick passions…The temple cannot become a theater. If other choirs and other religions have their ears delighted by the piercing notes of alluring sirens, in Jewish worship, decorum and solemnity suffice, or should suffice.98

In 1884, when The Jewish Banner returned to this discussion by inviting its writers to express their opinion regarding the possibility of allowing women to participate in religious ceremonies, no change of opinion was evident in the journal. R. L., dusting off the same arguments used a few years previously to justify the denial by the director of The Jewish Banner, maintained that mixing boys and girls impeded concentration and focus and thus would deprive prayer of its significance and value. In the author’s judgment, the presence of women could easily become questionable and dangerous at worship: Many women … go to temple more to be seen than to pray. If they were able draw near to men, would there not be women who would love men to worship them? And thus, without endeavoring to do so, we would approach idolatry.99

The assertions of the anonymous journalist were seconded by those of Rabbi Giuseppe Cammeo (1854–1934). According the rabbi, preserving the family circle as the principal space for women as wives and mothers could truly contribute to the salvation and progress of religion; thus, he dismissed out of hand the necessity of female participation in religious 98  F. Servi, “Le donne nei cori ovvero una lotta incruenta,” V.I., XXVII, fasc. XI, November 1879, p. 322. Servi shared the same opinion as Wogue, who declared: “Ce qui répugne au sentiment israélite, en matière religieuse bien entendu, c’est moins la voix de la femme que sa présence à côté de l’homme. Israël n’a jamais souffert dans ses temples la promiscuité des sexes.” (What is repugnant to Israelite sensibilities, in religious matters, of course, is not so much the voice of the woman as her presence next to the man. Judaism has never been able to endure promiscuity in its temples.) L. Wogue, “Un cas de conscience,” cit., p. 74. 99  R.L., “La donna negli uffici religiosi,” V.I., XXXII, fasc. I, January, 1884, p. 23.

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offices. However, due to the great social value of the mission of women, he declared he was in favor of a greater religious education for women, though without specifying the means and methods: So that women are capable of making others religious, they must be well-­ instructed themselves. Otherwise, how can they know what is permitted and what is forbidden?…We wish for every woman to know all the precepts of sacred law, and when she puts them in practice…her husband, children, neighbors, friends, and whoever has occasion to draw near to her will benefit from her good and useful example.100

This resistance and prejudices, which were fundamentally religious and cultural in nature, and which impeded defining and resolving the issue, were hardly irrelevant for the religious future of the community and would continue for some time. In fact, they re-emerged forcefully a few years later when The Jewish Banner once again brought up the issue of women’s participation in religious ceremonies when it hosted a debate between several distinguished rabbis about the possibility of allowing women to recite the Kaddish.101 The brief exchange between rabbis of differing viewpoints exemplified the contradictions in this area of Judaism: while women were entrusted with the responsibility of preserving and perpetuating the Jewish cultural and religious tradition for future generations, they were still confined to a secondary role within that tradition which remained anchored to a stereotypical division between the masculine and feminine spheres. On one side of the debate was the rejection of Rabbi Moise Ottolenghi (1840–1900), based in his concern that “in the temple where both sexes are often gathered together, the necessary religious concentration would lose much of its value if in the middle of religious silence we heard the silvery tones of a woman’s or girl’s voice invoking the Caddisc,”102 and the opinion of Rabbi Marco Momigliano (1825–1900), for whom the separation of men and women in the temple was indispensable “in order to maintain the d ­ ecorum 100  G. Cammeo, “Influenza della donna sulla educazione religiosa della famiglia,” V.I., XXXII, fasc. III, March 1884, pp. 75–76. 101  Kaddish (Aramaic): literally “sanctification.” This prayer is recited at the end of the important passages of the liturgy. It is recited by orphans and for this reason it has been considered as the prayer of the dead although it does not explicitly mention death. 102  M.G.  Ottolenghi, “Possono le donne dir Caddisc?,” V.I.,  XLIII, fasc. II, February, 1895, p. 40.

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and respect that would decline if women participated in religious functions with men.”103 Only Rabbi Isaia Levi (1847–1926), who perhaps sensed the danger of obstinate close-mindedness, announced his views in terms that were not hostile to the idea of women participating on equal footing with men in religious life. By excluding women, he warned, Judaism risked entering a state of abandonment: If we look around us today, we see that every religion avails itself of the valuable influence of women to sustain and reinforce the faith. For what reason then, do we Israelites depart from that and thus deprive our edifice from having a solid base, one that would be capable of fortifying and maintaining its core and restoring its ancient splendor? It is an act of truly unpardonable ignorance to affirm that the Jewish woman counts for nothing, in religious terms, and thus is considered as counting for absolutely nothing…while we applaud exclusivism, namely, not wanting Jewish women to participate as men do in worship ceremonies, and we see this weakening daily, more every day, where those reside who systematically oppose any useful innovation.…Let us provide a place, and grant to the Israelite woman the position she deserves in our worship; otherwise if we block her pathway, we isolate ourselves, we lose ground every day, we will see our temples deserted and no one will come any more.104

Levi’s opinion concluded a debate that arrived at no concrete change for essentially the same motives that inhibited Italy’s participation in religious reform. On one side, there was the rabbinate, who lived “in accord with orthodox religion” and therefore had insufficient motivation or impulse to venture into the terrain of innovation. On the other, there was a significant majority of the Jewish population who had for some time grown distant from religious orthodoxy without necessarily feeling the need to redefine their attitude in terms of a reform movement.105 Judaism at the end of the nineteenth century was “poised” between orthodoxy and

103  M. Momigliano, “Possono le donne dir Caddisc?,” V.I., XLIII, fasc. II, February, 1895, p. 41. Regarding Momigliano, see Autobiografia di un Rabbino italiano, (1897), Palermo, Sellerio, 1986, (second edition). 104  I. Levi, “Possono le donne dir Caddisc?,” V.I., XLIII, fasc. IV, April 1895, pp. 108–109. 105  “The modern Jew has been able to distance himself from religious observance, but he kept what he departed from intact.” A. Milano, Storia degli ebrei in Italia, cit., p. 374. For an overview of the reform movement in Europe and the United States, see M. A. Meyer, Response to Modernity. A History of the Reform Movement in Judaism, New  York-Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1988.

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i­ ndifference.106 Therefore, if the hierarchy remained firmly attached to its positions, there was also no specific demand for innovation made by the base. The articles in The Jewish Banner joined the debate over women’s roles that had been ongoing in the pages of Il Corriere Israelitico intermittently since the mid-1880s. The latter publication made its appearance several years earlier (in 1862) in Trieste, a city that was geographically integrated in the Hapsburg empire but that was home to a Jewish community that was firmly Italian in character.107 Far from limiting its views and objectives only to the context of the area surrounding Trieste, Il Corriere Israelitico was established with the intent of advancing a cultural and educational program that would benefit the entire Italian Jewish community. The journal attentively followed events across the country thanks to the rabbis and scholars who contributed to the journal and attested to the different contexts in which they functioned.108 At first, Il Corriere Israelitico seemed to align itself with the same intransigent position as The Jewish Banner. In an article from 1885, Rabbi Laudadio Fano, referring to religious commitment and women’s experience in Rome, declared, We have no religious practice that can recall our women to the faith. They are far away, they sense other heartbeats, other emotions that are nothing if not profane. It is women who attempt to destroy religious feeling in men: as long as they find a husband, as long as he makes money, they care for nothing else: self-interest is their ideal; it is unfortunately women who are the greatest contingent who abjure the faith.109 106  G. Luzzatto Voghera, “Cenni storici per una ricostruzione del dibattito sulla riforma religiosa nell’Italia ebraica,” R.M.I., LX, n. 1–2 January–August 1993, p. 63. 107  On the Jewish experience in Trieste, see T. Catalan, La comunità ebraica di Trieste. (1781–1914), Trieste, Lint, 2000. See also A. Millo, L’élite del potere a Trieste, Milan, Franco Angeli, 1989, pp. 55–68; id., Elites politiche ed élites economiche ebraiche a Trieste alla fine del XIX secolo, in Il mondo ebraico. Gli ebrei tra Italia nord-orientale e Impero Asburgico dal medioevo all’età contemporanea, edited by G. Todeschini and P. C. Ioly Zorattini, Pordenone, Studio Tesi, 1991, pp.  381–401; A. Ara, “Gli ebrei a Trieste, 1850–1918,” Rivista storica italiana, CII, 1, 1990, pp. 53–86. 108  See A. Milano, “Un secolo di stampa periodica ebraica in Italia,” cit., p. 109. On the history of the Triestine journal, see the essay by B. Di Porto, “Il Corriere israelitico: Uno sguardo d’insieme,” Materia Giudaica, IX, 1–2, 2004, pp. 249–263. 109  L. Fano, “Un’istituzione per le donne israelite,” C.I.,  XXIV, n. 7, November 1885, p. 157. Fano was probably referring to the fact that the group of Roman Jews, (33 in all) who converted to Catholicism in the years following emancipation, was composed exclu-

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This remained an isolated opinion. However, without completely negating that women—absorbed by other cares and interests—had grown distant from their faith and religious observance110 and that they knew little and cared less about “the sacred,”111 there was in general a greater propensity for finding the origins for the widely prevalent lack of religious interest in the Jewish community within the context of changing family habits and thus avoiding controversial distinctions between masculine and feminine responsibilities. This lack of religious interest was seen as the responsibility of those parents who made a “headlong rush” to send their “tender children” to Catholic preschools and public elementary schools. It was “a danger, that grew worse with time, since children coming home from school to the family, found themselves with few exceptions in environments with little religious devotion, where faith and worship were neglected.”112 To combat this, the journal recommended that the families and the various charitable institutions in every community contribute to preschools and elementary schools, where “boys and girls” could benefit from appropriate religious instruction. Il Corriere Israelitico was well aware of the difficulty in achieving the collaboration of families to stem the increasing secularization of Italian Judaism at the very time that families were moving away from a uniform lifestyle. The journal operated in the context of the Jewish community of Trieste, which was one of the most prominent examples of Jewish integration into wider society,113 with all of the serious and less serious consequences that entailed in terms of religious observance. The journal sively of women. Most were women belonging to the most economically disadvantaged sectors of the community and therefore most likely abandoned their religion for purely economic reasons. Hence the rabbi’s warm reception of the proposal put forward by his coreligionist Abramo Poggetto to draw lots each year, on the occasion of Pentecost, to provide dowries for young women who had behaved irreproachably from the moral and religious point of view. 110  “Our daughters, our sisters, are today perhaps, and perhaps not, much more educated than we were: they not only play very well, they dance beautifully, but they also boldly and forcefully invade the scientific terrain where we supposed we exercised unchallenged dominion, they tend almost to drive us out, to dispute the empire with much hope of success.…In their hearts…faith is dull or dying…for our women, practices, ceremonies…are a closed book that they never open.” L. Racah, “L’educazione religiosa della donna,” C.I., XXIV, n. 2, June 1885, p. 35. 111  See I. Levi, “Dell’istruzione,” C.I., XXVIII, n. 4, August 1889, p. 81. 112  Ibidem. 113  See T. Catalan, La comunità ebraica di Trieste, cit., and A. Ara, “Gli ebrei a Trieste,” cit.

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observed with regret that relationships between “Israelite” families were becoming more infrequent. Those “fraternal reunions” were no more, whereas they once had given rise to “frequently and eagerly” to good marriages between coreligionists. Life today is completely changed, and the consequences are tragic. Friendships, relationships with non-Israelites have gotten to the point that now mixed marriages happen in droves, with serious damage to both religions.…What is needed is a true and solid education at home.…Every father must show his children the duty they have to remain faithful to their proper religion.…Every mother has the arduous mission of directing her offspring in religious life.…Education and the mother’s teaching influence greatly the future of the children; as the rabbis say, “the butter of religious science is formed from the milk suckled at the maternal breast.”114

Il Corriere Israelitico opted to take a different tack from the one chosen by The Jewish Banner: In its efforts to explain the principal causes for the dire state in which the Jewish community found itself, the Triestian journal did not confine itself to a restricted analysis with minute and sterile observations of every detail in the changing realm of female experience, nor was it willing to make women into the scapegoat for the anxieties and difficulties Judaism faced in its search to find itself. The journal was engaged in an endeavor to elevate Judaism morally and religiously and so instead followed a path of tolerance with a determination not to create tension and strife within a community that was already involved in the difficult process of transition.115 Consequently, the journal dealt with issues relative to Jewish private life with a more relaxed and coherent approach. The Jewish Banner, on the other hand, at the end of the century was still unable to deal with issues relative to the secular aspect of the evolution of the family and women’s roles with an unprejudiced attitude. Its stubborn observation of the woman’s place strictly from the standpoint of rigid religious orthodoxy prevented the journal from discerning the exact parameters of the concerns and also inhibited attempts at offering resolutions that mediated the demands of tradition with the demands of progress. Evoking historical images of “mothers from ancient times who were … held in high esteem by Biblical law and even more by their husbands,”116  G. Cammeo, “Educazione israelitica,” C.I., XXXI, n. 9, January 1892, p. 199.  See A. Milano, “Un secolo di stampa periodica ebraica in Italia,” cit., pp. 109–110. 116  See F.S., “La donna israelita nella società. I. Secondo la creazione,” V.I., XLIII, fasc. XI, November 1895, pp.  353–354; “La donna israelita nella società. II. Le antiche madri,” 114 115

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The Jewish Banner advocated a specific female typology: though insisting that traditionally Jewish society was mindful of the dignity and rights of women, this traditional female typology could not offer any satisfying point of reference or positive model for the modern Jewish woman who mingled with and assessed herself in terms of environments outside of the Jewish community. Alongside nostalgic articles, the journal presented others that portrayed the modern female world painted in grim tones. “Think what a difference there is between our American and our Italian sisters in the faith!” Rabbi Cesare Fiano (1850–1920) exclaimed in an article from 1896  in which he compared American Jewish women to Italian Jewish women. The former worked devotedly to establish and spread the values of Judaism, while the latter dedicated the same energy to push religion into the abyss of indifference, he observed sadly. Fiano alluded to the women on the National Council of Jewish Women, a movement founded in Chicago in 1893. Alongside their vast philanthropic work and efforts in education, this group also promoted the study and understanding of Jewish history, literature, and tradition.117 While he ignored some not-so-minor details, such as the Council’s ties to the American feminist movement, which worked in favor of Jewish women both inside and outside of the community, as well as the role of Reformed Judaism, which contributed to the birth of a Jewish feminist movement, the rabbi asked his Italian female coreligionists how they could explain the “religious zeal” of their American sisters across the Atlantic: “We must believe that this is a powerful force in civilization, and that there is more progress in love than in disdaining one’s own faith.”118 XLIV, fasc. I, January 1896, pp.  6–7; “La donna israelita nella società. III. All’epoca de’ giudici e dei re,” fasc. IV, April 1896, pp. 106–107. 117  C. Fiano, “Le nostre donne,” V.I., XLIV, fasc. VIII, August 1896, p. 257. On NCJW activities and routes see, J. Sochen, “Some Observations on the Role of American Jewish Women as Communal Volunteers,” American Jewish History, LXX, n. 1–4, September 1980–June 1981, pp. 23–34; D. Grand Colomb, “The 1893 Congress of Jewish Women: Evolution or Revolution in American Jewish Women’s History,” American Jewish History,  LXX, September 1980–June 1981, pp.  52–67; L. Gordon Kuzmack, The Jewish Woman’s Movement in England and the United States, 1881–1933, Columbus, Ohio University Press, 1990; N. Las, Femmes juives dans le siècle. Histoire du Conseil international des femmes juives de 1899 à nos jours, Paris, L’Harmattan, 1996. Important information regarding the movement is also contained in P. Hyman, Gender and Assimilation in Modern Jewish History. The Roles and Representation of Women, Seattle-London, University of Washington Press, 1995. 118  C. Fiano, “Le nostre donne,” cit., p. 258.

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Unlike their American sisters, Italian women seemed unable to reconcile modernity with the practice of their religion. Fiano maintained that the women who were “followers of the true Mosaic law” were now reduced to a small group compared to the women who identified progress with religious indifference and thus gave way to religious apathy. “Fashion, ambition, a mania for imitation,” and not least of all, “the desire to take part in high society” were, in the rabbi’s opinion, “the strongest motivations” that worked upon “the spirit” of women, pulling them ever farther from the faith that, according to the rabbi, they were seeking to undermine.119 The laments of Rabbi Fiano were echoed by Rabbi Momigliano, who regarded the principal cause of the religious indifference that “slithered” through the Jewish community to be the fact that women were abandoning religion in the home: “The Israelite woman…too often forgets that true virtue consists in teaching her children religion and the fear of God.”120 The estimation of Bettina Levi, a new contributor to The Jewish Banner, was certainly more flattering regarding the nature and conduct of young Jewish women. It is true that Levi, like positivistic scientists of the age, classified and defined the different typologies that composed the female Jewish world alongside the “intelligent and good girls, healthy in mind and heart,” there were others who were “very different from the normal type”: The hysterical female, the neurotic female loses control in morbid sentimentality and capricious fantasies, there is the fin de siècle young woman who calculates, debates, weighs every action, every word … she is far, far from every generous feeling and let’s not forget the bas-bleus female intellectuals who.…derisively look the ignorant crowd up and down.

But she also affirmed that the “young Israelite woman,” regardless of her class or level of culture, was always humble, serious, and affectionate, “made for serenely fulfilling the mission of love and sacrifice that is given to women.”121 Despite Bettina Levi’s optimistic declarations, The Jewish Banner began the new century outlining a negative evaluation of the moral, cultural, and  Ibidem.  M. Momigliano, “Alle nostre donne,” V.I., XLIV, fasc. IX, September, 1896, p. 292. 121  B.Levi. v. A. (Bettina Levi widowed Allara), “Le nostre giovanette,” V.I., XLIV, fasc. XII, December, 1896, p. 417. 119 120

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religious condition of women. The Jewish female population, according to the articles in the journal, seemed to be moving daily toward the progressive “fusion” with Italian culture, thus dragging their families into dishonor and endangering the future of their own religious communities: Seeing Israelite women dressed as they are today, seeing them distort their bodies, damaging their health, all to attract the indecent looks and desires of others, we can say, “Woe is me!” that they no longer have the true religion or the perfect family.…Without pure families in Israel, there cannot be religion, and without religion there cannot ever be the hope of true happiness.122

Such observations attested to the cultural interaction that was being created regarding shared contemporary stereotypes of women and family, confirming the affinity with the dominant mentality in Italian society at the end of the century.

 G.d. E. Pincherle, “La donna e la morale,” V.I., XLVII, fasc. II, February, 1899, p. 46.

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CHAPTER 4

From Integration to the Reaffirmation of Identity

Old Models and New Experiences In the early years of the twentieth century, the presence of women on the editorial board of the journal The Jewish Banner (Il Vessillo Israelitico) became more noticeable. Of the ten female journalists who contributed writings to the journal with some degree of consistency, four in particular manifested a strong interest in and a lively sensitivity to women’s issues: Giuseppina Levi Artom, Emma Boghen Conigliani, Rosetta Vitale, and the well-known Bettina Levi Allara.1 The fact that more space was allotted to the written opinions of women encouraged a greater visibility for the issues, and at times, also increased the vivacity of the debate. However, this higher visibility did not necessarily translate into an effective force for imposing a more analytical perspective nor for improving the quality of the message. Moreover, these journalists hardly 1  In addition to the women mentioned above: Giuseppina Levi Artom (b. 1849), Emma Boghen Conigliani (b. 1866), Rosetta Vitale (b. 1883), and Bettina Levi Allara (b. 1849), the other journalists included Eugenia Ravà Sorani (b. 1857), Gemma Servi Portaleone (b. 1869), Gina Della Torre Momigliano (v. 1865), Gioconda Sorani Finzi (v. 1858), Calliope Servi Muggia (b. 1881, daughter of Flaminio Servi, long-serving director of The Jewish Banner), and Adele Servi De Benedetti (b. 1850) who had already been active in the journal La Donna [Woman], the journal of Gualberta Alaide Beccari. See Il Cinquantesimo anniversario del Vessillo Israelitico, Turin, Stab. Doyen di Luigi Simonetti, pp. 127–129.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 M. Miniati, Italian Jewish Women in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Italian and Italian American Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74053-5_4

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constituted a united front and thus their discourse was not characterized by unanimity: while they fundamentally agreed in their rejection of certain masculine concerns, they were not always able to find the same harmony regarding the path women should take. As representatives of different generations, and due to their very different life experiences and choices, these female journalists rarely demonstrated solidarity in designating a path for other women to follow or in pronouncing condemnation without reservation of women’s aspirations for emancipation. There was however, a series of voices that climaxed in a brief but important open debate during which the most enlightened of these journalists, Emma Boghen Conigliani, attempted to awaken her female coreligionists from their bourgeois slumber. In atypically strong tones for The Jewish Banner, she asserted that female Jewish identity was not limited to a single form. However, this conflict of opinions did not generate a concrete initiative that reconsidered the role of women in the Jewish community, nor take into account the new times and new exigencies, nor did this conflict reinvigorate an interest among women in the future of Judaism. Indeed, The Jewish Banner was hardly the ideal forum for innovation. Not only were these journalists obligated to operate on an “official” level within an ideological environment with strict social limits, but the predominant feeling among most women remained defined primarily by deeply rooted prejudices that were manifested in the stubborn reassertion of traditional values and inadequate social models. The favored interpretative model for understanding the tepid religious feelings of Jewish women and their scant attention to the Jewish education of their children was to attribute such deficiencies to the weakness and desire of Jewish women to emulate their non-Jewish neighbors, and their seeming incapacity to properly direct their legitimate enthusiasm for the Jewish community’s achievement of civil equality. Instead of turning our right to liberty to our advantage or to the advantage of our families, we chose to thrust from us anything that distinguished us from women of other religions, aping them, transforming ourselves into them.

In an article from May, 1901, Giuseppina Levi Artom, the most authoritative female voice in the journal, thus exhorted “the mothers of Israel.”

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Instead of [cherishing] our unique nature, we preferred to become a common type. And what occurred? It’s useless to hide it. We took on all of their defects, and unfortunately without enriching ourselves with a single virtue, we stripped ourselves of all the very virtues for which we had always been admired and praised.2

This is doubtlessly a harsh judgment, and truth be told, in one of her previous articles published in honor of the upcoming Passover, Levi Artom affirmed that the blame for neglected, tattered religious instruction and practice should not fall entirely on the shoulders of women. If the rising generation barely knew why they celebrated Pessah,3 the author asserts that the root of the problem was to be found in a distant past; the problem began long before, during the age when the Jews were given free citizenship in a free State and everyone—men and women alike—were induced to believe that they could not be both patriots and good Jews, and to believe that it was therefore impossible to reconcile their aspirations for citizenship with the duties that their religion required. “Raised in an environment saturated with a false and misunderstood concept of liberty,” and lacking the necessary teachings about religious doctrines and practices, Jewish women, once they became mothers, found themselves completely unprepared to take over the man’s role, now that men were occupied with other obligations. Women were unprepared for the difficult task of undertaking the religious education of their children and training them in accordance with the dictates of their faith. “The fault lay not with the people, but with the times.”4 However, this in no way meant that women did not need to accept their share of the responsibility and take the first step toward escaping that ambiguity regarding religion that so many families confronted. How could young people be expected to grow up with “an elevated sense of their duties” and have “a proper notion…of religion” when they were accustomed to sitting down to a family dinner table where unleavened bread was found on the same plate with “round country loaves and breadsticks.” This evocative image drawn by Levi Artom alludes to the paradox and encapsulates the reality of the emancipated Jew’s situation: hovering between two identities, in continual fluctuation between the desire to integrate and the desire not to cut ties to tradition, at least  G. Levi Artom, “Alle madri Israelite,” V. I., XLIX, fasc. IV, May 1901, p. 166.  “Pessa’h” is the Hebrew term for “Passover.” 4  G. Levi Artom, “Alle madri Israelite,” V. I., XLIX, fasc. III, March 1901, p. 93. 2 3

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not entirely. The effects of maintaining this stance of attempting to mediate between separate identities, Levi Artom observes, could prove to be damaging: Do we believe in divine commands? Then we must follow them and teach others to follow them. And if one does not believe? In that case, the lesser evil would be to abandon them altogether, but don’t be double-minded, then! Sitting on the fence only leads to a false form of piety and teaches children to be atheists…without any sound moral principles.

If women wanted their children to one day become “worthy…of this beautiful Italy and at the same time worthy descendants of Israel,” then there was only one practical path: giving children a sound religious education, the one thing that could enable them to be “steadfast in the face of adversities and immune to the temptations of evil.”5 Providing children with a sound religious education of course implied that women would need to return to a lifestyle more in keeping with the nature of their domestic duties, a lifestyle that gave priority to the family and religious observation. Levi Artom’s message was not fundamentally innovative. However, there was one notable exception in her more explicit references to what she considered one of the principal barriers to a woman’s return to religion, namely her female coreligionists’ enthusiastic participation in “certain societies,” which had no connection to Jewish culture or tradition. Rather, these societies were social organizations in which Jewish women were merely “tolerated” to the degree that they provided some material benefit to the society. These societies, whose “shackles” Jewish women had a duty to escape, were the multitudinous forms of Ladies’ Aid charity organizations. According to Levi Artom, Jewish women and girls supported these organizations with the sole aim of advancing socially and with the illusion that they could resemble and be accepted by their Italian sisters.6 The journalist’s assertions were burdened by their dismissal of the reality of the situation, a reality that deserved another kind of consideration. Philanthropic involvement constituted one of the principal threads woven into the history of the Italian Jews and the role of the middle class. From  Ivi, pp. 93–94.  G. Levi Artom, “Alle madri israelite,” V.I., XLIX, fasc. V, May 1901, p. 166.

5 6

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the end of the nineteenth century through the early years of the twentieth, this important segment of the Jewish population united the success of their integration in economic, social, and cultural life “with the traditional Jewish ideal of doing anything that was good for the community.”7 This segment of society became the generous and frequent promoter of sustained philanthropic activities on behalf of the working classes, the unemployed, and women and children. These activities culminated in the formation of the Società Umanitaria (Humanitarian Society) in 1893. This institution was established in Milan, a city with a strong philanthropic tradition, thanks to the extraordinary financial contribution of Prospero Moisè Loria (1814–1892), a wealthy Jew from Mantua with the intent of going beyond the traditional forms of charitable activity by providing the marginalized members of society with the material and educational means to lift themselves out of their poverty.8 A dedication to social 7  L.  Scherr, “La femme juive à travers les siècles,” Les Nouveaux Cahiers, XII, n. 46, Autumn 1976, p. 32, (“au vieil ideal juif de faire ce qui est bon pour la communauté”). 8  See article 2 of the Statuto della Società Umanitaria, Milan, Tip. Operai, 1893, p. 6 and L’Opera della Società Umanitaria dalla sua fondazione ad oggi, May 1 1911, Milan, Cooperativa tip.operai, 1911, p.  20. The article reproduces word for word the wishes expressed by Prospero Loria in his will (July 26, 1892) cited by Luisa Levi D’Ancona Modena. In her articles, “Prospero Moisé Loria: A Case Study of Jewish Secularism in Liberal Italy,” Jewish History, 31, issue 3–4, 2018, pp. 263–290 and “Nuove prospettive sulla filantropia in vita di Prospero Moisè Loria,” R.M.I., LXXXIV, n. 1–2, January–August 2018, pp. 69–98, she offers pertinent opinions on the Jewish secularism of Loria and on Jewish secular philanthropy in late nineteenth-century Italy. For a biography of Prospero Moisè Loria see P. Pellegrino, Il filantropo. Prospero Moisè Loria e la Società Umanitaria, Argelato (Bologna), Minerva Edizioni, 2014. See also, Umanitaria. Cento anni di solidarietà. 1893– 1993, Milan, Charta, 1993 and Alle origini dell’Umanitaria. Un moderno concetto di assistenza nella bufera sociale di fine ‘800 (1893–1903), edited by M.L. Ghezzi and A. Canavero, Milan, Società Umanitaria and Cooperativa Raccolto, 2013. After General Fiorenzo Bava Beccaris (1831–1924) dissolved the organization in 1898, the Humanitarian Society did not fully resume its activities until 1902. The following year, Augusto Osimo (1875–1923), a native of the Jewish Community of Monticelli d’Ongina in Piacenza, became secretary general director. The Presidency was confirmed by coreligionist Luigi Della Torre (1861–1937). The Milanese institution benefited from the important contributions of Eugenio Rignano (1870–1930), Sabatino Lopez (1867–1951), Umberto Ottolenghi (1867–1911), and of historians, lawyers, and economists, such as Ugo Guido Mondolfo (1875–1958), Camillo Supino (1860–1931), and Fabio Luzzatto (1870–1954). See E. Decleva, Etica del lavoro, socialismo, cultura popolare: Augusto Osimo e la Società Umanitaria, Milan, Franco Angeli, 1985, and G. L. Luzzatto, “Gli ebrei italiani, l’Umanitaria e il messaggio di una Mamma,” R.M.I.,  1970, now in Guido Ludovico Luzzatto, Scritti politici. Ebraismo e antisemitismo, edited by A.  Cavaglion and E. Tedeschi, Milan, Franco

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involvement was evident in other philanthropic endeavors that were less visible and narrower in scope, but were nonetheless still significant. The Jewish Banner was particularly proud of this commitment to social engagement, and punctually referred to the generosity manifested by the “Israelites” to their fellow-citizens in the numerous reports that the publication devoted to the accomplishments and happenings—both positive and negative—in various Jewish communities. This generosity typically took the form of financial contributions to state-sponsored and lay institutions, as well as to Catholic institutions. In Florence a substantial group of Jews supported the foundation of a charitable society for the protection of children of all faiths.9 The year 1898 marked the fiftieth year since the emancipation of the Jews in Piedmont.    In  January of that year  in the small Piedmontese village of Chieri, in commemoration of the first year since their father’s death, the children of “the beloved, departed Cav. Emanuele Sacerdote” donated 15,000 lire to the Patronato scolastico (School Patronage Society) to aid underprivileged elementary school students. In Ancona, where the Jewish community had always been known for demonstrating “generous donations to aid the poor of all religions,” the nobleman, Raffaello Jona, offered 300 lire to the city’s preschools to buy shoes and clothing for needy children,10 a commendable work that also benefited the community’s institutions. In May of the same year in Piedmont, upon the death of “the incomparable philanthropist” Baron Emilio Vitta di Angeli, 1996, pp.  164–172. The article written by Guido Ludovico Luzzatto, son of the lawyer Fabio, that evokes “the Jewish soul of Umanitaria” is dedicated predominantly to another important figure in the history of Umanitaria, Augusta Osimo Muggia (1877–1966). Writer and translator in her own right, she supported her husband Augusto in his activities related to social assistance for children and public education. 9  See “Notizie Diverse. Florence,” V.I., XXXII, fasc. V, May 1884, p. 175. The promoting committee counted the presence of Adolfo Scander Levi, Saul Davidson, Leonetto Volterra, and Angiolo Campagnano (1854–1920), director of the institute who housed the new society. Among the benefactors were Enrichetta Levi (consort of Adolfo Scander), Adele Campagnano (wife of Angiolo), Adele Castelfranco, Sofia Modigliani, and Emma Valentin. The Jewish convitto, “Istituto Campagnano,” whose opening was announced in the March edition of The Jewish Banner (“Notizie diverse. Florence,” V.I., XXXII, fasc. III, n. 3, March 1884, p. 94) was available to boys and girls, regardless of their religion and offered elementary courses and review lessons to the students of the Technical School and the Ginnasio. In addition to Hebrew, courses in French, English, and Latin were taught. The institute prepared students for the Army and Navy Military Schools. See S. Guetta, “Le istituzioni ebraiche per l’infanzia a Firenze,” R.M.I., LVI, n. 1–2, January–August 1990, pp. 113–129. 10  See “Notizie Diverse, Chieri,” V.I., XLVI, January 1898, p. 29 and “Notizie diverse. Ancona,” V.I., fasc. II, February 1898, p. 63.

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Casale (1825–1898), his heirs bequeathed 500 lire to “Jewish charities,11” as well as providing a considerable sum of money to the five dioceses of the city and contributing handsomely to the subscription opened by the city in order to help bakers lower the cost of bread.12 Similarly, in Asti, Commander Leonetto Ottolenghi (1845–1904), a native of that city, achieved the height of celebrity after personally paying for the erection of a monument in honor of the glorious past of Italy’s Unification (the Risorgimento) and promoting and financing the Wine Exposition. As The Jewish  Banner admiringly pointed out, Ottolenghi never neglected his own community and his Jewish duties. He always “attended temple and sacred meetings,” he sung in the choir, which he financially supported at his own expense, and “took active part in everything that is and was connected to Judaism.”13 11  F.S., “Cenni Necrologici. Vitta Barone Emilio,” V.I., XLVI, fasc. V, May 1898, pp. 169–171. The heirs later allocated other sums of money to both Jewish and local institutions. See “Beneficenze eredi Vitta,” V.I., XLVI, fasc. VIII, August 1898, p. 271. Emilio Vitta was a member of an important family of landowners with strong ties to the banking sector. Emilio’s father, Giuseppe Raffaele (?–1858), was made a baron in 1855 for his contributions on behalf of soldiers wounded in the Crimean War. As Paolo Pellegrini pointed out, there were three things for which Jews were granted a noble title: participation in the Risorgimento struggle, investments for the economic development and modernization of the country and the international defense of Italian interests. (See the following essays: “Ebrei nobilitati e conversioni nell’Italia dell’Ottocento e del primo Novecento,” Materia Giudaica, XIX, 2014, pp.  267–289 and “Jews Ennobled by the Savoys: The Role and Relationship of a Minority in Unified Italy,” in The New Italy and the Jews. From Massimo D’Azeglio to Primo Levi, edited by J. Druker and L. S. Lerner, Annali d’Italianistica, vol. 36, 2018, pp. 305–321.) Emilio Vitta, who was made a baron in 1867, was related to another illustrious and very wealthy family, the Franchetti barons, through his wife Elisa, (1832–1895) Abraham’s (1805–1887) daughter. The latter was made baron in 1858 (according to S. Schaerf, I cognomi degli ebrei d’Italia: con un’appendice su le famiglie nobili ebree d’Italia, Florence, Casa Editice “Israel,” 1925, p. 76) for his contribution to the development of the economy and infrastructure of the country and also for the role he played in guaranteeing that Cavour (Camillo Benso conte di Cavour 1810–1861) received James de Rothschild’s (1792–1868) interest in the construction of the Piedmontese railways (see the above mentioned essays by P. Pellegrini, p.  272 and p.  313 respectively) and the detailed studies by Mirella Scardozzi on the life and activities of the Franchetti family, “Itinerari dell’integrazione: una grande famiglia ebrea tra la fine del Settecento e il primo Novecento,” in Leopoldo e Alice Franchetti e il loro tempo, edited by P.  Pezzino  and  A.  Tacchini, Città di Castello, Petruzzi, 2002, pp. 271–320 and “Una storia di famiglia,” Quaderni storici, XXXVIII, 3, December 2003, pp. 697–740. 12  Between April and May of 1898, the rise in the price of bread had caused serious unrest in much of Italy. 13  The inauguration of the monument took place in May 1898 by Ottolenghi’s request and was attended by the King in person. This was the jubilee year of the liberation of Piedmont, and took place at the same time as the Oenological Exhibition, an event of great public ben-

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The same could be said of Baron Franchetti and the “Noble Levi brothers” of Reggio who offered to pay for a Christmas tree for the city’s needy children. Both their own Jewish community and the community’s comitato (charitable works committee) were the direct beneficiaries of the Levi brothers’ generosity; indeed, both were able to operate thanks to this generosity.14 These philanthropic activities were further promoted by women and lauded in the same tones by the journal. In May of 1881 The Jewish  Banner reported the news of generous donations made by Sara (Sarina) Levi Nathan (1819–1882), a philanthropist and patriot, on the sad occasion of her son’s death. The name Sarina Levi Nathan was directly associated with events of the Risorgimento, particularly in connection with the great Genovese patriot Giuseppe Mazzini, of whom she was an ardent follower. Following Mazzini’s death in Pisa in 1872, which occurred in the house of Janet (known as Giannetta, 1842–1911) Rosselli, Sarina Nathan’s daughter,15 the mother, to honor the memory of the great patriot, founded the Mazzini School with the efit considering the importance that the production of wine held in the economy of the region. F.S, “L’inaugurazione del Monumento del Risorgimento italiano e dell’esposizione,” V.I., XIVI, fasc. V, May 1898, pp.  162–164. Echoes of these events were also heard in France. See the article by L. Ravenna in the “Correspondances particulières des Archives,” Archives Israélites, LIX, n. 23, June 1898, p. 181. “For the distinguished merits acquired…for national industry and the patriotic population,” he was made count in 1899. See S. Schaerf, I cognomi degli ebrei d’Italia, cit., p. 79. Leonetto Ottolenghi was considered “the greatest benefactor of the city”; besides contributing to the beautification of Asti with town squares and monuments, he was also generous and devoted to responding to the economic needs of charitable institutions. Together with his brother Jacob Sanson, Leonetto financed the restructuring of the Synagogue, enhancing its visibility and artistic value. See R. Debenedetti, Nato ad Asti: vita di un imprenditore, Genova, Marietti, 1987, pp.  24–25. A. Rocco, “Leonetto Ottolenghi e la celebrazione del Risorgimento ad Asti,” in Il Risorgimento nell’Astigiano, nel Monferrato e nelle Langhe, edited by S. Montaldo, Asti, Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Asti, 2010, pp. 196–205. 14  “Notizie diverse. Reggio,” V.I., LII, fasc. I, January 1904, p. 28. Married to Luisa Sara Rothschild, Baron Raimondo Franchetti—brother of Elisa, the wife of Emilio Vitta—did much for the city where he last lived. He worked hard to urge agricultural activity and also focused his efforts on building roads, daycares, and schools in neighboring areas. His son Alberto married Margherita Levi, who belonged to a wealthy family that promoted many important initiatives on behalf of the city. For information on Raimondo Franchetti’s economic activities and many philanthropic initiatives, see M. Scardozzi, “Una storia di famiglia: i Franchetti,” cit., pp. 718–724. 15  On Giuseppe Mazzini’s intense relationship with Sara Levi Nathan and Janet Nathan Rosselli see R. Pesman, “Mazzini and/in Love,” in The Risorgimento Revisited: Nationalism and Culture in Nineteenth-Century Italy, edited by S. Patriarca and L. Riall, New  York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, pp. 97–114.

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double purpose of offering girls from poor families a secular secondary education, and of preparing them for a trade that would make them independent in the future.16 In addition to her patriotic endeavors, Nathan was renowned for her efforts in cultural and social reforms for women, especially for her labors to abolish state-run prostitution.17 Upon the death of her son, who was also a follower of Mazzini, Nathan decided to dedicate a significant part of her son’s inheritance to spreading the patriotic ideals of Giuseppe Mazzini and combatting prostitution. In 1899 it was Sarina Nathan’s daughter-in-law, Virginia Nathan (1846–1924), who met with praise in the pages of the The Jewish Banner. An example of the most progressive kind of philanthropy, Virginia “a gentlewoman whose name will 16  “Model of charitable and civil institution” (L. Casartelli Cabrini, “Rassegna del movi mento femminile italiano,” Almanacco della donna italiana, 1925, pp.  243–244), The Mazzini Schools, established in the working-­class district of Trastevere, had replaced the Catechism taught in the other schools with Doveri dell’uomo, the essay by Giuseppe Mazzini, summarized and simplified by Sara Levi Nathan, so that all the students could use it as a reference text. See A. M. Isastia, Storia di una famiglia del Risorgimento: Sarina, Giuseppe, Ernesto Nathan, Turin, Università popolare di Torino, 2010, pp. 193–199. Compared to the municipal schools, the Mazzini school adopted an avant-garde pedagogy in that the curriculum was closely linked to the specialization offered, and training female pupils to do “women’s work” was not prioritized. The female pupils were therefore guaranteed an education very similar to that of male students. See R. Ugolini, Ernesto Nathan tra idealità e pragmatismo, Rome, Edizioni dell’Ateneo, 2003, pp. 54 and 57. On the history of the school see ivi, pp. 43–101. 17  See “Notizie diverse. Rome,” V.I.,  XXIX, May 1881, p.  154. See also F.  Pieroni Bortolotti’s, Alle origini del movimento femminile in Italia, Turin, Einaudi, 1975, (second edition), pp.  85–86. In Ricordi della vita e dei tempi di Ernesto Nathan, the author, Alessandro Levi  (1881–1953),  a distinguished philosopher of law and married to Sarina Nathan  (1884–1967), daughter of Filippo Nathan, brother of Ernesto, underscores the important role played by Giuseppe Nathan (1848–1881) in diffusing of the ideas of Josephine Butler (1828–1906) and the campaign “for the elevation and the liberty of fallen women.” Giuseppe carried out an active campaign involving parliament members, publicists, and scientists, but also with participation from the working class. During the National Worker’s Congress, held in Genoa in 1876, the serious problem of prostitution was one of the topics on the agenda. When Giuseppe left all of his money to his mother, Sarina Levi Nathan dedicated a large part of the inheritance to spreading Mazzinian doctrines, and gave a similarly large sum to the Butler foundation. She donated the principle of her estate to establishing an institution for the rehabilitation of the women in Italy trapped in prostitution. See Ricordi della vita e dei tempi di Ernesto Nathan, pp.  55–58. The memoir of Alessandro Levi was finished in the summer of 1925, but was only published in 1938, illegally, given that the 1938 Fascist racial legislation prohibited the publication of writings by or about the Jews. See the bibliographical note of Andrea Bocchi, the curator of the recent edition of Ricordi della vita e dei tempi di Ernesto Nathan, new edition edited by A. Bocchi, Pisa-Lucca, Domus mazziniana-Maria Pacini Fazzi, 2006. The text used here is probably that of 1925.

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be immortalized as the benefactress of suffering humanity,” had established in the town of Civitavecchia a “Seaside Home for Women” suffering from anemia, which was open to girls over the age of 12 as well.18 In the same fervent tones, the news was announced of the gold medal awarded to Perlina Treves by the Comitato femminile delle patrone delle Colonie alpine (Women’s Committee of Patrons of Alpine Homes) in Turin for her foundational work to benefit the establishment of the new home which was called, “Turin 1848–1898,” a name that evoked an important date for both Jews and “Gentiles.”19 These are only a few examples of women’s civic contributions which had a far wider reach. The Jewish Banner expressed praise for these charitable works for the positive reflection they had on the image of the entire Jewish community. However, at the same time, this commendation was interwoven with the journal’s conflicting sentiments, pendulating between apprehension and open hostility when it foresaw the potential danger that Jewish women would become too socialized by the milieu of these charitable societies, a milieu that was different in culture and tradition. In short, charitable societies represented the road to unchecked integration, which 18  “Notizie diverse. Rome,” V.I., XLVII, fasc. VIII, August 1899, p. 277. Virginia Mieli, born in Siena, married young to Ernesto Nathan (1845–1921), the son of Sarina. After the wedding, the couple moved to London. Just after 1870, based on the counsel and wishes of Giuseppe Mazzini, of whom [Ernesto] was a faithful follower (in 1837 when Mazzini arrived in London he was welcomed to stay in Sarina’s home), Ernesto returned to Rome, where he soon became mayor (1907–1913). He assumed the administrative direction of The Rome of the People (La Roma del popolo), a newspaper founded by the Genovese patriot, Mazzini. It was in this same period that Virginia began her philanthropic work. In addition to the seaside home for women in Civitavecchia, Nathan founded a school for underprivileged children in the Prati area of Rome, which was named the “Educatorio Giuseppe Mazzini.” See A. Rosselli, Virginia Mieli Nathan, Rome, Tipografia Centenari, 1926, p.  17. Virginia Nathan also deserves the credit for the institution of the Unione benefica per le fanciulle in cerca di lavoro (Beneficial Union for Girls Seeking Employment), an institution built with the funds Sarina dedicated to the rehabilitation of prostitutes. By providing board and lodging for girls of all nationalities who needed work, thus removing them from the dangers of precarious situations, and by helping them to find work, the Union carried out a useful preventive work. See Atti del Congresso Internazionale Femminile. Rome, 16–23 May 1914, Torre Pellice, Tipografia Alpina Augusto Coisson, 1915, p. 419; A. Levi, Ricordi della vita e dei tempi di Ernesto Nathan, cit., pp. 58–59; R. Ugolini, Ernesto Nathan, cit; A. M. Isastia, Storia di una famiglia, cit. 19  See “Due medaglie,” V.I., XLVI, fasc. 8, August 1898, p. 275. On the same occasion, the Committee of the Patrons of the Alpine Colonies had offered a silver medal to Rabbi Giuseppe Foa (1841–1917). Once proposed the creation of a new colony, Perlina Treves found in the Rabbi and his other coreligionists the necessary support.

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risked repercussions for the entire family unit. The bitter thoughts of and criticisms by Giuseppina Levi Artom must be understood in this context, as must those of another journalist at The Jewish Banner, Rosetta Vitale, who was many years younger than Artom but was motivated by the same opinions.20 Vitale did not hesitate to equate the philanthropic efforts of her female coreligionists with worldliness, and dismissed their desires to act for the benefit of others as a mere pursuit of entertainment, and as a vain ambition to see their names “noticed in the headlines.” According to Vitale, the modern Jewish woman, with only rare exceptions, was one who had replaced the Sabbath lamp with an electric bulb which had “a stronger light,” and who skimped on her religious observance in order to dedicate more time to be seen at charity parties and balls or at school bazaars, and so forth. Thus, The society pages will tell the world that a certain elegant lady…gave her all to make this party a success…that she’s a martyr for charity. And the lady herself will be deeply satisfied….None of her coreligionists will likely be among the beneficiaries, but nonetheless, this lady will be seen as having done good works!21

Most likely Vitale’s observations were prompted by biases as much as by her own personal experiences in Cherasco, a small city on the outskirts of Cuneo where the Jewish community was quite modest in size.22 In Cherasco there were only three Jewish families. According to The Jewish Banner, in two of these families, the head of the family occupied a position of prominence in public administration,23 which no doubt functioned as incentive for interactions that were anything but infrequent with those of 20  Giuseppina Levi Artom was born in Carmagnola (Piedmont) in August 1849. Rosetta Vitale, also from Piedmont, was born in Cherasco in May 1883. 21  R. Vitale, “La donna israelita di mezzo secolo fa e la donna moderna,” V.I., LI, fasc. I, January 1903, p. 13. 22  From Censimento degli israeliti esistenti nel Regno alla fine del 1881, it turned out that in the town of Cherasco the Jewish presence amounted to 21 units out of a population of 9360 inhabitants. See Annali di statistica, serie III, v. 9, 1884, p. 146. 23  “Cav. Giacomo Debenedetti, who was for many years treasurer of these  Charitable Works, was replaced by others last year due to party malice. This year the Town Hall wanted him to direct these works, appointing him a member of the Board of Directors. And the eminent Mr. Giacomo Vitale (probably a relative of the journalist) was at the same time appointed to be a member of the First Instance Commission for the Mobile Wealth in this Mandate. Considering that the clerical party predominated and that only three Jewish fami-

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an important social standing, but were of a different religious persuasion. For example, at the wedding of the daughter of Cav. Giacomo De Benedetti, “many notables” of the town were invited to the sumptuous banquet following the ceremony.24 This kind of situation, like many others and not just in Piedmont alone, where the size of the Jewish community was reduced, encouraged socializing outside of the tight Jewish circle, especially for women. For wives of prominent citizens, particularly those who lived in the country rather than in cities, their inclusion on some board or committee directing a charitable organization alongside women of a high social class was an even greater sign of distinction, a way of confirming their belonging to that same class, and above all, a way to definitively acknowledge their integration as Jews. While the desire to “be recognized” and affirm their personal social advancement was perhaps at times greater than their desire to accomplish charitable acts, the antipathy of these journalists for the social activism of their female coreligionists originated mainly from fear, and even more from the conviction that the volunteer work of Jewish mothers was the principal cause of the growing aspiration among their daughters to pursue a career and a paid profession. Giuseppina Levi Artom issued this heartfelt appeal: Mothers in Israel, how much better would it be if we dedicated our time instead to religious study or educational pursuits and thus be better able to teach our children because—and we all know this to be true—Mother is the greatest teacher. If we mothers would train, if we would instruct our daughters, what great benefits could be derived for us, for the families our daughters will someday have, and not for the world, for business or for public offices which can be left to men. So many men need work! Would this not reduce the number of misfit women and idle men?25

The discussion extends beyond the issue of charitable work and includes the issue of women in the workplace, a phenomenon that had become anything but temporary in Italy during this time, particularly among the agricultural and industrial working class, as well as among the middle and lower-middle classes. Nevertheless, Levi Artom privileged the moralizing and prescriptive aspects of her discourse, rather than giving heed to the lies exist here, the fact is quite eloquent.” “Notizie diverse. Cherasco,” V.I., XLVII, fasc. XI, November 1899, p. 391. 24  See “Notizie diverse. Cherasco,” V.I., LI, fasc. IX, September 1903, p. 295. 25  G. Levi Artom, “Alle madri israelite,” V.I., XLIX, fasc. IV, April 1901, p. 166.

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social realities and dynamics women faced at the time. She approached the issue by employing the same arguments (not without prejudice) that were so frequently invoked in Italy, negating for women the elements and means to emancipation, thus effectively barring their path forward. Economic independence was the first step on the path, and full equality of civil and political rights was the final goal. The journalist for The Jewish Banner argued against the legitimacy of women seeking education, for she felt it would encourage a woman to pursue a professional career that would not only pull her away from the purpose for which she was created and thus deprive the family of its principal support, but would also threaten to negatively influence the professional prospects of men who would see shrinking work opportunities. The dislike expressed by the journalist found evidence perhaps in the case of Piedmont, one of the most progressive regions in the Italian peninsula. In Turin, which was one of the most progressive urban areas and was the residence of the journalist, the consequences of the change in mentality were most apparent; toward the end of the nineteenth century, middle and lower-middle-class families increasingly provided their daughters with an education that would allow them to have a profession, although they were impelled by different considerations. For example, at the beginning of the twentieth century, girls from the lower-middle class, for whom working would be a necessity and whose families had for a long time shown themselves to be in favor of their daughters working outside the home, had already managed to secure most of the available positions teaching in elementary schools. Following the creation of the Istituto superiore di magistero femminile (Upper Girls’ Teacher Training Institute) in 1882, women from these families were then able to find steady positions in the sector of secondary education for girls.26 26  As Delfina Dolza has observed, around 1870 the families of the small bourgeoisie had commonly accepted the job in return for payment from their daughters. Threatened by the economic crisis that hit Italy in the last decade of the nineteenth century, the lower-middle classes also saw in the education of girls as well as for boys, a means both to defend their status and to obtain social promotion. Hence the large number of young people attending Normal Schools with a view to employment in the teaching sector. See D. Dolza, “Per un contributo allo studio delle classi medie in Piemonte nei primi decenni del secolo: il caso delle insegnanti,” in Torino fra liberalismo e fascismo, edited by U. Levra and N. Tranfaglia, Milan, Franco Angeli, 1987, pp. 29–30 and pp. 41–42. In 1882, in order to respond to the growing need for secondary school teachers, the Istituto Superiore di Magistero femminile (Ismf), based in Rome and Florence, was created to employ girls with a teacher’s diploma in the lower ranks of secondary education and in particular in the women’s sections of the Normal School. The school (Ismf) was mostly attended by the most gifted daughters of the

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As for the daughters of middle-class families who practiced a profession, the number of girls who enrolled in the university in 1900 (250 in total) was almost equal to the number of girls who enrolled in the Istituto superiore di magistero femminile, 267. In the three years from 1897 to 1900, the number of female graduates reached 140. The university of Turin had the distinction of providing the largest contingent of female graduates which included not an insignificant number of Jewish students. Although the daughters of middle-class families were often directed toward courses of study that were not necessarily intended to be the basis for a future professional career but rather intended for them to accrue learning to be held in reserve and utilized in case the family faced an unexpected economic catastrophe, the girls seemed to wish instead to follow in the footsteps of teachers and seriously pursue the goal of engaging in a professional activity.27 lower and middle class. See ivi, pp. 38–40. On the creation of Ismf and the debates preceding it, see G.  Di Bello, “L’Istituto superiore di Magistero femminile nell’Ottocento,” in Id., G. Mannucci and A. Santoni Rugiu, Documenti e ricerche per la storia del Magistero, Florence, Luciano Manzuoli editore, 1980, pp.  23–75, especially pp.  45–75; M. Moretti, “Villari e l’istruzione femminile: dibattiti e iniziative di riforma,” in L’educazione delle donne. Scuole e modelli di vita femminile nell’Italia dell’Ottocento, edited by S. Soldani, Milan, Franco Angeli, 1989, pp. 497–530. See also G. Di Bello, “La professionalizzazione delle insegnanti della secondaria,” in Formare alle professioni. Sacerdoti, principi, educatori, edited by E. Becchi and M. Ferrari, Milan, Franco Angeli, 2009, pp. 492–500. 27  See D. Dolza, Per un contributo, cit., pp. 38–49. The data on the number of graduates were taken from V. Ravà, “Le laureate in Italia. Notizie statistiche,” Bollettino Ufficiale del Ministero della Pubblica Istruzione, (BUMPI), April 2, 1902, pp. 634–654. Among the 51 graduates of the University of Turin are the names of Ida Terracini (1870–1964) and Costantina Levi (1870–?), holders of a degree in mathematics obtained in 1892 and 1893 respectively (see: E. Luciano, “Ebree la cui religione si confonde con il culto dell’Italia: il caso delle insegnanti di matematica,” in Conferenze e seminari dell’Associazione Subalpina Matheis 2013–2014, edited by F. Ferrara, L. Giacardi, M. Mosca, Turin, KWB, 2014, pp. 323–333 and Id., “Mathematics and race in Turin: the Jewish community and the local context of education (1848–1945),” in “Dig where you stand” 4: Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on the History of mathematics Education, edited by K. Bjamadóttir, F. Furinghetti, M. Menghini, J. Paytz, G. Schubring, Rome, Nuova Cultura, 2017, pp. 189–201), and those of Sara Treves, Luigia Lombroso, Gabriella Levi, Giulietta Artom, and Pia Treves, all of whom graduated in literature between 1892 and 1893. The number of degrees awarded by the University of Turin—69 in all—is higher than that of graduates; 18 students had in fact obtained a second degree as in the case of Pia Treves who in 1900 had added a degree in philosophy to her degree in literature. See V. Ravà, “Le laureate in Italia,” cit. and M. Raicich, “Liceo, università, professioni: un percorso difficile,” in L’educazione delle donne. Scuole e modelli di vita femminile nell’Italia dell’Ottocento, cit., pp.  147–181. The tendency even in families in a secure economic position to encourage the intellectual

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While this situation caused anxiety for Giuseppina Levi Artom, it instead inspired the pen of Bettina Levi Allara. In an energetic article, the latter commented on the philanthropic and especially the intellectual activities of her female coreligionists in an entirely different vein. Published in 1903 for the fiftieth anniversary of The Jewish  Banner, Levi Allara’s piece retraced and rewrote in a feminine key more than 50 years of Jewish emancipation. She lauded the quick and courageous reaction of Jewish women to the “benevolent invitation” that society had extended to them: “Women found  the pathway open to  their  intelligence, and soon they took hold of every branch of intellectual pursuit….Bright…sensible…but a little shy,” young Jewish women poured into classrooms in great numbers, and “the most confident, the most intelligent” went on to pursue higher education and became excellent teachers and the directors of Jewish schools which were founded in large part thanks to the generous contributions of women who were “educated and charitable.” “Noble laborers of thought,” who unified religious faith with “the highest ideals of patriotism and progress,” Jewish teachers had prepared “the boldest, the strongest,” generation, which went on to distinguish itself in institutions of secondary education, then joined the battle at universities to “conquer science, [a generation that] populated the literary and scientific world with female doctors and professors, with distinguished women who through their tireless work and constant study, brought honor to the great work of progress and the regeneration of thought.”28 Levi Allara admitted that Jewish women were not flawless, and that the pursuit of education, like society life, often had the effect of “a strong wine, that if taken in great quantity would darken the intellect and diminish her strength.” But although education and worldliness could sometimes get the upper hand over Jewish formation of their daughters would seem to find significant testimony in the words of farewell of Luigia Archivolti Cavalieri to her young daughter Margherita. An educated woman, active philanthropist, and member of a distinguished family of the Jewish bourgeoisie of Ferrara, Luigia Archivolti Cavalieri (born 1854), who died in September 1901 as a result of serious illness, left her daughter a moving letter (dated August 24, 1901) in which she gave her the last, heartfelt advice: “Learn to be a good housewife, strengthen yourself in those studies that you most prefer and where you believe you will be superior to mediocrity, and this because in addition to having the moral skills to feed your intellect, your skills will be useful one day if you are a mother, and can help you, in case of need, to lead life without relying on the alms of others.” See In memoria di Luigia Archivolti Cavalieri. Nel trigesimo giorno dalla morte, September 3, 1901, Ferrara, 1901, p. 46. 28  B. Levi Allara, “La donna israelita nella società civile,” in Il Cinquantesimo anniversario del “Vessillo Israelitico,” cit., pp. 26–27.

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women, Levi Allara reassured her readers that this ill effect could inflict only superficial damage because “in Woman as much as in Man, the Jewish character is immutable and rises up and protests every time that the order of things is contrary to that untouchable purity, that law of justice that lies at the heart of the Jewish Code.”29 The strength of these affirmations was justified not only by the solemnity of the context, but also because they included elements from Levi Allara’s own personal biography. While she was the same age as Levi Artom,30 it is not possible to ascertain with complete confidence whether Levi Allara was herself a teacher; however, it is certain that the energetic Levi Allara from Turin knew well and understood the teachers’ world and experience which she identified with and loved. Levi Allara lived closely to the circle of teachers, “I have a weakness for this group that is so modest, whose labors are so useful”31 and was active in improving the instruction of underprivileged Jewish children.32 Bettina Levi Allara was the sister of Marietta Levi, who enjoyed a distinguished reputation in Casale for having dedicated “many years of her life to religious and civil instruction.”33 The “liberal” opinions of Allara regarding women in the workplace very closely resembled the opinions of Eugenia Ravà Sorani, her fellow-­ journalist at The Jewish Banner, who served as the director of the Scuola tecnica femmninile Marianna Dionigi (Women’s Technical School) and was recognized in 1899 with the gold medal award for her contributions to public instruction.34  While  another context, Ravà Sorani had underscored the extensive benefits from education and employment that women gained both for themselves and their families. Though far from supporting those women who called for “a utopia of emancipation, and those who  Ivi. pp. 28–29.  She was born in Casale (Piedmont) on December 27, 1849. 31  B.A.L., “Una festa al Collegio Colonna e Finzi,” V.I., LII, fasc. III, March 1904, p. 120. 32  See “Notizie diverse. Torino,” V.I., LIV, fasc. II, February 1906, p. 125, where it is reported that Bettina Levi Allara is a member of the provisional committee in charge of evaluating the project of a new Jewish boarding school, and B.A.L., “Per l’erigendo Convitto Israelitico in Torino,” V.I., LIV, fasc. IV, April 1906, pp. 232–234. 33  See “Cenni Necrologici,” V.I., LIV, fasc. III, March 1906. 34  Born in 1857  in Manciano, a small town in Tuscany, Eugenia Ravà Sorani, wife of Vittore Ravà (1888–1964, an important official in the Ministry of Public Education), was the director of the Asili Infantili Israelitici (Jewish Children’s Nursery Schools) in 1881 and in this capacity, she received the silver medal for public education from the Minister of Education. She became director of the Marianna Dionigi Institute and was awarded the gold medal in 1899. 29 30

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would at all costs make the conditions of the two sexes absolutely equal, thus thrusting women—who have been transformed into men—into the tumultuous agitation of masculine life,” Ravà Sorani did not hesitate to condemn as immoral “shutting up a woman in the home, and denying her any role in society.” This view is based on Ravà Sorani’s clear-eyed observation of and pragmatic approach to the economic realities of her day. She maintained that it was essential for women to achieve a position of independence that would render them “free to choose their own fate,” because times had changed and often a single breadwinner in a family was not enough. The economic crisis that had swept up the lower strata of the middle classes at the end of the nineteenth century now began to affect the upper strata as well, so much so in fact that many traditional middleclass men found it increasingly difficult to earn enough to support their families and maintain their lifestyle. Thus, in addition to the right and obligation a woman had to develop herself personally and enrich her own education, women’s labor now was a necessary sacrifice, but one that repaid a woman and her family with personal enrichment and spiritual wealth. Work soothes the soul. I say this from personal experience. Work is what procures comfort and ease for our loved ones around us. Let’s work, women! Let’s help to shoulder the ever-growing burdens on the family!35

Sorani did not foresee a career for women as judges, or government officials. Hers was a moderate feminism that valued first and foremost women studying and pursuing knowledge in order to dedicate themselves predominantly to teaching, which was considered in that age to be the natural extension of women’s maternal role. These days we cannot exclude women from professions in literature and science. We venerate those women who gave their lives to honorable works, those women who…dedicated themselves with love to advanced instruction for students without neglecting their sacred family duties or losing their sweet simplicity…thus they harmonize their domestic duties with their intellectual inclinations.36

35  E. Ravà, Il femminismo e l’educazione della donna nell’epoca presente, Rome, Società Editrice Dante Alighieri, p. 7 and p. 12. 36  Ivi, pp. 31–32.

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But even if a woman did not practice a profession outside the home, education remained an obligation and a mission. Sorani directed her writings to men as well. She wanted to make them understand how important it was for men to appreciate that a woman’s smile was the smile of an intelligent being, a smile dictated by the “mind and heart.” Ignorance destroyed thought, love, and family: I will make a solemn vow, and this is the vow: the rising movement for women’s intellectual development, which has only recently begun in Italy, proves that women can be of great influence in a civilization, that women’s mission of peace and love is one of education and progress!37

Hers is a message that portends the increasingly recognized value of women to society, an essential point in feminist thought, and one that is equally present in Jewish culture and tradition. It was a value that Sorani re-elaborated and reinterpreted more extensively after becoming a supporter of “fair emancipation,” emancipation that would dissolve all the prejudices marginalizing women and that would restore women’s full potential. Among Sorani’s and Allara’s female coreligionists there were certainly many valiant teachers to whom they referred and for whom progress, education, the valorization of the quality and capacity of women served as a source of inspiration and call to action. “Social mothers,”38 who had left the domestic hearth in order to put into action the synthesis of their specific religious and cultural values and their patriotic feelings to militate for the cause of education and instruction for the people, especially for children, the nation’s future citizens, as well as for women, whose right to citizenship still needed to be formed and attained. At the end of the nineteenth century, the sisters Rosa (1864–1946) and Emilia Errera, (1866–1901) who descended from a wealthy Venetian family, were already highly regarded for their competence as teachers as well as for their activism in intellectual and social circles. At the beginning of the twentieth century, a third sister, Anna (1870–1940) was recognized for her brilliant intellect, which she employed in the struggle for women’s

 Ivi, p. 21.  The term is borrowed from the volume Madri sociali. Percorsi di genere tra educazione politica e filantropia, edited by A. Cagnolati, Rome, Anicia, 2011. 37 38

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rights.39 Likewise, Adele Levi Della Vida (1822–1915) rightly deserves the credit for establishing the first kindergarten in Italy that followed the model of the innovative German educator Friedrich Fröbel (1782–1852) (with kindergartens first in Venice in 1869, and then in Padua and Verona), and for dedicating her life to educational and scholastic reform.40 Another distinguished example of a “valiant teacher” was Aurelia Josz (1869–1944).41 Her innovative pedagogical ideas arose from her specific cultural background, which also informed her identity whether she was 39  Emilia, Rosa, and Anna shared the same commitment to writing literature for children. In 1896, Rosa had published a reading book for elementary schools called La Famiglia Villanti (The Villanti Family), which was a great success. She also utilized well her knowledge of foreign languages and literatures, studied at the Istituto Superiore di Magistero in Florence, by translating children’s works. Emilia worked as a historian and literary critic. Anna, the youngest, combined her interest in children’s literature with her efforts to benefit women within the Unione Femminile (Women’s Union), and her work to improve the education of the lower classes. Her interest in children’s literature led to the publication of school texts, some in collaboration with her sister Rosa and Lina Schwartz (1876–1947), who was a poet and children’s writer. See the biographical notes contained in the Dizionario biografico delle donne italiane, Milan, Baldini and Castoldi, 1995, pp. 420–422 and the essay of A. Norsa, “Tre donne che hanno onorato l’ebraismo italiano: le sorelle Errera,” R.M.I., XLI, n. 1, January 1975, pp.  42–55. On Emilia and Rosa see Dizionario biografico degli italiani, Rome, Istituto della Enciclopedia italiana, 1993, pp. 251–254 and S. Fava, Percorsi critici di letteratura per l’infanzia tra le due guerre, Milan, V&P Strumenti, 2004, pp. 253–261. 40  “Without doubt Levi grasped the importance of introducing an Institute of a nondenominational character in Italy, where Jews could also be welcomed, equally as Catholics. Too many things in her life had suffered due to this unequal treatment in which she was still living with the consequences of, so as not to feel horror at all forms of exclusion from the common banquet of the spiritual life of the Nation”. V. Benetti Brunelli, Il primo giardino d’infanzia in Italia, Rome, Albrighi, Segati and C., 1931, p. 18. As Gina Lombroso Ferrero (1872–1944) recalls, Adele Della Vida Levi’s work was not limited to children’s gardens alone. During her stay in Florence for family reasons, she collaborated (like many of her coreligionists and some Jewish institutions, such as the Jewish Institute of Arts and Crafts and the Paggi Institute, a private school for girls) with the Society of the People’s Schools, founded in 1867 by Pietro Dazzi (1837–1896), a man of letters, educator, and an academician of the Crusca (1875). In 1889 Adele opened and supported the expenses of an embroidery section within the Professional School of Piazza S. Croce. See P. Dazzi, Relazione letta il 23 giugno 1889, in Società delle Scuole del Popolo di Firenze. Relazioni e discorsi di Pietro Dazzi dal 1868 al 1896, Florence, Tipografia G. Barbera, 1897, pp. 290–291. After moving to Rome, Adele founded a School of Home Economics in 1910. See G. Lombroso, Adele della Vida-Levi, una benefattrice dell’infanzia, Turin, Officina Poligrafica Editrice Subalpina “OPES,” 1911. 41  See for example, A. Josz, “L’ebraismo e la pace,” Giovine Europa, II, n. 5, 18 May 1914, pp. 77–78.

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religiously observant or not. Like her coreligionist Sorani, Josz supported a moderate form of women’s emancipation. In 1902, Josz founded La scuola pratica agricola femminile di Niguarda (Girl’s Practical and Agricultural School of Niguarda) in Milan. This institution was the first of its kind and was created with the purpose of providing adequate preparation for its female students to “work and serve intelligently in their situations,” whatever those situations might be, whether as hired agricultural laborers, condemned to a life of heavy labor and controlled by “obtuse overseers” who balked at adopting new, more efficient work methods—or as the daughters of small landholders who often remained shut up at home “awaiting an offer of marriage from any quarter” or were sent off into the “vast ocean of technical schools and Scuole Normali” (Teachers’ Colleges) though without the true vocation that is indispensable for undertaking a career fraught with difficulties.42 These girls were “unfortunate wild flowers…they work their lives away without ever understanding.” After obtaining a diploma at the cost of countless sacrifices, including even their health, the fate of these young women was often to find a teaching position in some isolated place far from their families, exposing them to situations that in some cases turned them into fallen women or victims. Even when their work situation was positive, the problem remained that a considerable contingent of teachers came from the countryside and consequently the number of opportunities and prospects for improvement 42  Before the move in 1904 to Niguarda, a small town near the Lombard capital, the School had its headquarters in the facilities of the Orfanotrofio femminile della Stella di Milano. As Aurelia Josz herself recalls, the Council of the Orphanage had thought of including agricultural education in its program but had given up for lack of money. The Committee for Agrarian Education, which she formed, then proposed to bear the expenses for the operation of the course and the Council offered a classroom and a plot of land for the exercises. See A. Josz, Le donne e lo spirito rurale. Storia di un’idea e di un’opera, Milan, Antonio Vallardi, 1932, p. 15. In her valuable study on the work of Aurelia Josz, Paola D’Annunzio points out that the choice of this location was not only logistically motivated. Among the aims of the Agricultural School was also to offer the disenfranchised a chance for physical, moral, and social redemption. In this sense, the orphans of the Stella were the most appropriate recipients of an initiative aimed at achieving economic independence, particularly in a city like Milan, where the meteoric growth of the city and the intense flow of immigrants, linked to the great industrial development, triggered phenomena of serious social and moral problems, such as prostitution and juvenile delinquency. See “Aurelia Josz (1869–1944): un’opera di pionierato a favore dell’istruzione agraria femminile,” Storia in Lombardia, n. 2, 1999, pp. 70–73. On the history of the School, see also V. Vita Josz, Le origini della Prima Scuola Agraria Femminile Italiana nel pensiero e nell’opera di Aurelia Josz, Nervi, Tip. Ongarelli, 1957.

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decreased for the entire group because “it is a law of economics that oversupply lowers the value of the product.” Agricultural instruction would prevent so much wasted energy and would guarantee these young women a more stable work situation more in harmony with their family’s social class. What good fortune for these girls if schooling returned them to their families capable of putting to use those humble household industries: raising chickens, bees, silkworms, flowers; girls able to bring order, propriety, and cleanliness to the home. The proceeds of their work would certainly not be diminished: such a woman builds up a home.43

Josz concluded with words strongly reminiscent of the Bible.44 In her battle to revitalize agricultural labor, Josz undeniably drew inspiration from some of the same ideals of regeneration that guided the Zionist 43  A. Josz, “L’istruzione agraria femminile,” (text of the report read on the occasion of the III Congress of Women’s Education held in Milan in September 1907), Vita femminile italiana, I, fasc. 1, January 1907, pp.  6–8. See also, Id. Relazione e programma della Scuola Pratica agricola femminile, in Niguarda (Milano), Milan, Tip. Agraria, 1910, pp.  3–7. Aurelia Josz was born on August 3, 1869 in Florence, the city where she graduated from the Istituto Superiore di Magistero at the age of 19. She taught literature at the Normal Schools and was able to create an agricultural school for girls, thanks to the support of many coreligionists, among which the figures of Baron Leopoldo Franchetti (1847–1917) and his wife Alice Hallgarten (1874–1911) stood out. Coming from a wealthy Jewish American family, Alice Franchetti, a very active philanthropist, shared Josz’s innovative pedagogical approach based on direct experience and observation. In the Montesca school founded in 1901 with her husband Leopoldo, which was followed in 1902 by the creation of the Rovigliano school, teaching was based on the principle of living with nature. Women’s agricultural education and the improvement of domestic education were part of a wider project for the social promotion of farmers. See S. Bucci, “La scuola della Montesca. Un centro educativo internazionale,” in Leopoldo e Alice Franchetti e il loro tempo, cit., pp. 195–242). In 1921 the School also instituted the Magistral Course to prepare rural teachers to develop a love for the land in their students and to facilitate their insertion in the new work environment. In 1927 the Fascist Party called her to take care of the planting of the Fascist Women’s Agricultural High School of S.  Alessio, in the province of Rome. Once the work was completed in a few months, the Josz had to suffer the affront of the regime that inaugurated the school of S. Alessio as the first agricultural school for girls, taking all the credit and allocating the public funds stolen from the School of Niguarda that in 1930–1931 had to close its doors. In 1933 the School was reopened but Josz had been ousted. Aurelia Josz died in Auschwitz in August 1944. See P. D’Annunzio, Aurelia Josz, cit, pp. 86–96. See in addition, Dizionario biografico delle donne lombarde, cit., pp. 601–602. 44  “Every wise woman buildeth her house.” Proverbs 14:1.

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project, a movement that Josz did not hesitate to join.45 She considered the redemption of the land to be one of the important instruments that permitted all of humanity, not women alone, to attain physical and spiritual regeneration. All intelligent women of Italy must join in the battle against the most pernicious of prejudices, namely that prejudice which makes many believe that agricultural labor is less noble than other employment. In truth, the secret of regeneration lies in the return to that pure font of life, while mankind becomes more humble and purer through contact with the earth, and above all, happier. Let us return to the land! Tolstoy cried, and his cry was prophetic: Let us return to Mother Earth.46

This faith in the power of education, work, and progress, which inspired the thoughts and guided the actions of many other Jewish women regardless of their ties to religion and religious observance—this faith was wellunderstood and professed by Giuseppina Levi Artom. While she was ready to erect barriers to limit the professional ambitions of her female coreligionists, with similar conviction and determination, the journalist became a champion of their rights, especially their rights to education and knowledge. This conviction matured in the rich field of her own personal lived experience. The image of Giuseppina Levi Artom that has been handed down was the image of a woman with “a lively intellect,” who shared with her highly educated and refined husband,

45  Aurelia Josz had given her adhesion to “a Zionism understood as a moral force that awakens latent energies, breaks hateful chains, humiliating servitudes of spirit and body, a Zionism that is the flower that blossoms from a wider idea of humanity and true brotherhood.” A. Josz, “Educazione morale e Sionnismo,” L’idea sionista (here after I.S.), IV, n. 11, November 1904. Josz was part of Bettino Levi’s Milanese Zionist Group. See “Notizie diverse. Milano,” V.I., L, fasc. I, January 1902, p. 26. 46  A. Josz, “L’istruzione agraria femminile,” Vita femminile, I, January 1, 1907, p.  15. This reference to Tolstoy has a double meaning. Aurelia Josz fully identified with the thoughts of the Russian writer. Tolstoy recognized the moral primacy of the agrarian world and therefore considered it necessary to safeguard the culture of the land as a repository of authentic values and a means for the improvement of humanity. See P. D’Annunzio, Aurelia Josz, cit., pp. 81–82. Similarly, the Russian writer enjoyed great popularity in Jewish-­Zionist circles and his writings were an inspiration to the first pioneers in Palestine. See A. Cavaglion, “Tendenze nazionali e albori sionistici,” in Storia d’Italia, Annali, 11, Gli ebrei in Italia, vol. II, Dall’emancipazione ad oggi, Turin, Einaudi, 1997, pp. 1308–1309.

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a veneration for knowledge typical of that generation raised under the banner of rational enlightenment and especially alive in Jewish families of a certain social standing. Thanks to rationalism and Enlightenment ideals they felt they could finally assert their right to civil equality with other citizens.

Their veneration of knowledge gave “an aristocratic stamp”47 to the modest economic condition of her family of “typical intellectual Jews.” In addition to her position as inspector of public schools, Giuseppina Levi Artom was “an expert teacher in Jewish schools.”48 This explains the 47  B. Treves, Tre vite. Dall’ultimo ’800 alla metà del ’900. Studi e memorie di EmilioEmanuele-Ennio Artom, Florence, Casa editrice Israel, 5714–1954, p. 7. Giuseppina Levi Artom was the mother of two children, Elijah Samuel (1887–1965) and Emilio (1888– 1952). A “tireless scholar” of biblical studies and ancient Jewish history and author of religious texts, Elijah Samuel studied at the Rabbinical College of Florence and later became a rabbi in various communities. Emilio was instead a mathematician, a teacher in technical schools and then in high schools, for whom “true religious faith was…an intermittent experience…however, what remained constant and basic was his consideration of Judaism as an indispensable ethical experience”. This concept is also found in the writings of their children, Ennio (1920–1940) and Emanuele (1915–1944). R. Pertici, “Emanuele Artom studioso di storia,” in La moralità armata. Studi di Emanuele Artom. 1915–1944, edited by A. Cavaglion, Milan, Franco Angeli, 1993, p. 12. Ennio, born in Turin in April 1920, graduated in literature at the age of 20 with a thesis in glottology. He also had an interest in Jewish things which led to his collaboration with the Dizionario Enciclopedico Utet for entries relating to Judaism. Together with his brother Emanuele he shared responsibility for the Library of the community of Turin and organized debates and conferences. Ennio died in 1940 in a tragic accident in the mountains. For Emanuele, too, fate was equally dramatic. Author of important studies of Jewish history, Emanuele conceived “Judaism as tradition, as a bond transmitted through time.” To Judaism he claimed, “within his universalistic conception,” “the tradition of morality.” D. Sorani, “L’ebraismo, il confronto di una vita,” in La moralità armata, cit., p. 39. After the fall of Fascism (July 25, 1943) and the armistice of September 8th, Emanuele chose the path of the partisan struggle. Captured by the Germans in the spring of 1944, he died as a result of torture. His Diaries, (published first by E. Ravenna and P. De Benedetti, Milan, Centro di documentazione ebraica contemporanea, 1966 and in a new edition edited by G. Schwarz, Diari di un partigiano ebreo. January 1940–February 1944, Turin, Bollati Boringhieri, 2008), some pages of which can be found in the book Benvenuta Treves, Tre vite, cit., pp. 167–240, are considered “one of the ‘strong’ books on which the moral and intellectual identity of every Italian Jew should be built.” A. Cavaglion, “Introduzione,” to La moralità armata, cit., p. 2. 48  B. Treves, Tre vite, cit., p.15. Giuseppina Levi, married to Emanuele Salvador Artom, employee of the “Regie Poste,” could boast of an experience as inspector of the municipal school G. A. Rayneri of Turin and as director of the Jewish preschool. See E. Rossi Artom, Gli Artom. Storia di una famiglia della Comunità ebraica di Asti attraverso le sue generazioni (XVI-XX secolo), Turin, Zamorani, 1997, p. 196.

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modest concessions that she seemed to make to her female coreligionists who wished to dedicate themselves to teaching. In all probability, these concessions were justified by the fact that teaching more often than not assumed the role of an actual mission, especially when carried out within the Jewish community. By extension, teaching became associated with the maternal role because it took on the role of safeguarding Jewish religion and culture, a duty not all mothers wanted or were able to discharge with the necessary care. Levi Artom’s aversion for any work carried on outside the home by her female coreligionists remained essentially intact, but this aversion was to some degree attenuated by her deep love for the culture that led her tirelessly to depict education and knowledge as the inexhaustible source of psychological  and spiritual well-being, which gave her the right to define herself as a woman “who loved progress.” Levi Artom wanted all young Jewish women to be trained as teachers “not just a few to teach in schools,” but above all to be teachers in their homes, to become important teachers of their children, brothers, and sisters. Above all, she wished to “convince all mothers that women and girls…who were educated and domestic brought a richness to the family that is sought for in vain in those families who are driven by the mania of jobs for women.”49 This is what the austere journalist asserted in an article published in The Jewish  Banner in 1904  in which once again she confronted the thorny problem of women’s employment. Women’s aspirations for economic autonomy were concisely defined by Levi Artom as an actual “mania,” a trap that would threaten domestic peace, a desire induced by thoughtless and irresponsible mothers who, driven by “the mirage of quick and easy money,” did not hesitate to “cast their daughters” into environments that were culturally and religiously foreign to “holy law.”50 Her rigid conclusion accurately expressed the sentiments of a Jewish society that anxiously questioned what the future of the family would be in the absence of its most central element—the mother. The traditional resistance to women working was widespread, especially among the middle class, which was the class to which these male and female contributors of The Jewish Banner belonged, as did their male and female readers. Fear and hostility were also prevalent among members of other religious groups, such as the Catholics, but beyond the intransigent, traditionalist positions, or the positions that  G. Levi Artom, “Quel che vorrei,” V.I., LII, fasc. IX, settembre 1904, pp. 445–447.  Ivi, p. 446.

49 50

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were more open to women working, there was a need and a duty to confront the various problems associated with women working, especially for women from the disadvantaged classes. Nevertheless, the will and determination to confront the various problems that the issue of women working involved still existed.51 Among the Jewish establishment, the call for women to return to their rightful duties held precedence over a careful analysis of the phenomenon of women’s working outside the home, and precluded undertaking any initiatives to consider the consequences. In reality, the reasons for this lack of action—besides bourgeois indifference and morality—could be ascribed principally to the social class and to the type of employment pursued by these women who dedicated themselves to money-earning activities outside the home. These women came from the middle and lower-middle classes. Thus, even in cases where they had very limited resources, they rarely faced situations of abject poverty. Many of them worked in the teaching field, a profession that certainly involved various types of difficulties, but which nonetheless guaranteed steady employment. While it is true that poverty was far from unknown to the Jewish community— though the neediest could count on the intervention and support of a multitude of institutions (though this support was not overly efficient), it is also true that there was an almost total absence of an agricultural or industrial proletariat class of women who daily confronted a critical situation of survival for themselves and for their families. Italy as a country that came late to industrialisation, continued to be of little interest to the imposing number of immigrants coming from Eastern countries. From the beginning of the nineteenth century immigrants started to pour mainly not only into the USA and Argentina, but also into England, Germany, and to a lesser degree, France. Therefore, Italian 51  On the social engagement of women in the Catholic sphere, refer to I. Pera, “Chiesa, donna e società moderna: don Grugni e il femminismo cristiano,” Storia e problemi contemporanei, XIII, 26, 2000, pp. 25–47; Id., “La questione femminile nel mondo cattolico del primo Novecento,” Ricerche di storia sociale e religiosa, 59, 2001, pp. 67–89; Id. Camminare nel proprio tempo. Il femminismo cristiano di primo Novecento, Rome, Viella, 2016; R. Fossati, Élites femminili e nuovi modelli religiosi nell’Italia tra Otto e Novecento, Urbino, Quattro Venti, 1997. In addition see M. De Giorgio and P. Di Cori, “Politica e sentimenti: le organizzazioni femminili cattoliche dall’età giolittiana al fascismo,” Rivista di storia contemporanea, IX, fasc. 3, July 1980, pp. 337–371; M. G. Tanara, “Organizzazioni femminili cattoliche e azione sociale fra Otto e Novecento,” in Donna lombarda, 1860–1945, edited by A. Gigli Marchetti and N. Torcellan, Milan, Franco Angeli, 1992, pp. 58–64.

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Jewish women did not have to deal with the poverty of their immigrant foreign coreligionists, nor did they have to mobilize themselves to create special institutions specific to a situation of need, such as those created by their English or American female coreligionists with the goal of offering religious, emotional and economic support to women condemned to grueling conditions in life and at work. Such a state of affairs would not only have stimulated a more consistent presence of women in the community, and thus have favored the eventual vindication of a more important role for them, but above all, would have prompted even the more reticent to give a less dismissive judgment regarding the issue of women’s employment.52 The harsh opinions of Giuseppina Levi Artom about “the mania over jobs for women” were destined to arouse strong reactions from another contributor to The Jewish Banner: Emma Boghen Conigliani (1866–1956) who harbored very different feelings regarding women’s work.53 The exchange between the two contributors injected new elements into the debate, thus reigniting and enriching a debate that had slowly been declining into monotony. After her sincere admission of having reflected deeply on the article with the “trepidation that even the most resolute women” feel when their daughters are still in their tender years,54 Boghen Conigliani, responded decisively to Levi Artom’s generalizations. A renowned teacher 52  Regarding the social assistance and philanthropic activities of American, English, and German Jews on behalf of their female immigrant coreligionists see L. Gordon Kuzmack, Woman’s Cause. The Jewish Woman’s Movement in England and the United States, 1881–1933, Columbus, Ohio University Press,1990; M.A. Kaplan, The Jewish Feminist Movement in Germany. The Campaign of the Judischer Frauenbund, 1904–1908, Westport, CT, Greenwood Press, 1979 and the chapters, “Women’s Organization from Chevra to Feminism,” in Id., The Making of the Jewish Middle Class. Women, Family, and Identity in Imperial Germany, New  York, Oxford University Press, 1991, pp.  192–227 and “Female Spheres and Recognition: The Welfare Involvement of Jewish Women,” in R. Liedtke, Jewish Welfare in Hamburg and Manchester. 1850–1914, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1998, pp. 164–184. 53  See E. Boghen Conigliani, “Le donne israelite,” V.I., LII, fasc. XII, December 1904, pp. 587–590. 54  There are clear references to her personal biography. Born in Venice, Emma was married in 1892 to Federico Conigliani, a member of an important and very religious family from Modena. In 1904 she was already mother of three children: Mario, Guglielmina, and Nerina. For additional information on Emma Boghen Conigliani, see M. Miniati, “Più che italiana. Un profilo biografico di Emma Boghen Conigliani,” in Spazi pubblici e privati, fisici e virtuali della donna ebrea in Italia (sec. XV-XX), edited by L. Graziani Secchieri, Florence, Giuntina, 2015, pp. 333–350.

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and brilliant woman of letters,55 Boghen Conigliani was highly attuned to social issues and the “woman question.” That the “Israelite woman” had the duty to love her home and “not aspire to leave it,” was never in question. But for some women, leaving the domestic hearth was the only practical way to avoid poverty and there were young women who overcame demanding academic challenges in order to secure their future. Boghen Conigliani rebuked her colleague and coreligionist Levi Artom for evaluating the issue of women working through a lens that confused the struggle for dignity with the “mania for working,” which was worthy of criticism, but was “never worse” than languishing in luxury or indolence. I wish I could make you see [speaking to Levi Artom] as I see in my mind’s eye, that flock of girls and women who have been accused of having “the mania for working.” A few have this mania, and it is blameworthy, but only a few.…How many sweet, fervent eyes have had to regard the world as a battlefield, while they would have loved the gentle shelter of the domestic walls!…In the new conditions of society, women more and more often need to work to maintain their honesty and dignity; the question of the necessity of women working outside the home is one side of the social issue…I would like to show [the critics] these untiring, studious young women, who seemed driven by a relentless ambition to be first in their schools and who wreck themselves with intellectual labors that are too heavy, because one poor grade can mean a lost scholarship, or a lost future. I would like to show [everyone] in intimate daily detail those women who valiantly fight in their professions.56

55  Emma Boghen Conigliani’s passion for teaching began with her work at the Scuola Normale di Ascoli Piceno in 1890. In 1903 she was honored by the Ministry of Public Education with the gold medal for Benefitting Public Education. Having successfully taught in the Normal Schools of Parma, Naples and Udine, after 1900 she taught literature at the Regia Scuola Superiore di Brescia, (cf. ivi, p. 341), qualifications she had polemically included at the conclusion of her article in response to Giuseppina Levi Artom. See E.  Boghen Conigliani, “Le donne israelite,” cit. Emma Boghen Conigliani had also distinguished herself for her work as a writer and literary critic. See M. Miniati, “Più che italiana,” cit.; C. Gragnani, “Istanza didattica, emancipazionismo e biografismo tardo ottocentesco: Emma Boghen Conigliani critica letteraria,” in Sottoboschi letterari, edited by O. Frau and C. Gragnani, Florence, Firenze University Press, 2011, pp. 29–54 and L. Magazzeni, Operaie della penna. Donne, docenti e libri scolastici fra Ottocento e Novecento, Rome, Aracne, 2019, pp. 191–199. 56  E. Boghen Conigliani, “Le donne israelite,” cit., pp. 588–589.

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In this controversy, Boghen Conigliani championed the right of all women to work, not only those women whose conditions made working a necessity. She recognized the legitimate desire for economic independence of those women who did not enjoy the protection of marriage. In other words, the unfortunate spinsters, condemned to a life of serving others in silence and solitude, women who had “the courage to take on a life alone rather than prostitute themselves in marriage to the first man who happened along,” as the emancipationist journal, Vita Femminile (Women’s Life) affirmed.57 The good Signora Artom will have observed at times and with invincible piety the not infrequent figure of the spinster who takes care of the domestic tasks in the house of her brother or some other relative and then spends long, bleak hours in silence with a stocking in her hand.58

Emma Boghen Conigliani concluded her earnest and aggrieved article by underscoring the ambiguities and the contradictions in Jewish society which was intent on female education, and admiring of the educational refinement of their women, but opposed to the employment opportunities that could result from that education. This aversion was perhaps “the effect of the nation’s intense family sentiment.” A sentiment that was however insufficient to excuse those “gentlewomen” living their comfortable lives. The stigma they ungenerously attached to the “fervor for work” revoked solidarity with their sisters who had set out on other paths in life. The women who study and work are noble-hearted and courageous. I do not know why it is among the Jews in particular and especially among Jewish women that there is this indifference or hostility toward them.…What you call “mania for work” and disdain is often a noble courage in the face of the necessities of a life which is bitter for many, while for you it is sweet…your sisters who sacrifice themselves merit no reproof from you for they bring

57  Gitana, “Pregiudizi. Zitellona,” Vita femminile, II, n. 1, January 1896, p. 7. Eugenia Ravà Sorani’s opinions on this subject were not very different. She quickly affirmed that the economic independence of women was morally enhancing to the institution of marriage. “Matrimony will become an act of free choice much more than it is now, because the woman will no longer be forced by necessity to unite herself with on the first man who comes along, as long as he can support her.” E. Ravà Sorani, Il femminismo e l’educazione della donna, cit., p. 13. 58  E. Boghen Conigliani, “Le donne israelite,” cit., p. 588.

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honor to our nation for their resourcefulness and hard work…they have the right to expect a fraternal feeling of respect and reassurance from you.59

The contradictory sentiment that Boghen Conigliani refers to was elaborately expressed in an article in The Jewish Banner from 1902. The anonymous author, interpreting the feelings of the entire community, had enthusiastically commented on the successes of her female coreligionists who attended university.60 In The Jewish Banner this type of article was not  Ivi, pp. 589–590.  After pointing out that Ernestina Paper (1846–1926) had been the “first young lady” to graduate in Italy (in Florence, in 1877), in Medicine and Surgery, (see the entry edited by P. Govoni in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, Rome, Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana founded by Giovanni Treccani, 2016, vol. 85, pp. 713–716), the author added: “We do not have precise data on the number of female graduates in 1901, but it is certain that there were more than 70 and that there were many Jewish young women. Always onward! And we will always be happy to mention the progress that is being made even among the gentle sex.” “Israelite italiane laureate nelle R. Università del Regno dal 1877 a tutto il 1900”, V.I., L, fasc. V, May 1902, p. 168. The article had probably been prompted by the report made by Vittore Ravà, “Le laureate in Italia. Notizie statistiche,” for the Bollettino Ufficiale del Ministero della Pubblica Istruzione, (BUMPI), of April 2, 1902 (pp.  634–654). The data provided by Ravà showed that between 1877 and 1900 there were 224 female graduates, (257 considering the double degrees) 21 of whom were “Israelites.” (Among the “Israelites” on Ravà’s list, the name of Emma Modena (1875–1953) does not appear. She received her degree in Medicine in Milan in July, 1900. Her absence from the list was pointed out by Annunziata Paola Jeraci who wrote a study on the personal and professional journey of the noted doctor, and to whom she dedicated her essay, “Emma Modena medico socialista. Vita privata e attività professionale,” Storia in Lombardia, XIX, n.3, 1999, pp. 57–86). Ravà also made specific mention of those graduates who taught or had jobs in universities and other higher education institutions. Among these were three Jews: Elisa Norsa (1868–1939), assistant to the department of Zoology at the University of Bologna; Anna Foà (1876–1944), assistant to the department of Comparative Anatomy at the University of Rome; and finally, Marussia Bakunin (1873–1960), instructor at the Chemistry Institute of the University of Naples. The list of graduates of the University of Pisa includes the name of Maria Fischmann (1868–1931), the first woman to graduate in medicine and surgery (1893). Like Ernestina Paper, Fischmann came from Odessa and belonged to the Jewish merchant bourgeoisie class with its vibrant cultural life and connection across Western Europe. See M. Raicich, “Liceo, università, professioni: un percorso difficile,” cit., p. 150. Both Paper and Fischmann, as well as another very famous Russian, Anna Kuliscioff (1854–1925) (see M. Casalini, Anna Kuliscioff: The Lady of Italian Socialism, Rome, Editori Riuniti, 2013) had studied at Swiss universities before attending at Italian ones. As Alessandra Peretti remarked, who dedicated many pages to Maria Fischmann, better known as Maria Di Vestea, that the three doctors were exemplary figures of “that Russian-Jewish environment where access to higher education was considered the main path to emancipation and equality,” and in which “the battle for education had begun very early and had involved women from the beginning,” despite 59 60

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new. Every time a young Jewish woman achieved her teaching certificate or was given a position at a Normal School or something similar, the journal announced the event with an abundance of praise and compliments. This pride and enthusiasm stood in strident contrast with the hostility and indifference that the journal showed toward those women who expanded their interests and commitments outside of the domestic walls. Unlike Giuseppina Levi Artom, for whom being a Jewish woman meant living a life ruled by family, religious observance, and pursuing Jewish studies in order to pass on that knowledge to her children and the rising generation, Emma Boghen Conigliani believed that religion itself legitimized women’s efforts that were not confined solely within the walls of the home. If the “stigmata of the Jewish character” was “the divine sense of high morals, of divine justice,” as Bettina Levi Allara had formerly asserted,61 then not only men but women as well had the right and the duty to evaluate their own actions in terms of obedience to the moral imperative that called for commitment to the well-being and progress of all of civil society, according to Boghen Conigliani: having to adapt to a harsh, tsarist school policy. See A. Peretti, “Da Odessa a Pisa: una donna medico tra interessi pedagogici, diritti della donna e impegno sociale,” in Fuori dall’ombra. Studi di storia delle donne nella provincia di Pisa (secoli XIX e XX), edited by E. Fasano Guarini, A. Galoppini, A. Peretti, Pisa, Plus, 2006, p.  86. See also G. Vicarelli, “Rara ed eccelsa avis: le prime donne medico in Italia,” in Donne e professioni nell’Italia del Novecento, edited by Id., Bologna, Il Mulino, 2007, pp. 97–116, and Id., Donne di medicina. Il percorso professionale delle donne medico in Italia, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2008, especially pp. 31–58. The story of Enrica Calabresi exemplifies the Jewish presence in the university, and in particular in the scientific sector that at the time was rarely frequented by women. Her story is reconstructed by Paolo Ciampi in the book Un nome, Florence, Giuntina, 2006. In 1904, the doctor Edgardo Morpurgo (1872–1942), in the course of his report on the subject of the physical education of Jews in Italy, during the 4th Italian Zionist Conference in Milan, had reiterated the observations made by Eugenio Righini in his study Antisemitismo e semitismo nell’Italia politica moderna, (Milan-Palermo, Sandron, 1901) concerning the cultural superiority of Jewish women over men and also over non-Jews of equal economic and social profile: “Their education,” Righini affirmed, “leaves behind by far that of Christian women with equal social status,” p. 62. See E. Morpurgo, Per l’educazione fisica degli Ebrei in Italia, Modena, Biblioteca dell’Idea Sionnista, 1904, pp.  21–22. In the 1930s, the FILDIS (National Federation of Graduates and Diplomates) still counted many Jews among its members. See F. Taricone, “La FILDIS (Federazione nazionale laureate e diplomate) e l’associazionismo femminile (1920–1935),” in La corporazione delle donne, edited by M. Addis Saba, Florence, Vallecchi, 1996, p. 159. 61  B. Levi Allara, “La donna israelita nella società civile,” in Il cinquantesimo anniversario del Vessillo israelitico, cit., 1903, p. 27.

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Our religion is inherently far removed from any regressive bigotry…it has of itself free and broad principles that embrace in all their power the love of country, the humanitarian spirit, the love for arts and sciences, the veneration for civilization. The religious principles of a Jewish woman constrains no part, hinders no part, offends no part of intellectual and civil life, but instead, like the cherished family hearth, those principles radiate warmth and light on the family, the nation, and humanity. Scientific progress robs nothing from this high and free faith…and in the turbid times in which we live, the profound bond between the modern spirit and our ancient faith offers a sweetness and a power that is able to elevate the soul in every field of endeavor and human thought. To this the Jewish woman owes her free and vibrant understanding as a wife, a mother, and a citizen.62

By presenting work as a means to deal not only with material problems but also with existential questions, and by according those women engaged in work activities the same respect that had been reserved for women absorbed in their roles of wife and mother, Boghen Conigliani brought a breath of feminist fresh air to the Jewish community, though she still had criticisms of some feminist ideas. “Feminism, in its most elevated and vital elements, can be or can become a work of redemption,” she wrote in 1902. However, Boghen Conigliani accused extreme advocates for feminism of wanting to pit one half of the human race against the other and provoking a “ridiculous” antagonism that created serious obstacles. “The same identity for men and women,” she insisted, was neither possible nor desirable. A woman could hold the job of a man, or a man that of a woman, but both would do the job “at [their] worst.”63 Boghen Conigliani’s moderate, but not overly moderate, approach to feminism did not prevent her from contributing to several politically progressive journals, such as Vita femminile (Woman’s Life),64 which had already expressed evolved opinions  E. Boghen Conigliani, “Religione e patria,” in ivi, pp. 36–37.  E. Boghen Conigliani, “La donna e il diritto al lavoro,” La Rassegna scolastica, Florence October 30, 1902, fasc. XIII. It is part of a collection of articles and reviews (the headlines of the newspapers and magazines from which they are extracted and their dates are handwritten by Emma) contained in ACGV, Fondo Boghen Conigliani, folder 8, insert 8b. 64  The journal Vita femminile published in Rome for a period of three years (1895–1897), was proposed as the official voice of the Leagues for the protection of women’s interests, that had formed in the 1890s in various Italian cities, such as Turin, Milan, Florence, and Rome, in which workers, teachers, and employees participated. The vote to abolish marital authority and establishing the legal equality between men and women were their main objectives. 62 63

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about the rights, education, and work of women. For Boghen Conigliani, work was “sacred.” She claimed, “Here is the good part of feminism: let women work.” All women. Work was “health and morality” for all women: for disadvantaged women who were forced to stave off poverty as well as for well-off women who were vulnerable to the dangers of boredom and idleness. However, there were still duties. Boghen Conigliani invited women, at least the “best women” to fight more for their duties than for their rights. Her exhortation could seem a contradictory call for the old order, but it was not. By “duties,” Boghen Conigliani intended “higher and more arduous duties,” duties that once “conferred” on women would allow them to do more, to do better, for the family and for “the Nation, for which they have always been allowed to do very little directly.” Thus, Boghen Conigliani claimed a woman’s right to fulfill her duty to the family and the Nation not as a creature subjected to protection, but as true citizens. Who were “the best women” that Boghen Conigliani referred to? Perhaps more educated women, women who were not burdened by economic necessities and therefore freer to dedicate themselves to those duties that Boghen Conigliani indicated? A few years earlier, a group of these “best women”—women of the educated and progressive bourgeoise—spoke not of equality between men and women, but of equivalence, with the intent to affirm and valorize the specific characteristics of feminine identity. They founded an association with the purpose of “helping women in order to make them capable naturally and intellectually of fulfilling their lofty mission of love and social regeneration.” This was the language of the Programma dell’Unione femminile,65 one of the most important and coordinated organizations of the emancipation movement. Further points included: establishing a fund for medical expenses relative to pregnancy and delivery; the improvement of the moral and economic condition of kindergarten teachers, telegraph operators and telephone employees; providing professional training for the daughters of workers; and the admission of women to the boards of directors for Charitable Works. See A. Buttafuoco, Questioni di cittadinanza. Donne e diritti sociali nell’Italia liberale, Florence, Protagon editori toscani, 1997, pp.  54–55. About the journal, see D.  Bertoni Jovine, “La stampa femminile in Italia,” in Enciclopedia della donna, edited by D. Bertoni Jovine, Rome, Editori Riuniti, 1964, p. 122; R. De Longis, “Scienza come politica: ‘Vita femminile’ (1895–1897),” DWF, 21, 1982, p. 51; A. Buttafuoco, Cronache femminili. Temi e momenti della stampa emancipazionista in Italia dall’Unità al fascismo, Arezzo, Dipartimento di studi storico-sociali e filosofici, 1988, p. 25. 65   Unione Femminile Nazionale (National Women’s Union), Programma e Statuto, Milano, Officina Grafica R. Muggiani, (no date), pp. 4–5.

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A substantial group of Boghen Conigliani’s female coreligionists came together in this organization, and followed it through its many phases of growth and development.

Jewish Women in the Movement for Female Emancipation One of the distinctive features of the women’s emancipation movement in Italy was the substantial membership of Jewish women in its organizations.66 The Unione Femminile Nazionale (National Women’s Union), close to the socialist party, constituted one of the foremost places and significant high points of Jewish women’s involvement in the female emancipation movement. Founded in Milan in 1899 by Ersilia Majno Bronzini (1859–1933), the Unione Femminile was one of the most important and efficiently structured organizations of the women’s political movement. The Unione Femminile arose with the purpose of concentrating all the various women’s organizations in Milan into one strong, central nexus, regardless of their political or religious orientations, coordinating their various activities, and thus becoming the central reference point and main force of what the Union called, “practical feminism.” By this, the Union meant the promotion of and support for the many charitable, educational, and political initiatives aimed at the psychological and material liberation of women. As could be read in the Union’s Program, there were many “people of good will” and institutions that could operate to advantage, but both the former and the latter were “nearly paralyzed” and their efforts were thwarted by the indifference and hostility of the context in which they worked. The women who were engaged on the social front, though not great in number, were “inexperienced and frequently distracted by other occupations,” and operated for the most part without “a developed awareness.” The various institutions in existence at the time were disjointed and did not offer results proportional to the efforts they exacted. The Union swore to “unite all women of good will and to give a practical direction to their latent, fragmented energies.” It saw women as more than capable of working the areas of charitable works, education, protection of children, 66  A. Buttafuoco, “Apolidi. Suffragismo femminile ed istituzioni politiche dall’Unità al fascismo,” in Cittadine. La donna e la costituzione. Atti del Convegno promosso dall’Associazione degli ex-parlamentari, (Roma, 22–23 marzo 1988), Rome, Camera dei deputati, 1989, p. 40.

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maternity assistance, and employment as counselors, delegates, visitors, and inspectors.67 The determination to move in this direction, to develop and promote women’s involvement in service and assistance activities, found justification in a specific operational strategy practiced by the Italian women’s movement. In fact, the women’s movement in Italy gave particular emphasis to feminine competencies and to the possibility of transforming them into an instrument for improving society. The movement tended to give a political value to social work in that it constituted a means for breaking down the barriers that separated the public and the private spheres. Participation in social work allowed women to dismantle the systems that defined what the specific scope of actions should be for both sexes, and enabled “the passage, or rather, the osmosis between the masculine sphere and the feminine sphere” in order to not only create a new woman, a new society, and a new family, but also “a new man.”68 Starting from the premise that in society men and women were “not two equal forces, but two equivalent forces, with the right and the duty to apply themselves for their mutual benefit,” the Union promoted all initiatives that could potentially “translate into concrete and useful fact the awakening of the woman’s consciousness.”69 As of 1890, a law in Italy regarding Charitable Works (Opere Pie) gave women access to the Administrative Council of Hospitals, and the Administrative Council of Orphanages, as well as to all similar institutions. Intuiting that this legislative provision offered an opportunity to include women in public institutions and to direct them toward a sector for skilled employment which entailed access to political life, the Union set to work to encourage middle-class women to fill these positions, and in this way, pursued multiple goals. The Unione Femminile actually carried out the task of educating women as it prepared them and sent them to jobs that required training and responsibilities, such as jobs as counselors, visiting prisons, as community representatives studying the conditions in  Unione Femminile Nazionale, Programma e Statuto, cit., pp. 3–6.  A. Buttafuoco, Questioni di cittadinanza. Donne e diritti sociali nell’Italia liberale, Florence, Protagon editori toscani, 1997, p. 68. On the Unione Femminile Nazionale, in addition to the fundamental studies of Annarita Buttafuoco, see G. Gaballo, Il nostro dovere. L’Unione Femminile tra impegno sociale, guerra e fascismo (1899–1939), Novi Ligure, Edizioni Jocker, 2015 and the collection of essays edited by S. Bartoloni, Attraversando il tempo. Centoventi anni dell’Unione femminile nazionale (1899–2019), Rome, Viella, 2019. 69  Unione Femminile Nazionale, Programma e Statuto, cit., p. 7. 67 68

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impoverished sections of the city, as nurses, and as factory inspectors verifying the adherence to labor laws for women and children. These jobs taught women to recognize their own abilities and their own value, to become aware of themselves and their rights, and at the same time provided them with the tools and knowledge necessary for educating and assisting other women, especially the poor, the unemployed, the marginalized, and prostitutes. In turn, they helped disadvantaged women to become self-aware, to understand their oppression but also their own power, their own potential, their rights, and to provide them with “the tools and the opportunities to grow and to become aware of the value of their own existence and their proper role in social life.”70 At the same time, through its intense efforts in training women, the Unione Femminile opened up new employment opportunities for women, and also conferred a professional and institutional legitimacy onto women’s traditional participation in charitable works. Indeed, this participation came to take on the role of activities that were carried according to scientific principles, and also activities that were remunerated as public works.71 The Unione Femminile’s desire for a practical role in public assistance translated into the institution of the Uffici di Indicazione e Assistenza (Offices for Direction and Assistance). Created for the purpose of facilitating the relationships between citizens, public entities, and the State, these Offices followed an operational line that brought faster and more useful results. This consisted in showing those individuals who turned to them for assistance the required and most expeditious methods to receive help, whether that was finding subsidies, housing, hospital admission or something else, in order to help people, especially women, to avoid painful and tedious bureaucratic procedures.72 Working in these Offices required 70  See A. Buttafuoco, “Nina Rignano Sullam. Una filantropa politica,” in Cinque protagoniste fra politica e cultura, Atti dell’incontro: L’impegno al femminile, (13 marzo 1988), Milan, Tip. Antonio Cordani, 1990, p. 150. 71   Ivi p.  151. See also A. Buttafuoco, “La filantropia come politica. Esperienze dell’emancipazionismo italiano del Novecento,” in Ragnatele di rapporti. Patronage e reti di relazione nella storia delle donne, edited by L.  Ferrante, M.  Palazzi, G.  Pomata, Turin, Rosemberg & Sellier, 1988, p. 178. As the author pointed out, the Union undertook the training of factory inspectors even before the State provided for this position. See ibidem. 72  See. A. Buttafuoco, Questioni di cittadinanza. Donne e diritti sociali nell’Italia liberale, cit., p. 72. The Uffici di Indicazione e Assistenza were working on behalf of the population as a whole. In the majority of the centers where they operated (the first Office began operat-

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women to manage relations with numerous charities, to collect and study the charities’ various statutes, regulations and standards, to examine requests, to obtain detailed information about the working, housing, economic, and health conditions of the clients and their families, and to verify the accuracy of what was reported in order to avoid possible abuse. Once the file was completed, the Offices’ delegate would follow the case until a solution was reached. Thus, the Offices, according to the design of the Unione Femminile’s founders, became an ideal place to appraise and demonstrate how capable women were of carrying out large-scale public works, when adequately prepared with the knowledge, sensitivity, and ability to take the weight and responsibility.73 In addition to the Uffici Indicazione e Assistenza, the Unione Femminile also initiated offices for employment placements. At the beginning of the 1900s, the Union managed an Employment Office in collaboration with La Società Umanitaria  that offered free of charge  placement for those entering domestic service. This organization allowed women and girls who were seeking positions as maids, cooks, or nannies to escape exploitation by private employment agencies and brokers. Speculators in such agencies were frequently involved with networks in the prostitution market, who preyed especially on domestic workers.74 The creation of these structures was accompanied by the creation of clubs, recreation centers, and libraries. These libraries also served as the venue for classes, seminars, and lectures open to all women, not just members of the Union. These ing in Milan in March 1900. Over the course of a decade, offices were opened in conjunction with the Unione Femminile in Florence, Rome, Turin, Udine, Livorno, Cagliari, and Girgenti), the Offices became an important reference point for the sick, the unemployed, the elderly, abused minors, and especially for women. Indeed, these were the segments of the population who were always in the most dire conditions. The burden of supporting a family often fell entirely to women; also, it was to women that husbands and adult sons and daughters assigned the unfortunate task of seeking help from charitable institutions, in an effort to protect their own pride and dignity. See ivi, p. 82. On the activity of the Offices, see also A. Buttafuoco, “Tra cittadinanza politica e cittadinanza sociale. Progetti ed esperienze del movimento politico delle donne,” in Il dilemma della cittadinanza. Diritti e doveri delle donne, edited by G. Bonacchi and A. Groppi, Rome-Bari, Laterza, 1993, pp. 104–107. 73  See A. Buttafuoco, Questioni di cittadinanza. Donne e diritti sociali nell’Italia liberale, cit., pp. 72 and 77. 74  See F. Reggiani, “Un problema tecnico ed un problema morale: la crisi delle domestiche a Milano. (1890–1914),” in Donna Lombarda, 1860–1945, edited by A. Gigli Marchetti and N. Torcellan, cit., p. 159.

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activities addressed a variety of issues from the legal status of women (Unione Femminile was a staunch supporter of women’s suffrage) and the most scientific methods for raising children and managing a household, to school reform and the difficult issue of juvenile delinquency.75 In Milan and in other cities where the Unione Femminile had branches, the activities it sponsored—similar to the activities promoted by other emancipationist organizations—went in multiple directions, all of which were aimed at “promoting and supporting all initiatives that [could] contribute to the moral and material elevation of a woman, and to her instruction and protection for herself and her children.”76 From its foundation, the Unione Femminile relied on the active participation of Jewish women, who over time, became the majority of its members.77 In this participation, Nina Rignano Sullam (1871–1945) and Bice Cammeo (1875–1961) stood out. Both were close collaborators of Ersilia Majno in the administration of the Union and the institutions connected with it. The Milanese Nina Rignano Sullam78 was part of the founding group of the Unione Femminile. In fact, she was one of the first women to support the project that created Unione Femminile, a project that came about also in part due to her financial support. Among the many initiatives that she supported, Sullam devoted particular attention to providing assistance for domestic workers. The credit is due to Sullam for devising and establishing the Ufficio di Collocamento per le Domestiche (Office for Placement in Domestic Service), as well as creating (in 1910) a hosteldormitory to assure safe housing for unemployed young women, preventing them from having to resort to sordid hotels or rented rooms that exposed them to the risk of prostitution. Sullam also dedicated herself to establishing a vocational school to train ladies’ maids in order to improve  See A. Buttafuoco, “La filantropia come politica,” cit., p. 176.  Unione Femminile Nazionale, Programma e Statuto, cit., p. 9. 77  See A. Buttafuoco, “Nina Rignano Sullam. Una filantropa politica,” cit., p. 151. 78  Costanza Rignano Sullam was born in Milan to a Jewish wealthy family that provided her with a solid and modern education, attentive to the international culture in which it participated. In 1897 she married her highly cultured, coreligionist Eugenio Rignano, (1870–1930) born in Livorno, who introduced her to democratic Lombard socialism, whose aims and commitment she fully shared. On the life and activities of Nina Rignano Sullam, see A. Buttafuoco, “Nina Rignano Sullam. Una filantropa politica,” cit. and as well as her previously cited works on Italian female emancipation and the Unione Femminile, and G. Gaballo, Il nostro dovere, cit., p. 47 and Dizionario biografico delle donne lombarde, cit., pp. 1048–1050. 75 76

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their performance and thus improve both their position in the labor market and their pay. Her objective was to help domestic laborers acquire both dignity and their rights, to “remove any servile quality” and equate domestic service with “any other industrial profession” and include it under “the aegis of social legislation,” and in this way, to ensure that domestic workers would no longer be marginalized and instead would be considered equal to all other workers.79 Sullam also deserves credit for proposing the institution of the Dipartimento Femminile nell’Ispettorato delle Industrie (Women’s Department of Industry Inspection) to Minister Luigi Rava (1860–1938) in 1902 on behalf of the Unione Femminile. In factories where the majority of the workforce consisted of women and children, specifically trained women had the responsibility to certify that the laws passed in June of 1902 for workers’ protection were enacted and enforced. This requirement was not fulfilled until several years later.80 Nina Rignano Sullam is also remarkable for the energy she dedicated to the organization and management of the Asilo Mariuccia, one of the most important accomplishments of the Unione Femminile. In collaboration with Ersilia Majno, Sullam directed the Asilo and contributed to its financial support. Established in 1902, the Asilo was created to take in, teach, re-educate, and train for employment 79  See N.  Rignano Sullam, “Istruzione professionale e organizzazione delle addette ai lavori domestici,” in Atti del I Congresso Nazionale di attività pratica femminile, Milan, Società Editrice di Coltura Popolare, 1909, pp. 122 and 131; A. Buttafuoco, “Nina Rignano Sullam,” cit., pp. 151–154. 80  See ivi, pp. 149–150. See also N. Rignano Sullam, Ispettrici di fabbrica, Milan, Tipografia Milanese, 1902, pp.  3–19. The paper was an excursus of the relevant legislative measures taken in other European contexts. “Even with the help of the simplest and barest common sense, it is easy to conceive…that by creating a new law, a law that imposes obligations on the one hand and establishes rights on the other, and establishes a series of limitations and restrictions, it is necessary to create at the same time the means, the bodies to enforce it, so that it does not remain a dead letter, and is not a mere handful of dust thrown in the eyes of the applicants, an absurdity, a hypocrisy.…Male and female inspectors are needed…people of science and culture, therefore capable of judging technical and health matters, of solving the hygienic and economic problems that arise as they observe and follow the life of the worker; and trained people of the working class.…We would like the Italian workers, taking advantage of the experience of their more fortunate English sisters, to be convinced of the need to ask for a well-organized corps of female and male inspectors, not as a separate body, separate from the law and in a secondary way, but as a primary and indispensable condition.” Ivi pp. 4, 9, and 19.

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those girls and adolescents whose family and economic situations put them at risk of falling into the abyss of prostitution. The Asilo also welcomed young women who had become victims of the sex trade and sought to escape from it. The Institution was firmly secular; in agreement with the Asilo’s promoters, it was Nina Rignano Sullam who adamantly  insisted on the non-­denominational affiliation of the institution, and the absolute religious freedom of the girls, who were completely at liberty to choose their form of worship outside of the institution.81 Bice Cammeo was also connected to the work of the Asilo Mariuccia. Born in Florence to a prosperous Jewish bourgeois family, Cammeo took an active part in the initiatives of the Union during the years she resided in Milan. In addition to the Asilo, Cammeo was engaged in the Fraterna, an association affiliated with Unione Femminile, that assisted piscinine, girls between the ages of 8 and 13 who worked 12 to 16 hours a day sewing and ironing in millinery and tailor shops for meager wages. The Florentine emancipationist was equally active in the Comitato Milanese Contro la Tratta delle Bianche (Milanese Committee Against White Slavery) founded by the Union in 1901.82 When she returned to Florence, Bice Cammeo established an Ufficio di Indicazione e Assistenza in 1904 and in 1910, she began a Rifugio Immediato e Temporaneo per Fanciulli Abbandonati (Immediate and Temporary Refuge for Abandoned Children).83 Bice 81  See pp.  34–35 of the fundamental study of A. Buttafuoco, Le Mariuccine. Storia di un’istituzione laica, Milan, Franco Angeli, 1985. 82  In 1899 the Italian Committee against human trafficking was founded. In 1906 the headquarters of the Committee moved from Rome to Milan. Camillo Broglio became its president and Ersilia Majno became its secretary. See L. Schettini, “Il Comitato italiano contro la tratta: impegno locale e reti internazionali,” in Attraversando il tempo, cit., pp. 37–60. 83  Working with the Uffici di Indicazione e Assistenza, Bice Cammeo noticed the need in Florence for an institution with wards for boys and girls, for children who needed to be removed from their families and quickly receive help without bureaucratic barriers. These were children who were morally or materially abandoned because their parents were sick or in prison. Sometimes it was the parents themselves who asked for their children to be hospitalized; in that case the real urgency arose from poverty or lack of discipline. The Rifugio did not accept delinquent children because it focused primarily on prevention, and was wary “of those coercive means that momentarily repress all the basest instincts, but which then build up in impetuous and wild natures, and are destined to be triggered at the first clash with life.” Rifugio Immediato e Temporaneo per fanciulli abbandonati, Relazione dell’anno 1910, Florence, Stabilimento Tipografico G. Ramella, 1911, p. 10. On the life and activity of Bice Cammeo, “irreplaceable collaborator and dear friend” of Ersilia Maino, see A. Buttafuoco,

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Cammeo and Nina Rignano Sullam remain two distinguished figures in Italy’s emancipation movement and in the Unione Femminile organization where many Italian Jewish women, such as Paolina Schiff (1841–1926), another prominent figure in the emancipationist movement, proved their tenacity for and devotion to the feminist cause. In 1881 Schiff founded the Lega Promotrice degli Interessi Femminili (League for the Promotion of Women’s Interests).84 Born in Manheim in 1841, Schiff moved to Milan at a young age where from 1893 she taught German language and literature at the Accademia scientifico-­letteraria, and was one of the first five female professors in Italian history.85 In 1902, she began her activism in the ranks of the Union, and continued to labor ardently on behalf of women workers. Participating in every battle for women’s rights, such as the struggle for suffrage, and the battle against the trafficking of young women, and the battle for an unmarried woman’s right to legally establish the paternity of her child, Paolina Schiff was an active participant in the debate and the preparatory efforts that preceded the approval of the law regarding the Cassa Nazionale di Maternità (National Maternity Fund) by Italian parliament in July of 1910. Schiff was a staunch supporter and promoter of the institution of the National Le Mariuccine, cit. (the citation is on p. 41); Dizionario biografico delle donne lombarde, cit., pp.  250–251; P. Guarnieri, “Tra Milano e Firenze: Bice Cammeo a Ersilia Majno per l’Unione Femminile,” in De Amicitia. Scritti dedicati a Arturo Colombo, edited by G. Angelini and M. Tesoro, Milan, Franco Angeli, 2007, pp. 504–515; R. Raimondo, Audaci filantrope e piccoli randagi. Il contributo di Lucy Bartlett, Alessandrina Ravizza e Bice Cammeo a favore dell’infanzia traviata e derelitta, Parma, Junior-Spaggiari, 2016, pp. 65–86. 84  Together with Anna Maria Mozzoni (1837–1920), a central figure in the Italian women’s emancipation movement, in 1881 she founded the Lega promotrice degli interessi femminili (League for women’s interests) with the purpose of improving women’s conditions and studying all the main issues concerning women. The League was active in Milan for about a decade. For more on the League, see A. Buttafuoco, “Vie per la cittadinanza. Associazionismo politico femminile in Lombardia fra Otto e Novecento,” in Donna Lombarda 1860–1945, cit., pp. 21–45. In 1883, again with Mozzoni, Paolina Schiff founded the first women’s trade union in the industry, that of the hemmers. See F. Pieroni Bortolotti, Alle origini del movimento femminile in Italia (1848–1892), Turin, Einaudi, 1975, (second edition), p. 192. On Paolina Schiff, see Dizionario biografico delle donne lombarde, cit., pp.  994–995 and the entry edited by S. Bartoloni in Dizionario Biografico degli italiani, Rome, Istituto dell’Enciclopedia Italiana, 2018, vol. 91, pp. 486–488. 85  On Paolina Schiff’s difficult time at the university, see Simonetta Polenghi, (2019): “Striving for recognition: the first five female professors in Italy (1887–1904),” Pædagogica Historica, DOI: 10.1080/00309230.2019.1690008

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Maternity Fund. Two of her coreligionists, Bianca Arbib (1872–1958) and Nina Sierra (1856–?),86 who were also notable activists, were likewise involved in this specific project. Jewish women were active contributors to the female press, which encouraged the values of economic, moral, psychological, and intellectual independence for women, and which acted as the spokesperson for initiatives directed at improving women’s social and legal status. In the journal Vita Femminile, alongside the names of Emma Boghen Conigliani and Paolina Schiff, the names of Rosa Errera, Isa Boghen Cavalieri,87 and 86  A. Buttafuoco, “Motherhood as a Political Strategy: The Role of the Italian Women’s Movement in the Creation of the Cassa Nazionale di Maternità,” in Women and the Rise of the European Welfare State, edited by G. Bock and P. Thane, London-New-York, Routledge, 1991, pp. 178–195. Bianca Arbib, (neé Finzi in Milan), specialized in foreign languages after secondary school and translated various works, in particular from Russian. Her dedicated work with Unione Femminile arose from her interest in education and women’s rights and more generally in youth education. After the Messina earthquake of 1908, Bianca Arbib carried out an intense philanthropic activity on behalf of refugees. She was president of the Unione Femminile Nazionale from 1910 to 1912. See Dizionario biografico delle donne lombarde, cit., p. 456. “I think I was born a feminist,” Nina Sierra affirmed in a lecture given at the People’s University of Alexandria in Egypt (N. Sierra, Femminismo, Milan, Tipografia Nazionale di V. Ramperti, 1903). Nina Sierra (née Cammeo) was born in the Italian Jewish community in Cairo and, at least until 1905, the year her family moved to Florence, she lived “between the two shores of the Mediterranean.” At the beginning of 1902 Nina Sierra published an article on the feminist movement in Egypt in the journal of the Unione Femminile, responding to the interest of Italian feminists in the condition of women in the Near East (“Il movimento femminista in Egitto,” Unione Femminile, March 1902). The conference on feminism was part of her collaboration in the activities of the Università popolare of Alexandria, which had been founded by Alexandra Avierino (1872–1937), an intellectual of Greek Orthodox origin. She was also the founder (in 1898) of “Anis al-Jalis” (“Companion of Women”), a periodical promoting women’s rights, and also founded the art-literary magazine “Le Lotus” (1901). Information regarding Nina Sierra can be found in C. Papa, “Storie universali di famiglia: donne e nazione fra Italia e ‘Vicino Oriente’,” Studi storici, 4, 2018, pp. 1055–1077. 87  Isa Boghen Cavalieri, journalist and scholar and sister of Emma Boghen Conigliani, was very attentive to the theme of women’s vocational education. She had been president of the Comitato di propaganda pel miglioramento delle condizioni della donna (publicity committee for the improvement of women’s conditions), which had been formed in 1890  in Bologna, her city of residence, (see: Comitato di propaganda pel miglioramento delle condizioni della donna, Per l’istituzione a Bologna di una scuola professionale femminile. Relazione della Presidenza. Novembre 1890-Giugno 1893. Bologna, Stabilimento Tipografico Zamorani e Albertazzi, 1893 and B. Dalla Casa, “Associazionismo borghese ed emancipazione femminile a Bologna: il Comitato di Propaganda per il miglioramento delle condizioni della donna (1890–1893),” Bollettino del Museo del Risorgimento, n. 1, 1988, pp. 145–165).

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Elisabetta Padoa88 are also important. In 1901 Rina Melli (1882–1958) of Ferrara founded Eva (Eve), a journal of socialist opinions aimed at women, particularly working women and female agricultural laborers. An advocate for divorce and female education, Eva endeavored to motivate women to awaken their self-awareness, to convince women that In 1894 she was a member of the Comitato esecutivo per l’istituzione di una Scuola provinciale femminile di arti e mestieri (Executive Committee for the establishment of a Provincial Women’s School of Arts and Crafts). The school opened its doors in Bologna in September 1895 and was directed by Isa. See B. Dalla Casa, “Mutualismo operaio e istruzione professionale femminile a Bologna. L’Istituto ‘Regina Margherita’ Società Anonima Cooperativa (1895–1903),” Bollettino del Museo del Risorgimento, 1984–1985, pp. 23–78. In 1892, Isa Boghen Cavalieri directed In memoria delle donne italiane devote al Risorgimento della Patria e al Progresso della Civiltà, a single issue published by the Publicity Committee for the improvement of the intellectual, moral, and legal conditions of women on which Emma Boghen Conigliani also collaborated. On that occasion Isa Boghen Cavalieri wrote: “Some believe our Committee to be a political association and politics is banned; others believe it has subversive aims and it has never had any… What do we want? Nothing but what is good and right… We don’t want to offer… demeaning mites… but to help with effective words and moral support. We know the evil habit of those wealthy, good ladies who sometimes hand out money to those who beg for it, but they never think of the long line of women who suffer and suffer because they cannot and do not know how to work, because their work is disdained, because their education is insufficient and their education is not broad enough, because they need to rise up but they fall down without a loving hand to lift them…. We want intelligent, well-meaning girls to be allowed to create an independent position with their work, just as men are allowed to do… we want women not to be inferior and dependent on men but to be companions on the same level.” I.  Boghen Cavalieri, “Che cosa vogliamo?,” In memoria delle donne italiane devote al Risorgimento della Patria e al Progresso della Civiltà, single issue, 1892. 88  Wife of the mathematician Alessandro Padoa Padoa (1868–1937), an observant and practicing Jew, Elisabetta Padoa (born in Bologna in 1870 to Felice Padoa, hence the repeated surname) lived in Turin where she worked in the Turin branch of the League for the protection of women’s interests, active since February 1895. See E. Padoa Padoa, “Organizziamoci,” Vita Femminile, I, n. 1, July, 1895. In 1896 the League had founded a Cassa di assistenza per la maternità (Maternity Assistance Fund) that guaranteed working women a subsidy, which allowed them to abstain from work during the last period of pregnancy and time immediately after childbirth. A Committee of Benefactresses had the task of raising funds from industrialists, private individuals, and local institutions. “Since motherhood is a sacred function, worthy of inspiring sympathy and respect, may the children of all be protected against deprivation and pain,” Elisabetta Padoa Padoa wrote, inviting “wealthy mothers” to give generously to those who financially suffered from the hours they were forced to take away from work “not through any fault of their own, but out of necessity.” E. Padoa Padoa, Pro Maternitate (Cassa di Assistenza per la Maternità), Turin, Tipografia Subalpina, 1899, pp. 7–8.

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they alone were the architects of their own liberation. The journal was active in the struggle to pass legislation in favor of women’s employment and the protection of children, and took a different tone from that of other socialist publications which typically outlined a future in which women would exclusively be mothers, completely given to their families and the education of their children. Eva instead promoted work for women as an essential factor for their emancipation and a vital avenue for their interaction with the outside world.89 In 1902 the journal La Rassegna femminile (The Woman’s Review) appeared. This publication intended to inform women about the activities of the women’s movement internationally, and to provide them with a “tribune” for the free exchange of ideas regarding the most important issues affecting the woman’s condition. In addition to Bice Cammeo, also Margherita Sarfatti (1880–1961) and Zoe Campagnano contributed to this Florentine journal.90 The latter, together with Paolina Schiff, was part of the editorial staff for the semi-monthly journal La Voce della donna

89  See M.P. Bigaran, “Per una donna nuova. Tre giornali di propaganda socialista tra le donne,” DWF, n. 21, 1982, p.  60 and P.  De Paoli, “Il caso Eva. Socialisti e questione femminile,” in 1892–1922. Il movimento socialista ferrarese dalle origini alla nascita della Repubblica Democratica. Contributi per una storia, edited by A. Berselli, Cento, Cooperativa Culturale Centoggi, 1992, p. 176. Born in Ferrara in 1882 into a family of wealthy merchants, Rina Melli was married against her parents’ wishes to Paolo Maranini (1875–1941), a non-Jewish man of socialist leanings and much more modest social status, and whose social and political commitment she shared. For a biography of Rina Melli, see Il movimento operaio italiano. Dizionario biografico, Rome, Editori Riuniti, 1977, vol. III, pp. 423–424; D. Mantovani, “Rina Melli-Paolo Maranini,” in 1892–1922. Il movimento socialista ferrarese, cit., pp. 165–171. 90  “To follow with scrupulous impartiality all the phases of women’s unrest in the various nations of the world, to report all the individual and collective successes achieved, to contribute to the education of dedicated women by studying the most important current events, analyzing the most interesting publications and artistic exhibitions, and at the same time to deal with the most important problems of practical life and to listen to and support the voices of those who rise up against any injustice; these are in short the intentions with which we descend into the ring.” La Rassegna femminile, “Il nostro programma,” La Rassegna femminile. Tribuna Libera delle donne, I, n. 1, January 26, 1902. “The Review” was based at the Jewish Institute directed by Angiolo Campagnano (see note 9). See Donne e giornalismo. Percorsi e presenze di una storia di genere, edited by S. Franchini and S. Soldani, Milan, Franco Angeli, 2004, p. 346.

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(Woman’s Voice) which was based in Bari and had a very limited period of publication.91 Overall, in addition to the prominent figures of the women’s emancipation movement, Jewish women as a group made important contributions specifically to the Unione Femminile as well supporting philanthropic activities in general.92 Whatever their religious and cultural status, all 91  (From December 1, 1903 to August 20, 1904. See A. Buttafuoco and R. De Longis, “La stampa politica delle donne dal 1861 al 1924. Repertorio-catalogo,” DWF, n. 21, 1982, p. 96). The periodical, created on the initiative of “modest women writers in Apulia,” aimed to give an account of the economic and legal condition of women and “with the help of history and sociology, to make an impartial and clear examination of the ideas that in the past were made about a woman’s life, education and attitudes.” “Il nostro programma,” La Voce della Donna, I, n. 1, December 1903. In 1904, Zoe Campagnano published a lively article in the periodical inviting women to become aware of the role they could and should play in society, but which was denied them by ignorance and bad faith: “Do not lower yourselves before the man, do not yield to the false belief that he is greater than you. The great seem great because we are on our knees. Let us arise!” Z. Campagnano, “Malignità vere e verità maligne,” La Voce della Donna, I, n. 8–9, May 1904. On the Bari periodical, see A. Buttafuoco, Cronache femminili. Temi e momenti della stampa emancipazionista dall’Unità al Fascismo, cit., passim. 92  In 1905, for example, Clara Archivolti (1852–1945), married to Giuseppe Cavalieri, a professor and bibliophile from Ferrara, founded the Comitato per le bibliotechine gratuite nelle scuole elementari del Regno (Committee for Free Libraries for elementary schools across the Italian Kingdom). The Archivolti Cavalieri’s project, which between 1905 and 1906 was also carried out in other cities, was to provide primary school classes with small library funds managed by the teacher who used them to promote reading among the pupils. The initiative was aimed at the children of the lower classes whose brief time in school risked returning them to a state of illiteracy. In order to broaden their cultural horizons, encourage their inclusion in the life of the nation, and in this way, contribute to the understanding and collaboration between different classes, the project’s aim was to help young people from disadvantaged classes to develop a taste for reading, to help them establish a habit that would allow them to give continuity to the educational process begun in school, even after their modest study ended. In this way, Archivolti Cavalieri was trying to diminish one of the causes of juvenile delinquency, cultural and moral weakness. The institution created by the Cavalieri enjoyed the support of the Unione Femminile and the Società Umanitaria (Humanitarian Society). On the philanthropic work of Archivolti Cavalieri, see A. Chiappini, “L’impresa bibliografica e bibliotecaria di Clara Cavalieri, ‘colta e munifica donna’,” Biblioteche oggi, VIII, n. 41, July–August 1990, pp. 471–478; L. De Franceschi, “Alle origini delle biblioteche scolastiche: l’iniziativa di Clara Archivolti Cavalieri,” Ricerche pedagogiche, XXVIII, n. 110, January–March 1994, pp. 31–40; M. Fiore, Clara Cavalieri Archivolti: un progetto a favore delle biblioteche scolastiche e della lettura per l’infanzia, Verona, 2005. A similar initiative was promoted by Paola Lombroso (1871–1954), a writer and teacher from Turin, daughter of the scientist Cesare Lombroso, who started the rural Bibliotechine in 1909. The institution provided, free of charge, books for children in rural schools to combat their cul-

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women had to deal with a culture and education that e­ stablished strict rules for their behavior, rules that excluded or at least hindered their participation in any sector outside that of the family. Their participation in the female emancipation movement represented the possibility for these women to construct their identities as women on a new foundation, to affirm their autonomy, and to liberate themselves from conditioning that was doubly difficult for Jewish women, for in re-­evaluating their traditional roles and balances, Jewish women had to reckon with the added responsibility of giving continuity to their traditions and their culture. In this sense, compared to their “Gentile” sisters, Jewish women seemed even more prepared and determined to disregard the expectations of general society as well as those of the very community that had delineated their religious and cultural origins, and therefore wished to distance them from social life that was not exclusively contained within that community. The reasons for Jewish women’s adherence to emancipationist organizations can be ascribed fundamentally to the opportunity that the new movement offered them to express and define themselves in a broader cultural and social context that was more in tune with the new realities and needs women faced, conditions that the Jewish world was very reluctant to consider. Jewish society lacked female associations that allowed women to achieve organizational autonomy and acquire decision-making power that would legitimize their active participation in the management of community affairs. Many women considered the roles and tasks assigned to them incompatible with their own interests and their cultural and intellectual level; they felt the need to develop their potential by participating in organizational and social activities with a broader reach, activities that not only ensured their taking part and influencing the debate on women’s issues, but also allowed them to actively contribute to the wider process of tural isolation. Paola Lombroso’s work was based on the same assumptions as Archivolti Cavalieri, namely, her faith in the love for reading among young working-class people as an important factor in their growth and maturity. Also in the area of her interest in childhood education, Paola Lombroso founded in 1896  in Turin with her sister Gina the Scuola e Famiglia. The aim of the institution was to help working families comply with the law on compulsory education and support public schooling in its difficult educational work, as well as to occupy children after school with manual work to discourage idleness and vagrancy and promote a love for activity. On the rural libraries and the Scuola e Famiglia see D. Dolza, Essere figlie di Lombroso. Due donne intellettuali tra ’800 e ’900, Milan, Franco Angeli, 1990, pp. 70–71 e pp. 123–131.

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national modernization and social regeneration. Undoubtedly, the strong identification that Jewish women felt with the culture and values of their Italian homeland, the diminished relevance of anti-Semitism, and the secular spirit of the organizations and institutions linked to the women’s movement made it unnecessary for them to distinguish themselves from their sisters of other faiths. Indeed, Jewish women in Italy did not feel the need to define themselves on an autonomous terrain, while they shared the same objectives. This does not imply that women who chose to engage in the struggle for women’s emancipation in a context free from religious expectations were necessarily rejecting their own religious origins. While it is true that only Boghen Conigliani had openly declared “the intimate bond” between religious faith and the progress of women in the family and in society, it would be overly simplistic in the absence of other such affirmations to evaluate the commitment and activism of the other women, mostly secular, as a diaspora within the diaspora, as a severing of the bond with their own specific past and with their own specific cultural belonging. There was an apparent continuity between the Jewish tradition and women’s choice to operate within those associations and organizations that aimed to instruct women to autonomy and to provide them with the necessary tools to rise materially and intellectually. Consider for example the value that Jewish culture assigned to education, which was seen primarily as an instrument of moral improvement for the individual, as an acknowledgment of the equality and freedom of the whole human race, and as principal means for progress.93 And consider as well the value Jewish culture accorded to knowledge, and to their “determination… to rise to a higher intellectual plane.”94 In addition, there was the long Jewish tradition of rendering social assistance, which was founded on the principle of justice (zedaqàh), namely, the duty to help one’s fellow human beings, to enact justice for them, and support them with advice and instruction, not merely

 G. Lattes, Educazione e civiltà, Livorno, Tip. Belforte, 1892, p. 25.  S. Zweig, The World of Yesterday, New York, The Viking Press, 1943, p. 11. On the role and value of education in Jewish history and tradition, see A. Cohen, Everyman’s Talmud: The Major Teachings of the Rabbinic Sages, New  York, E.  P. Dutton, 1949, pp.  173–179. A.  Pacifici, Discorsi sullo Shemà, Rome-Jerusalem, Casa editrice Israel-Taoz, 1953, p.  49; J. Maller, “The Role of Education in Jewish History,” in The Jews. Their History, Culture and Religion, edited by L. Finckelstein, New York, Harpers Brothers Publishers, 1949, vol. 11, pp. 896–916. 93 94

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give empty handouts, but to equip them with the means to provide for their own needs and achieve the dignity of economic independence.95 These principles were not far distant from the principles that informed the structure and approach of the Offices of Direction and Assistance. Their fundamental purpose was to teach their clients that receiving help from the city, the province, or the State was their right. In addition to securing the occasional subsidy for their clients, as evidenced by the reports made by various Sections, they prioritized finding “the best means for relieving the destitute from poverty, rather than extending their condition with insufficient aid” and thus put them “in a position to fulfil their duty, rather than robbing them of it with easy giveaways.” They were  not “a charitable institution as understood generally, but a charitable form of activity aimed at removing the causes of poverty and preventing its moral consequences.”96 It is not entirely aleatory, therefore, to consider these same principles that were so present in Jewish tradition and culture as one of the main motivations for Jewish women to adhere to a movement of emancipation centered on the theme of moral growth and the intellectual and material autonomy of women. In this sense, Jewish women would have shared and performed some of the essential elements of their heritage in a broader context. Their commitment was therefore also the fruit of their Jewish heritage, an inheritance that was often lived instictively as a sort of unconscious identification with the founding values of their tradition, values that

95  See A. Milano, Storia degli ebrei in Italia, cit., p. 503; F. Dessau, “Gli ebrei e l’assistenza sociale,” RMI, VII, n. 4–5, August–September 1932, p. 201. For an in-depth analysis of the value and meaning of the zedaqà, see: E. Toaff, “Evoluzione del concetto ebraico di zedaqà,” Annuario di studi ebraici, 1968–1969, pp. l11–122. For a general historical overview of the social welfare system in the Jewish community see S. Baron Wittmayer, The Jewish Community, Philadelphia, The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1945, vol. III. pp. 290–350; Id., A Social and Religious History of the Jews, New York, Columbia University Press, 1952, vol. II. pp.  269–274; I.S. Chipkin, “Judaism and Social Welfare,” in The Jews. Their History, Culture and Religion, cit., vol. I, especially pp. 721–740. M. Giuliani, La giustizia seguirai. Etica e halakhà nel pensiero rabbinico, Florence, Giuntina, 2016, pp. 71–90. 96  See Ufficio di Indicazioni e Assistenza, Relazione dal 4 luglio al 31 dicembre 1904, Florence, Stabilimento Tipografico G. Spinelli, 1905, p. 5; Unione Femminile Nazionale. Sezione di Livorno, Relazione del Consiglio Direttivo, Livorno, Tipografia Affissioni, 1912, p. 4. See in addition, A. Buttafuoco, Questioni di cittadinanza, cit., p. 73 and p. 77.

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brought Jewish women in tune culturally with the aims pursued by the women’s emancipation movement and its methods of intervention.97 The Jewish contribution to the women’s movement was a phenomenon in other European countries, particularly in France. In contrast to the Italian Jewish community, in France there seemed to be some willingness to recognize the harmony of women’s participation in “feminism” with the principles and teachings of the religion in which they were educated: Our women…have broadened the circle of their relationships and take a great and laudable part in the works of philanthropy, teaching, social solidarity. They have rightly associated themselves with this movement of regeneration and progress called feminism, which aims to emancipate women and help them claim their rights. The respect and inviolability of the human being…have rightly extended to women. It has been recognized that, as a divine creature equal to man, she has the duty and the right to develop her intellectual and moral faculties, to participate in the progress of humanity and to equip herself with the same weapons as man to carry on the struggle for existence. Judaism, the religion of light and progress, is far from opposing this act of justice and humanity.98 97  Alessandro Levi’s words commemorating Sarina Levi Della Vida Nathan (1885–1937), daughter of Ernesto and Virginia Nathan, as a woman of culture and active philanthropist confirms this view: “Sarina never sees assistance as that form of charity which is so often, I will not call it hypocritical, but tearful; nor does she see it as a virtue that mainly profits, even in the highest sense, those who practice it. Rather, she sees charity as a strict duty of justice. Even Sarina thought (and I am deeply persuaded of this) as I do, that justice is the supreme ideal of life, that justice includes charity and therefore imposes charity as a duty, because to give to every human being that which is his due to him means to make him share in all the good he is worthy of, either because of his merits, or even because of his misfortunes. Perhaps that conviction, that faith was the atavistic legacy of our race which, almost unconsciously, found resonance in its spirit.” A. Levi, Sarina Levi Della Vida Nathan, Modena, Tip. G. Ferraguti, 1938, p. 21. See in addition M. Miniati, “Tra emancipazione ebraica ed emancipazione femminile: il dibattito della stampa ebraica dall’Unità alla grande guerra,” Storia Contemporanea, XX, n. 1, February 1989, pp.  45–78 and  Id., “‘Le emancipate’ le ebree italiane tra Ottocento e Novecento,” in Le donne delle minoranze. Ebree e protestanti d’Italia, edited by C. Honess and V. Jones, Turin, Claudiana, 1999, pp. 243–254. 98  E. Levy, (Grand Rabbin de la circonscription de Bayonne), La femme juive dans la société moderne, Biarritz, Imprimerie E.  Seitz, 1906, pp.  10–11. (“Nos femmes…ont étendu le cercle de leurs relations et prennent une grande et louable part aux oeuvres de philanthropie, d’enseignement, de solidarité sociale. C’est avec raison qu’elles se sont associées à ce mouvement de régénération et de progrès qui s’appelle le féminisme et qui a pour but l’émancipation de la femme et la revendication de ses droits. Le respect et l’inviolabilité de la personne humaine…se sont étendus, à juste titre, à la femme. On a reconnu que, créature divine, au

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However, the situation in France was not all sweetness and light. Levy accompanied her positive considerations (cited above) with regret for the feminine world in which “the corrupting and demeaning ideas of the age” continued to gain ground. It was not the participation of women in the emancipation movement that Levy questioned: “Judaism is in perfect communion with the supporters and protagonists of women’s intellectual and spiritual  emancipation. The Jewish woman does not therefore distance herself from her role by contributing with heart and soul to the redemption and dignity of her sex,” but rather the confusion and the contradictions that arose from participation in it, which, like other movements for social improvement, often came at the expense of the religion of their fathers. Such confusion existed, because “the principles taught by Judaism not only agree with the most independent thought, but also contain in their seed the regenerative ideas of which contemporary society is proud.”99 An even more disturbing phenomenon was that women would abandon and deny their religion because they were “absorbed and conquered” by the allures of worldly society. Thus, there was no shortage of criticism, but there were also strong indications of openness that were completely absent from the opinion of the Italian male coreligionists whose hostility and resistance toward any emancipatory move were shared by those from different religious orientations as well.

même degré que l’homme, elle a le devoir et le droit de développer ses facultés intellectuelles et morales, de participer au progrès de l’humanité et de se munir des mêmes armes que l’homme, pour soutenir la lutte de l’existence. Le Judaïsme, religion de progrès et de lumière, est loin de s’opposer à cet acte de justice et d’humanité.”) On the commitment of French Jewish women to the emancipation of women, see Y. Cohen, “Protestant and Jewish Philantropies in France. The Conseil National des Femmes Françaises (1901–1939)”, French Politics, Culture & Society, 24, n. 1, spring 2006, pp. 74–92; Id., “Le Conseil National des Femmes Françaises (1901–1939). Ses fondatrices et animatrices juives,” Archives Juives, 2011/1, vol. 44, pp. 83–105. 99  E.  Lévy, La femme juive dans la société moderne, cit., p. 12 (“les idées dissolvantes et désespérantes du siècle,” “le judaïsme est en parfaite communauté d’idées avec les partisans et les protagonistes de l’affranchissement intellectuel et moral de la femme. La femme juive ne s’écarte donc pas de son rôle en contribuant de coeur et d’âme relèvement et à la dignité de son sexe,” “les principes enseignés par le judaïsme, non seulement s’accordent avec la raison la plus indépendante, mais encore contiennent en germe les idées régénératrices dont se glorifie la société contemporaine).”

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It is true that there was “an advanced stage of social disintegration and acculturation to the dominant society”100 causing “a progressive disintegration of the Jewish identity, which can only be successful in a religious realm. This caused Jewish society to fear the absence of women from the community because it would negatively affect the religious behavior of the family and consequently aggravate the process of social disintegration that was occurring. This overlap between Jewish identity and religious observance hampered them from recognizing the fragile thread that perhaps still bound their emancipated Jewish sisters to tradition and inhibited the possibility of pursuing a dialogue with them. After the publication of Boghen Conigliani’s article, there were no substantial changes in party line, at least not on the male side. As one contributor to the journal maintained in an article dedicated to “young maidens” on the occasion of their religious coming of age, “feminism” was a new problem for the “more civilized nations” but not for Judaism. Millenia ago, the problem of feminism had been solved by Judaism because it offered men as well as women the possibility of “scaling to the highest peaks, where the human touches the divine, to become prophets and with their word, which was the word of God, to cause all Israel to tremble, together with the most powerful nations with their monarchs and their priests!”101 This affirmation revealed an attempt to channel the emancipatory process of women into the Jewish religious and cultural tradition, a tradition that the author considered entirely capable of providing all the necessary answers to those women who wanted or needed to ask important questions about their identity and their rights: My daughters! If any one of you might be destined in life to sometimes leave the safe walls of your homes, to consider and study the vaster, more complicated questions of civil life, if you will ask yourself what the solution is to the problem concerning the condition of women, what are their rights and duties in relation to man and society, do not forget that the problem was already solved…by your Religion, the Religion of Israel, the religion of truth.102 100  M. Toscano, “Ebrei ed Ebraismo nell’Italia della grande guerra. Note su un’inchiesta del Comitato delle Comunità Israelitiche Italiane del maggio 1917,” in Saggi sull’ebraismo italiano, edited by F. Del Canuto, Rome, Carucci, 1984, pp. 349–392, now in Id., Ebraismo e antisemitismo in Italia. Dal 1848 alla guerra dei sei giorni, Milan, Franco Angeli, 2003, p. 124. 101  S. Colombo, “Femminismo,” V.I., LV, fasc. VI, June 1907, pp. 332–333. 102  Ivi, p. 333.

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The Construction of the New Jewish Woman At the outset of the twentieth century, the problems related to returning women to religion and increasing religious observance in family ceased to be the object of reflection and debate in The Jewish Banner exclusively. Due to Zionism, the “woman question” gained the interest of a new sector of opinion. In this case, it was that segment of the Jewish population, though small in number, which was driven by new ideals to return the religious and cultural vigor to Judaism, and promoted action aimed at redefining boundaries and balances between Jewish and Italian identity.103 This interest seemed to seek an approach that would address the “woman question”  in more realistic terms. However,  the entry and progressive spread of Zionist ideology in Italy never brought a real change  in this direction. Especially in the beginning, the change was essentially a change of tone, without any significant effect on the reconsideration of the traditional female role. The attitude of openness found its limit in the approach of many Italian Jews to Zionism. Their adherence was based entirely on cultural, ideological, and philanthropic-­humanitarian motivations, rather than being fueled by the idea of a return to the Promised Land.104 For 103  On the theme of the religious and cultural awakening of Italian Judaism at the beginning of the twentieth century, see A. Milano, “Gli enti culturali ebraici in Italia nell’ultimo trentennio (1907–1937),” R.M.I.,  XII, n. 6, February–March 1938, pp.  253–259; “Risveglio di vita e cultura ebraiche in Italia agli inizi del Novecento,” Atti del convegno, R.M.I., XLVII, n. 7–12, July–December 1981; M. Toscano, “Fermenti culturali ed esperienze organizzative della gioventù ebraica italiana (1911–1925),” Storia contemporanea, XIII, n. 6, December 1982, pp. 915–961, now in Id., Ebraismo e antisemitismo in Italia. Dal 1848 alla guerra dei sei giorni, cit., pp. 69–109. See in addition, R. De Felice, Storia degli ebrei italiani sotto il fascismo, Turin, Einaudi, 1988, (fourth edition), pp. 23–26. 104  On the origins of Zionism in Italy, see D. Lattes, “Le prime albe del sionismo italiano,” in Scritti in memoria di Leone Carpi, Milan-Jerusalem,  Fondazione  Sally Mayer, 1967, pp.  208–218; R.  Di Segni, Le origini del sionismo in Italia, Florence, Centro Giovanile ebraico di Firenze, 1972; F.  Del Canuto, Il movimento sionistico in Italia dalle origini al 1924, Milan, Editrice La Federazione Sionistica Italiana, 1972 and Id., “Firenze 1920: il ‘Comune Ebraico’,” R.M.I., XLVII, n. 7–12, July–December 1981, p. 143; G. Laras, “Il movimento sionistico,” R.M.I.,  XI–VII, n. 7–12, July–December 1981, pp.  74–80; D. Bidussa, “Il sionismo in Italia nel primo quarto del Novecento, una, ‘rivolta’ culturale?,” Bailamme, n. 5–6, December 1989, pp.  168–244 and Id., “Tra avanguardia e rivolta. Il sionismo in Italia nel primo quarto del Novecento,” in Oltre il ghetto. Momenti e figure della cultura ebraica in Italia tra l’Unità e il fascismo, edited by A. Luzzatto and G. Luzzatto Voghera, Brescia, Morcelliana, 1992; S. Della Seta Torrefranca, “Identità religiosa e identità nazionale nell’ebraismo italiano del Novecento,” Italia Judaica, IV, Gli ebrei nell’Italia unita, Rome, Ministero per i Beni Culturali e Ambientali,  1993, pp.  263–272, and

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devoted supporters, Zionism in Italy found legitimacy as a necessary stimulus for re-evaluating and discussing the process of Jewish integration into Gentile society, and at the same time, laid the foundations for a spiritual and intellectual rebirth of Judaism. They felt Judaism had abandoned its historical mission and its moral integrity,…it only aspired to blend in and die: leaving behind the ghettos, it kept its oppression-weakened soul while sharpening its ambitious mind in the struggle for riches and honors: and so it became morally objectionable, as are the parvenus of all species.

So stated an article from January, 1901 in L’Idea Sionista (The Zionist Idea), the main publication of the Italian Zionist Federation.105 The journal did not hesitate to take up positions openly critical of the strongly anti-Zionist Jewish Banner, precisely because it was the expression of and vehicle for those assimilationist tendencies that The Zionist Idea was determined to combat.106 Therefore, Zionism as a “means of returning Israel to being a people before returning them to the land of Israel”107 took the form of a “new tendency” in Italy. Its ultimate objective was not to give A. Cavaglion, “Tendenze nazionali e albori sionistici,” in Storia d’Italia, Annali, 11, Gli ebrei in Italia, vol. II, Dall’emancipazione ad oggi, Turin, Einaudi, 1997, pp. 1293–1320. For an in-depth investigation of the impact of Zionism on Jewish and Italian society see M. Toscano, “Ebraismo, sionismo, società: il caso italiano (1896–1904),” in Stato nazionale ed emancipazione ebraica, edited by M. Toscano and F. Sofia, Rome, Bonacci, 1992, pp. 393–420, now in M. Toscano, Ebraismo e antisemitismo in Italia. Dal 1848 alla guerra dei sei giorni, cit., pp.  48–68. In addition, see S. Levis Sullam, Una comunità immaginata. Gli ebrei a Venezia (1900–1938), Milan, Unicopli, 2001, pp.  31–48, on the events of the Gruppo Sionistico Veneto. For a parallelism between Risorgimento and Zionism see E. Capuzzo, “Sionismo e Risorgimento,” in Ebrei, minoranze e Risorgimento. Storia, cultura, letteratura, edited by M. Beer and A. Foa, Rome, Viella, p. 382. 105  “I nostri ideali,” I.S., n. 1, January 31, 1901, p. 1. In the geography of Italian Zionism, the cities of Ferrara and Modena were the two crucial centers. Felice Ravenna (1869–1973) from Ferrara, had the honor and burden of holding office for the F.S.I. Modena was the headquarters of The Zionist Idea and the directors were from Modena: Carlo A. Conigliani (1868–1901) until 1902 and, afterwards, Amedeo Donati. See I. Zoller, “Il giornalismo israelitico in Italia,” La Rassegna Nazionale, XLVI, vol. XVII, November 1924, p. 121; G. Laras, “Il movimento sionistico,” R.M.I., XI–XII, n. 7–12, July–December 1981, p. 77. See especially B. Di Porto, “‘L’Idea Sionista’ fondata da Carlo Angelo Conegliani,” Hazman Veharaion—Il Tempo e L’Idea, XIII, n. 7–10, April–May 2005, pp. 81–84 and “La lotta su due fronti de ‘L’Idea Sionnista’,” Hazman Veharaion—Il Tempo e L’Idea, XIII, n. 11–12, June 2005, pp. 103–105. 106  F. Ravenna, “La stampa israelitica in Italia. Quel che è e quel che dovrebbe essere,” I.S., I, n. 2, February 1901, p. 16. 107  A. Milano, Storia degli ebrei in Italia, cit., p. 382.

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the Jews a new homeland, “since we already have a homeland, a beautiful and very noble one,” as The Zionist Idea affirmed. Rather, its purpose was to reunite them with their original identity, to restore their awareness of and pride in their own history and culture, and to motivate them to regain their identity, and their pride in their own history, culture, and traditions. As Alessandro Levi (1881–1953), an illustrious scholar and member of the Gruppo Sionistico Veneto, stated: Zionism, though it had no other title of honor, would still have this merit: to have awakened or reawakened in many of us young people the dignity of the lineage from which we descend, even if we no longer followed the faith of our ancestors. Zionism is not a religious issue.…Zionism is a social issue: where, as fortunately among us, the Jewish problem does not manifest as a legal or economic problem, Zionism must be, above all, a moral question: a question of human and social dignity.108

In this sense Jerusalem was a symbol—“nothing more than a very significant symbol”—of “Jewish renewal,” of action for “the moral and intellectual refinement of the Israelite.” Zionism represented a sign of solidarity with their distant brothers and sisters, a project to improve others and one’s self. It represented a program of regeneration and self-improvement, one advocated by the “Zionist Idea,” whose fulfillment was inseparable from the rediscovery and reaffirmation of the values of solidarity and brotherhood. Here then was precisely what should have been the female participation in the “excellently charitable and sovereignly beautiful work”109 of Zionism as it was understood and lived in Italy. If not women, who “in the family 108  Alfa Lamda (Alessandro Levi’s pseudonym), “I cristianelli del ghetto,” I.S., VII, n. 4, April 1907, p. 28. In his writing, Levi launched a harsh attack on those coreligionists who out of personal ambition did not hesitate to act overly zealous toward the clergy, “in order to beg for their help to find some public office.” In all the speeches that appeared in The Zionist Idea, Levi (who also wrote under the pseudonym Aldo da Roma) was highly critical of the mimicry and assimilationist attitudes of his coreligionists, and the deficient cultural education in Jewish communities, which he considered to be responsible for the estrangement and departure of the younger generation. See, for example, “Possono gli ebrei fare dell’anticlericalismo?” I.S., VII, n.12, December 1907, pp. 125–129; “Il libro è chiuso…,” I.S., VII, n. 1, pp. 14–17; “Gli ostacoli alla cultura,” I.S., VII, n. 7, July 1907, pp. 59–60. 109  G. Servadio, La Donna e il Movimento sionistico, (Discorso letto a Ferrara la sera del 25 Marzo 1900 alla sede del Circolo “Fratellanza Israelitica) (Speech read in Ferrara on March 25, 1900 at the headquarters of the Circolo “Fratellanza Israelitica”), Ferrara, Premiata Tipografia Sociale Zuffi, 1901, p. 21.

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is the guardian angel…whose word is heard with more respect,” who could and should have fulfilled the task of ensuring that a generation of young people was taught according to “these holy principles,…to love the poor and the downtrodden” and learned “this new language of love and brotherhood”?110 With these words from one of its infrequent articles dedicated to the “woman question,”111 The Zionist Idea in 1901 commented on the publication of a text by Gina Servadio regarding women and Zionism. The text was a transcription of a lecture that Servadio had given in Ferrara in March of the previous year.112 On that occasion Servadio had solemnly endeavored to make her sisters understand how the struggle to give a homeland to those without one could and should also represent an important moment of personal, spiritual,  and intellectual growth for Italian Jewish women as well. As an ideal “of love and compassion,” Zionism presented itself to women as a “great love,” the only one capable of filling and revitalizing life that, with the passing years, was too often squandered on “fleeting pleasures” and the illusion of eternal youth and beauty. “Oh, you young people, you beautiful, good young people, do not reject the charity that implores you: we all must have a great love in life that summons all the energy of our valiant soul with its power and intensity.”113 Women had to express this great love by following their “sacred duty” to improve themselves in order to improve others. Zionism meant nurturing one’s mind with “idealistic concepts” and being aware of one’s educational mission, so that the woman’s soul is alight with “the most holy fervor that will be able to ignite a spark in the tender child’s soul that will in turn elevate him to greatness as a man of genius or a man of heart.”114 What changes, then, did Zionism bring to the female world? None, at least not on a practical, material level. On a symbolic level, it gave greater prominence and power to womanly action by virtue of tremendous personal, emotional, and intellectual strength that emanated from her. Thus, women bore the responsibility not only for the future of their children, but also for the future of an oppressed people struggling to liberate itself  b.d., “Conferenze sioniste,” I.S., I, n. 3, marzo 1901, p. 19.  During its ten years of publication, The Zionist Idea devoted very little space to the “woman question,” only a total of three articles which appeared in the years 1901, 1907, and 1908. 112  G. Servadio, La Donna e il Movimento Sionistico, cit. 113  Ivi p. 24. 114  Ibidem. 110 111

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from suffering and humiliation in the midst of a multitude of difficulties. And while this responsibility went far beyond the boundaries of the family, it nevertheless needed to be satisfied exclusively within it. There were no other arenas—or at least, no others were proposed—where women could put their intelligence and sensitivity to good use for the benefit of their own community and for that of their distant coreligionists. In addition to the fact that in Italy, the legitimization of women’s public professional role was still far from attaining recognition at the beginning of the twentieth century, the insistence on women remaining in the domestic realm also found justification in a Zionism that did not represent itself as a political project, “not having to propound a salvific path in reaction to any ongoing progrom,”115 but rather as an existential search for identity, a search that played out in historical and cultural as well as religious terms. The re-evaluation of observance as a fundamental element in the renewal of religious identity involved the diligent and constant presence of women. Hence the need to reiterate what “a very serious error, the cause of great consequences for…religion” it was “that people believe women are not obliged to observe the religious precepts.” Such a belief and custom could not depend on any concrete data because, as Rabbi Giuseppe Cammeo (1854–1934) was careful to point out in The Zionist Idea of July 1907, what the “Jewish code” prescribed in matters of female observance went in a completely different direction. Religion was “an indispensable duty”116 for women. The texts that could instruct them in their duties and responsibilities were not lacking, observed Cammeo. Therefore, where the barrier to a woman’s participation in “public and domestic worship” was caused by her lack of knowledge, study was the ideal tool to overcome it. As much as he encouraged a more robust religious instruction for women—as he had done many years before in the pages of The Jewish Banner—the rabbi did not think that women’s lack of religious observance was merely an intellectual problem. The underlying problem, he added in a later article, was due to “brothers in the faith” who  D. Bidussa, “Il sionismo in Italia nel primo quarto del Novecento. Una ‘rivolta’ culturale?,” cit., p. 170. 116  See G. Cammeo, “La donna nei riti ebraici,” I.S., VII, n. 7, July 1907, p. 63. To the “readers inclined to study,” the author recommended reading a pamphlet by Cesare Foa (1833–1907), written 40 years before, which carefully explained the woman’s obligations regarding physical cleanliness, the preparation of pasta hallà and permitted foods. See C. Foa, Doveri religiosi della Donna israelita, Turin, Tipografia di Salvadore Foa, 1866. 115

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were increasingly ashamed to “belong to the Jewish faith” and displayed an attitude of stubborn detachment and indifference toward “Judaism” and the “Israelite Community.” They give no support to religious instruction, to a Jewish education, to Jewish charity: on the contrary, they kept their children far away from any contact with other Jews, and pride themselves on being seen on the streets, in public walks, clubs, cafès, and theaters, always in the company of people belonging to another faith.117

Cammeo depicted a particularly ambitious and self-promoting bourgeois class who the famous writer (and coreligionist) of the time, Enrico Castelnuovo, had also masterfully and pitilessly illustrated in what would remain by far his most famous work, I Moncalvo. In the novel, Castelnuovo tells the story of a very rich and successful financier, Gabrio Moncalvo and his family whose unbridled ambition and irrepressible desire for complete integration into the conservative Catholic elite society of Papal Rome propelled them to the extreme of conversion.118 It was not by chance that Cammeo cited this work by the “valiant writer” to justify his severe criticism of so many of his coreligionists for their corruptibility and opportunism. The story narrated by Castelnuovo provided Cammeo with all he needed to target Jewish women with his harsh accusations: “more valuable than men to the Jewish cause” but often “unfortunately the first to destroy religious feeling.” In the Moncalvo family it is the women, Rachele, Gabrio’s wife, and Mariannina, his daughter, who stain themselves with the shame of renouncing their faith for the sole purpose of achieving their long-desired aim of contracting a marriage with a member of the Roman aristocracy. It is women, Cammeo asserted, who dragged men down. Irreligious, capricious, vain, and attracted to priests, women destroyed “that religious and national sentiment that made Jews happy and strong.”119

 G. Cammeo, “Siamo ebrei?,” I.S., VIII, n. 7, July 1908, p. 83.  E. Castelnuovo, 1 Moncalvo (1908), edited by G. Romani with an introductory note from A. Cavaglion, Novara, Interlinea, 2019. On the author and in particular on the novel and its protagonists, see the informative insights of G. Romani, pp. 5–16. See also G. Romano, Ebrei nella letteratura, Rome, Carucci, 1979, pp. 43–44 and L. Gunzberg, “Alcuni romanzieri del Novecento,” in Storia d’Italia, Annali, 11, Gli ebrei in Italia, cit., pp. 1578–1583. 119  G. Cammeo, “Siamo ebrei?,” cit. p. 84. 117 118

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Cammeo’s harsh observations exhausted the limited space that The Zionist Idea could allocate to feminine issues. The different context offered by the journal had not been able to convey a greater serenity of judgment nor overcome the same model of female existence that had been obstinately put forward but was hardly adapted to the times. The female problem had numerous aspects, but still a solution was sought only within the religious sphere. However, Cammeo, like most of the rabbis who had addressed the issue, was not particularly interested in making concessions in this regard.120 Although he hoped for more participation in public worship from women, Cammeo shared the position of those who, as Rabbi Donato Camerini (1866–1921) had stated in the pages of Il Pensiero Israelitico (Jewish Thought)—a journal to which Giuseppe Cammeo had also contributed—“between the ancient’s masculine proud exclusion which forbids teaching girls the divine Law and the exaggerated chivalrous sentimentality of the moderns who would have women be equal to men, even religiously,” they opted for a third way, that of a “special” and more thorough religious instruction for women. An instruction not aimed “at the rites of the temple…but at the shrine of the family, where God has placed his kingdom and his altar.”121 Cammeo, like many of his male and female coreligionists, continued to develop his views within that Manichaean perspective, which was not exclusive to Jewish belief. According to this perspective, women were essentially divided into two only types: virtuous mothers and wives, who were above all religiously observant; and their opposite, ambitious and 120  See, for example, G. Cammeo, “Influenza della donna sulla educazione religiosa della famiglia,” V.I., XXXII, fasc. III, March 1884, pp. 75–76. 121  D. Camerini, “L’iniziazione religiosa delle fanciulle,” Il Pensiero Israelitico, I, fasc. III, 1 May 1895, pp. 2–4. Camerini believed that those who envisaged abolishing the “separation of the sexes in the Temples,” counting the women in the minian and authorizing them to recite the Kaddish, would lead to women acting in the role of “sacred officiant.” Cammeo considered that the need for women to participate in public worship had been largely satisfied by those rabbis who had established the religious coming-of-age for girls in their communities and therefore did not think there was a need to go much further. Women’s duties and virtues were to be expressed essentially in the home: “Do not forget that, O gentle wives! All your strength, all your kingdom lies in making the home hearth dear and blessed, in making home the sanctuary of religion, comfort and love.” G.  Cammeo, “Importanza della donna nel Giudaismo,” Il Pensiero Israelitico, I, fasc. VIII, July 15, 1895, pp.  11–12. Il Pensiero Israelitico was printed semi-monthly in Pitigliano and directed by Guglielmo Lattes and then by Rabbi Donato Camerini. The publication did not continue after its first year of circulation.

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irresponsible women like Rachele Moncalvo, who were intent on destroying the family and the entire structure of Judaism. However, the problem remained of a certain segment of the female world: those who, although attracted by other lifestyles and not particularly inclined to religious observance, at least not in the terms he understood and hoped for, had not completely abandoned Judaism and could therefore be recovered by employing a language that was not exclusively in a religious key. A few years earlier Bettina Levi Allara had referred to this problem in one of her articles in The Jewish Banner. Between September and December 1904, the debate between Emma Boghen Conigliani and Giuseppina Levi Artom122 over the issue of women’s work had concluded with yet another heartfelt appeal from Artom for everyone, men and women, to not forget that to be “worthy of belonging to God’s beloved people,” knowledge and observance of divine law was necessary. Hence the proposal put forward by an illustrious figure of Italian Judaism, Gino Racah, to create an association “of women and girls” in order to promote religious observance in the family. “The sweet insistence of a wife or a sister” who belonged to such an association, in Racah’s mind, would help to restore domestic worship, “the inheritance of religion itself.”123 Levi Allara was opposed to the program Racah proposed precisely because of the intimate, family nature of those practices which, in her opinion, were ill-adapted to “useless parades.” Whoever followed divine precepts, Levi Allara maintained, “is possessive of the impression he feels: it is not possible to compel the observance of our rituals by example.”124 In order to preserve ancient tradition, keep religious sentiment strong, and maintain firm connections between brothers and sisters in the faith, Levi Allara suggested bringing women together in practical activities in an association whose mechanism and purpose were charity and love, qualities that naturally emanated “from the heart, from the sensibility of the women.” This proposal originated with Giuseppe Cammeo’s appeal in the pages of The Jewish  Banner to his coreligionists to intervene on behalf of the Jewish Orphanage in Rome. The desperate economic conditions in which the institute found itself hindered a wider range of action, and it was 122  See G. Levi Artom, “Quel che vorrei,” cit.; and E. Boghen Conigliani, “Le donne israelite,” cit. 123  See g.r, (no title), V.I., LII, fasc. XII, December 1904, pp. 590–591 and G. Racah, “Le donne israelite,” V.I., LIII, fasc. II, February 1905, pp. 74–76. 124  B.A. Levi, “Per l’orfanotrofio israelitico in Roma,” V.I., LIII, fasc. I, January 1905, p. 13.

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essential that children with no families be raised and educated in their own religious context without having to seek support from institutions that were religiously and culturally different.125 Given that Jewish communities were generally burdened with multiple and diverse financial needs, in order for the Orphanage to continue its important work, Levi Allara asserted that there was only one solution, that of private contributions. Those who could offer such support were not only those who had the means and who were accustomed to giving their financial support to charitable activities, but also those who felt the necessity of “direct and practical” action, the only kind of action that “will maintain and keep our Israelite family united.” In order to keep religious sentiment alive, to uphold tradition and community cohesion, Levi Allara continued, in addition to the school, which not everyone attended, there was only charity and love. These were noble sentiments held dear by Jews, Levi Allara affirmed, but it was “a broken [form of] charity that hesitates and does not prevent,” and in what ways were  love and brotherhood truly manifest? Given that charity and love resided particularly in the woman’s soul, these were the values and criteria a women’s organization should be inspired by and inclined to.126 There was apparently nothing new in the words of Levi Allara. The natural refinement and sensitivity of the female soul was a common stereotype, and had long been the essential prerequisite for the traditional participation of women in charitable activities. A participation that was certainly not new within the realm of the Jewish community. Gino Racah, to support his proposal for a women’s association that would promote religious observance, pointed out that in the Jewish community in Milan, his community, “at every Jewish activity with which they were associated,” from charitable works to the increase in schools and the spread of Zionist 125  The Jewish Orphanage was founded in 1902 on the initiative of Baron Giorgio (1870–1944) and Xenia (1872–1944) Levi delle Trezze and was based in Rome. In September 1904, Giuseppe Cammeo lamented the fact that such an important institution remained unknown to many people and was consequently forced to struggle to exist. It housed only six children while the number of needy children in Rome was far greater. Cammeo called for the aid of the press and his coreligionists passing through Rome so that more people would learn of the existence and merits of the institution and help to increase its resources, thus enabling it to provide for the other Jewish orphans waiting for help. G. Cammeo, “L’Orfanotrofio Israelitico Italiano in Roma,” V.I., LII, fasc. IX, September 1904, pp. 444–445. 126  B.A. Levi, “Per l’orfanotrofio israelitico in Roma,” cit., pp. 13–14.

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studies, women had contributed with their “diligent, intelligent and fruitful work” so much so that one could only suppose that in the religious field, “from which they have remained distant,” their actions could prove equally useful.127 The suggestions of Levi Allara could therefore become obsolete. In reality, with her allusions to a “broken [form of] charity,” that failed to prevent problems, as well allusions to a spirit of Jewish brotherhood that was not fully expressed, Levi Allara raised an age-old problem that at the beginning of the twentieth century, inspired especially by Zionist ideas and suggestions,128 had forcefully returned to the attention of community leaders, namely, the need to reconsider the structure and operation of the network of Jewish charities and to provide Italian Judaism with a unified organizational structure to increase efficiency and efficacy. In November 1909, the first congress of Italian Jewish communities was 127  G. Racah, “Le donne israelite,” cit., pp. 75–76. In the field of care, there was already significant evidence of women’s industriousness. Just to give a few examples, the Jewish Orphanage “Achille Attias,” inaugurated in Florence in November 1901, owed its existence to Regina Jalfon Attias who in her will, drawn up in 1890, had allocated a considerable sum to the creation of the institution. For this regard see Orfanotrofio Israelitico “Achille Leone Attias.” Relazione dell’onorevole Consiglio dell’Università Israelitica di Firenze intorno alla gestione del primo quinquennio, Florence, July 5, 1907. ACEFI, b. 15.1. Opere Pie Pro Infanzia. In 1886 Enrichetta Sacerdote’s will provided for the creation of an orphanage and school for “poor Jewish children.” Similarly, Carolina Calabi’s benevolence established an Opera Pia for the benefit of the Jewish orphans of Verona. See Statuto organico dell’orfanotrofio Israelitico “Enrichetta Sacerdote” ed Educatorio per fanciulli poveri israeliti in Torino, Turin, Tipografia G. Sacerdote, 1908 and Opera Pia Carolina Calabi per Orfani Israeliti di Verona, Verona, Stab. Tipo-litografico G. Franchini, 1900. In 1908 in The Jewish Banner, Giuseppe Cammeo underlined how the orphanages of Florence, Livorno, and Turin owed their existence to the generosity of women. See G. Cammeo, “Gli orfanotrofi israelitici in Italia,” V.I., LVI, fasc.XI, November 1908, p.  528. Thanks to the legacy of Fortunata Pardo Roques Disegni from Livorno, poor Jewish orphans had an actual space to be educated and instructed. Ivi, p. 527. See, in addition, n.c., “La solenne inaugurazione dell’orfanotrofio israelitico in Torino,” V.I., LVI, fasc. XII, December 1908, pp. 590–591 and G. Cammeo, “Ancora degli Orfanotrofi Israelitici in Italia,” V.I., LII, fasc. 1, January 1909, p. 24. 128  The moral, physical and economic elevation of the Jewish proletariat, as well as the fight against parasitism, constituted one of the main objectives of the Zionist program, which required a necessary and radical transformation of the charity system. See, for example, Atti del IV Convegno Sionnistico Italiano tenuto in Milano nei giorni 20 e 21 marzo 1904, Modena, Unione Tipo-Litografica Modenese, 1904, pp. 31–35. See in particular the report by G. Foà, Beneficenza e comunità israelitiche, published by the Associazione sionistica modenese, “Carlo Conigliani,” Modena, Unione Tipo-litografica Modenese, 1904. On the problem related to the modernization of the charity system see M. Miniati, “L’insostituibile pesantezza del povero. La beneficenza ebraica fra tradizione e modernizzazione,” R.M.I., LXXVI, n. 1–2, January–August 2010, pp. 275–297.

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held in Milan, convened by the local Administrative Council of the Jewish Charitable Society (Consiglio di Amministrazione della Società Israelitica di Beneficenza). This marked the culmination of debate that was reopened in 1908 by Giuseppe Cammeo’s proposal to make the Jewish orphanage in Rome the only institution responsible for the relief and education of children without families.129 The debate turned away from the focus, modernization, and functionality of charities (and of all Jewish institutions in general) to the more complex and long-standing issue concerning the lack of a central coordination for Jewish life.130 “Italian Judaism has scattered limbs; it is not an organism: its blood doesn’t circulate, its life doesn’t flow.”131 As for the type of female 129  “Would it not be more orderly, more fair, more logical, and more economical, to have a single Italian Jewish orphanage in Rome…and form a single fund, a single patrimonial capital?…It would be good…that Jewish Italy would consider once and for all to unite its forces, and not to disperse them!” G. Cammeo, “Gli orfanotrofi israelitici in Italia”, V.I., LVI, fasc. XI, November 1908, p. 528. 130  “The absence of a system of central direction exacerbates the antagonism between the various communities, accentuates their differences, makes their lives different and does not allow that fusion of forces that is an essential condition of prosperity, not only in orphanages, but also in schools, religious education, rabbinical colleges and religious life in general.” Il Vessillo, “Ancora degli orfanotrofi israelitici in Italia,” V.I., LVII, fasc. 4, April 1909, p. 172. 131  “All this is a symptom of a serious illness of death (sic). The French Jews have given a noble example of concord in this: and what they have done is supremely beautiful and worthy of emulation.” A.L., “Un Congresso?,” V.I., LVII, fasc. 5, May 1909, p. 214. Two important and serious issues disturbed Jewish life in Italy and acted as a further stimulus for a union between the various communities: the diminishing population of Jewish communities in smaller cities, and as well as the “very frequent arrival of poor wayfarers” whose “wandering from one city to another” required a considerable though fruitless financial effort on the part of the various communities. In the circular of October 20, 1909, with which the Board of Directors of the Jewish Society of Charity of Milan invited the various heads of the communities and charitable institutes to the Conference of November 14 and 15, there was great anxiety over the “continuous progressive languishing” of the smaller Jewish communities in the wake of Jewish migration toward larger urban centers. The circular urgently raised the problem of saving and using the capital destined for religious and charitable purposes, which in the event of the disappearance of the smaller Jewish communities, risked being incorporated by the local Congregations of Charity. With regard to their poor coreligionists, it was mainly Eastern European emigrants who, waiting to emigrate to the USA or the Middle East, relied entirely on the aid provided to them by the communities through which they passed (on this subject see T. Catalan, “L’emigrazione ebraica in Palestina attraverso il porto di Trieste (1908–1938),” Qualestoria, XIX, n. 2–3, August–December, 1991, spec. pp. 57–66). The lack of coordination between the various Community administrations and charitable institutions often obliged the unfortunate to “vicious rounds” and “unnecessary stops at intermediate points in their journey,” (L. Ravenna, “Il Convegno di Milano,” V.I.,

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intervention hoped for, Levi Allara—pointing to charity as the ideal field of activity and urging “Jewish mothers and young ladies” to unite in “sacred and charitable league” to help the poor orphans taken in by the providential institution in Rome to grow up “within their own religious family”—did more than merely make a rhetorical appeal to natural female generosity. Rather, she seemed to have intuited and wanted to suggest that practical activity was an essential vehicle for women to join forces; it was the unique instrument for ensuring that women would take actions capable of “maintaining a firm religious sentiment” and “reaffirming the bond of brotherhood and solidarity.”132 Certainly, the author was not referring to just any practical activity. Levi Allara pictured women’s work that was rationally planned and organized within a welfare system that was equally organized and rationally planned. A few years later, when taking part in the intense debate over social assistance, Levi Allara reiterated her thought more forcefully and clearly: “Down with the old system of charity […] that was blind and unresponsive, that showered down the treasures of charity, invaded families with an exaggeratedly affectionate caress LVIII, fasc. I, January 1910, p. 6) rounds and stops that resulted in “a waste of money, funds redirected from a more useful destination, used in whipping the poor stray from one city to another, who is not offered even the distant possibility to leave his pitiful situation of exile without a homeland, without a home, without family, without a job.” x.y.z., “Il Primo Congresso delle Comunità Israelitiche d’Italia,” V.I., LVII, fasc. XI, November 1909, p. 529 (the article contains the full text of the circular). In both cases, as in all matters affecting the interests of the entire Jewish population, the grouping of communities into a single body was the ideal solution. In fact, the Milan Congress closed with the decision to consider a Federation based in Rome. Once formed, the union would serve “to cement in a lasting way the relations between the Italian Jews, to maintain a continuous and uninterrupted contact between them, to lend them a rapid and secure means to protect their legitimate interests, and to use their influence in favor of their distant brethren, living in inhospitable and hostile quarters.” L. Ravenna, “Il Convegno di Milano,” cit. p. 5. In February 1911, the second Congress of Communities, also held in Milan, decided to set up a Committee, based in Rome. In the aftermath of the Congress of Rome, in May 1914, the Committee worked to bring the communities together in a Consortium whose constitution as a moral body was officially sanctioned in May 1920. See the detailed study of T. Catalan, “L’organizzazione delle comunità ebraiche dall’Unità alla prima guerra mondiale,” in Storia d’Italia, Annali, 11, Gli ebrei in Italia, vol. II, Dall’emancipazione ad oggi, cit., 1997, spec. pp. 1272–1290. However, the communities retained the right to choose whether or not to be part of the Consortium. Only in the Fascist era did Italian Judaism come to have a unified legal status. Mussolini’s government passed a law that required the communities adhere to the Union of Italian Jewish Communities. See De Felice, Storia degli ebrei italiani sotto il fascismo, cit., pp. 101–108. 132  B.A. Levi, “Per l’Orfanotrofio israelitico in Roma,” cit., p. 14.

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promising to relieve and sweeten [their burdens], not to heal and liberate [them from those burdens].” She eschewed Jewish charity that was not true to its basic principles of elevating and not demeaning the poor, of liberating the “Jewish proletariat,” and making it an active and independent agent and not that leech of charitable works, that overbearing landlord, that cynical freeloader…the shame of many organizations. Replace the handouts that degrade…with true charity that elevates. To make honest workers, to train strong and valiant fighters, cut of the evil at its roots…lead the hearts that are opening to hope, shore up the energies that move forward to action.

Levi Allara commended the recent foundation of the Enrichetta Sacerdote Orphanage and Educational Facility (Orfanotrofio ed Educatorio), named after the magnanimous woman whose generosity had ensured the institute’s existence. “Founded on essentially modern principles,” the institute took in children—“poor creatures at risk”—without a morally healthy family environment. “In all of them, a sense of dignity has awakened, a gentle desire to emulate goodness, a delicate wish to please and to distinguish themselves.”133 Weekly financial distributions and short-term assistance should be limited and give place instead to long-term aid, increasing forms of intervention aimed at guaranteeing a future for disadvantaged children and supporting workers experiencing hardships.134 This would be a scientifically administered form of charity, reorganized according to modern principles, a form of charity that corresponded “to the biblical ideal of helping without the recipients feeling their humanity was diminished.”135 This idea informed the many ways that Jews participated on behalf of their unfortunate disadvantaged brothers and sisters from other faiths. This approach helped to endow female interventions with a more professional guise, rendering this approach in some ways similar to the philanthropic activity of the many female coreligionists who operated outside of the Jewish community. In this way, social activity offered women greater 133  B.A.L., “A proposito degli Orfanotrofi israelitici in Italia,” V.I., LVII, fasc. 2, February 1909, p. 81. See also n. c., “La solenne inaugurazione dell orfanotrofio israelitico di Torino,” ivi, p. 82. 134  Ivi, pp. 81–82. 135  See “Gli Ebrei e la Cassa Nazionale di Previdenza per la Vecchiaia e per l’Invalidità degli operai,” V.I., LVIII, fasc. 7, July 1910, p. 312.

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freedom of movement and, above all, the possibility of valuing and seeing their own abilities recognized, and thus it became the preferred path to achieving a more active participation in community life as well as the means to recuperate or revitalize religious feeling, which was clearly all to the benefit of the family and of the entire structure of Judaism. Levi Allara’s affirmations elaborated several ideas that would later inspire the views of those young Zionists who, a few years after Cammeo’s words, reopened the discussion on the question of women, sparking a debate whose chief forum was La Settimana Israelitica (The Jewish Week). Since its early years, one of the distinctive features of this movement was the energetic, productive participation of young people, though some were young “not in years, but in spirit and in their thirst for greater knowledge of Judaism.”136 Within this group, the young students of the Rabbinical College of Florence, a stronghold of Zionism, played a leading role. In 1899 the College relocated its headquarters to the Florentine capital where it came under the direction of Rabbi Shemuel Zevì Margulies (1859–1922), one of the foremost Zionists in Italy. In close collaboration with another distinguished rabbi, Hirsch Perez Chajes (1876–1925), the institution became the main reference point and central nervous system of cultural and Zionist activity at the time.137 In 1907 those young people in 136  M. Toscano, “Fermenti culturali ed esperienze organizzative della gioventù ebraica italiana. (1911–1925)”, cit. p. 71. 137  In 1882 serious financial difficulties forced the Rabbinical College of Padova to close. In the same year, however, it was decided to revive the institution and relocate it to Rome. In 1887 the College reopened its doors, but the change of location did not bring about its smooth functioning. Students were scarce and the level of teaching was lower than desired. It was then decided to relocate the Rabbinical College to Florence because Margulies, who was Rabbi in Florence since 1890, was considered the most suitable person to elevate the College’s fortunes. Shemuel Zevì Margulies was born in Brzczany in Galicia and lived in Poland. Before his arrival in Italy he had obtained a rabbinical degree at the Rabbinical College of Wroclaw and a degree in philosophy and Semitic languages at the University of Leipzig. Hirsch Perez Chajes, also of Galician origin, was a student and then teacher at the College of Florence and a rabbi in Trieste between 1912 and 1918. For more on Margulies and Chajes, see C. Facchini, “Living in Exile: Wissenschaft des Judentum and the Study of Religion in Italy (1890s–1930s),” in Italian Jewish Networks from the Seventeenth to the Twentieth Century, edited by F. Bregoli, C. Ferrara Degli Uberti, G. Schwarz, New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, pp. 101–126. On the role of the Rabbinical College of Florence in the revival movement of Italian Judaism at the beginning of the twentieth century, see N. Pavoncello, Il Collegio Rabbinico Italiano, Rome, Tipografia Sabbadini, 1961 pp. 10–13; T. Eckert, Il movimento sionistico-chalutzistico in Italia fra le due guerre mondiali, Tel Aviv, Kevutzàth Yavne, 1970; S. Guetta, L’educazione ebraica: il Talmud Torà di Firenze dal 1860

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whom Margulies “had been able to instill not only the theoretical knowledge of Judaism, but also a spirit of practical action,”138 had created ProCultura, a new cultural movement with the purpose of valorizing Jewish culture and reawakening religious dedication in the Jewish community by promoting the study of the “fathers” of Judaism and expanding the understanding of their thought and works.139 As of 1910 Pro-Cultura was able to utilize the press with La Settimana Israelitica (The Jewish Week), “the first real journal…that appeared in Jewish Italy.”140 Founded in Florence in the same year that The Zionist Idea came to an end, the new publication was promoted by Rabbi Margulies with the aim of “spreading a healthy culture across all classes of the Jewish population.”141 Margulies assumed the direction of the paper while leaving the task of editing it to his students. La Settimana Israelitica was therefore a journal of young people, a forum for discussing and debating the ideas and proposals that the dynamic Florentine group promoted with the intent of raising the awareness of their coreligionists and bringing new energy to various segments of Judaism,142 a project ideally positioned to include women. And women had not declined to participate, both as subjects and promoters of the activities carried out by the various committees of ProCultura. For example, in Padua, a woman was responsible for the al 1922, Graduation thesis, Faculty of Magisterium, University of Florence, 1987–1988, p. 91 and S. Della Seta Torrefranca, “Identità religiosa e identità nazionale,” cit., p. 267; L. Viterbo, “La nomina del rabbino Margulies: un Excursus nella Firenze ebraica di fine Ottocento,” R.M.I.,  LX, n. 3, September–December 1993, pp.  67–68; M.  Del Bianco Cotrozzi, Il Collegio Rabbinico di Padova. Un’istituzione religiosa dell’ebraismo sulla via dell’emancipazione, Florence, Olschki, 1995, pp. 334–336. 138  A. Milano, “Un secolo di stampa,” cit., p. 119. 139  A. Milano, “Gli enti culturali ebraici in Italia nell’ultimo trentennio. (1907–1937),” R.M.I., XII, n. 6, February–March 1938, pp. 253–269. 140  A. Milano, “Un secolo di stampa,” cit., p. 119. For more on the Florentine periodical, see also, B. Di Porto, “I periodici fiorentini di Samuel Hirsch Margulies: ‘La Rivista Israelitica’ e ‘La Settimana Israelitica’” in Percorsi di storia ebraica. Atti del Convegno internazionale. Cividale del Friuli—Gorizia, 7/9 settembre 2004, edited by P.  C. Ioly Zorattini, Udine, Forum, 2005, pp. 221–245. 141  “It is published every week, and can, better than the pro-cultura conferences, serve to spread the knowledge of the history and science of Judaism and its present conditions, while the conferences are rare, have a small number of attendees, and a very small number of good lecturers.” M. Finzi, Collegio Rabbinico Italiano. Quarta Relazione, Florence, Tip. Galletti and Cassuto, 1910, p. 6. 142  See A. Milano, “Un secolo di stampa,” cit., pp. 119–120; M. Toscano, “Fermenti culturali ed esperienze organizzative della gioventù ebraica italiana,” cit., p. 72.

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institution “of a special course for young ladies about the mission of women in Judaism.”143 But the interest and support shown by some women was a phenomenon of modest proportions compared to the majority of women who appeared indifferent “not only to all that [was] Jewish in a religious sense, but for all that [concerns] the moral interests of Judaism.” This was the context in which La Settimana Israelitica acted, and while not utterly renouncing censorious tones, the paper quickly revealed its intention to approach to the controversy in a new way that emphasized clarity and analysis. In January 1912 the journal tackled the subject of women’s disinterest with an important article whose anonymous author made no secret of his skepticism toward those who sought answers and remedies to current problem only in the past. The issue of women’s disinterest in the future of Judaism should be understood as a reflection of the deep crisis in Jewish society at the time.144 In some ways, this article was a belated response to an earlier piece by Hirsch Perez Chajes in which the distinguished scholar summoned women to the Jewish cause by re-evaluating their role in the historical, cultural, and religious tradition. Like other learned and illustrious rabbis before him, Chajes cited several post-biblical womanly figures distinguished for their courage, wisdom, and intelligence, with the intention of erasing all the prejudices and erroneous ideas of those who believed that in “Ancient Judaism” the woman had been the victim of the same unfair treatment to which the Muslim woman was subjected, deprived of her freedom, “imprisoned in

143  See  “Pro-Cultura  ebraica. A Padova,” V.I., LVIII, fasc. 1 and 2, January–February 1910, pp.  30–31 and 79 respectively. The Jewish Pro-Cultura Committee of Padua was formed in 1907, and another was formed soon after in Florence. In 1909, however, due to the departure of some of its founders for work reasons, the activities of the Florentine committee diminished. Padua then took on a leading role. In 1909 a committee was also set up in Bologna. A scholar, Estella Rimini, also took part in the cycle of conferences organized there, with the report: “Of the Jewish people and their prophets.” See “Pro-Cultura ebraica. Comitato di Bologna,” Corriere Israelitico, XLVII, March 31, 1909, pp. 326–327. In 1910 committees in Venice, Ferrara, and Verona were also formed. In Verona, the provisional committee of the Pro-Cultura included five women. See: “Pro-Cultura ebraica. A Verona,” V.I., LVIII, fasc. 1, January 1910, p. 31. See also A. Milano, “Gli enti culturali ebraici”, cit. 144  La Settimana Israelitica, “Appello alle donne,” S.I. III, n. 4, January 22, 1912. The article probably belonged to Alfonso Pacifici’s pen. The choice to sign as “Settimana Israelitica” can be ascribed to the desire to emphasize the communion of spirit and intent that characterized the entire Florentine group.

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the harem in some kind of pampered slavery” and considered by the man mainly as a “female” rather than as a “companion.”145 The 1912 article was not intended to contest Chajes’s thoughts. “We recognize that in the Bible we find the most beautiful glorification of the woman and her importance in society and the family.”146 The article stated that perhaps because of the importance women had “enjoyed and deserved” in the heart of the family, the learned had not always mentioned her religious duties, judging it useless to continually emphasize something that was quite natural: “the support that the woman gave to the whole structure of Judaism was so obvious... She was the center of the Jewish family: she was therefore, as a direct and natural consequence, the center of Jewish life.” Hence the disappointment of those who complained of the restricted spaces that Judaism allotted to women in worship and religious life in general and who considered this to be the principal cause for their estrangement; this, however, was an unjustified disappointment, the newspaper insisted. While it was not unusual to find women in Jewish society who were dissatisfied with the “supposed limits” that religion imposed upon them, it was still rare for these same women who believed themselves to be “banished” from religious life to express “the desire to return to this life out of love, or by force, or by the force of love.”147 The detachment of women was “an undeniable and painful fact,” but more extensive participation by women in religious rituals was not the most complete, effective solution. The construction of a Jewish way of life that was “more aware, more noble, more open to modern developments” was inseparable from the efforts of those “whose sacrifice and zeal were the foundation of centuries of unbroken, vibrant Judaism.” The solution, then, was to be found elsewhere, more precisely, in the professionalism, knowledge, and experience that woman had acquired over the years from their social activities, teaching and culture in general. Any solution had to be accompanied by a two-fold willingness: from women and from the Jewish community. On the part of the women, of course, especially the “many Jewish women and young ladies” who were involved in school and pedagogical matters, who either held an administrative position or who were simply interested in academic activity and who were asked to dedicate their efforts to the Jewish sphere as well. By granting even a modest amount of their time and  H.P. Chajes, “La donna nel Talmud,” S.I., I, n. 4, January 22, 1910.  La Settimana Israelitica, “Appello alle donne,” cit. 147  Ibidem. 145 146

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offering even a small part of their expertise, they could bring enormous benefit to Jewish educational institutions. Not to mention the “useful growth” to Jewish education as well as to the “cause of civilization in general” if these women would dedicate themselves to helping disadvantaged children by establishing scuole festive148 and recreation centers. In addition, the Jewish community had to do its part as well by rethinking its attitude toward women and, above all, by reconsidering their role within it: “What we want is to appeal to women on behalf of charitable Jewish works and at the same time appeal to our current institutions in favor of the women who are already within our ranks.”149 In this regard La Settimana Israelitica cited the case of kindergarten teachers who had, with few exceptions, always been neglected as a “class.” By introducing the concept of “class” into the discussion, the journal was asking “Israelite Italy” to consider its teachers from another perspective. Teachers should not be considered individually, only in terms of their individual qualities. The role of teacher was a vocation that needed to be highlighted not only in terms of sacredness, but in terms of professionalism. Doing so would cause others to consider teachers a “class,” a specific professional category whose knowledge and experience fulfilled a role of fundamental importance in the community and for the community, namely, forging “the soul of the Jewish child,” following, at least in its first phase, the intellectual development of the “lower-­middle class” which was the segment of the Jewish population that still maintained the strong ties to their faith. Consequently, teachers fully deserved to be recognized and considered by “Israelite Italy” as important contributors to any discussion concerning the younger generations, who were the future of Judaism. Likewise, the teachers also had to learn to recognize themselves as “class” and create a fitting visibility. The concept of class implied organization and autonomy. First of all, they had to unite, compare their experiences, “know 148  The schools and high school weekend programs that were established in Milan in 1861 and later in other Italian cities were aimed at young working women who had already completed elementary school but wanted to achieve higher education and improve their work situation. To prevent the young women from having to go out at night during the work week in order to take courses, the classes were taught on Sundays in the early afternoons. The anonymous author of the article likely thought classes on Sunday would include men as well as women with the chief purpose of reinforcing their understanding of Judaism. For more on scuole festive, see C. Ghizzoni, Scuola e lavoro a Milano fra Unità e fascismo. Le civiche Scuole serali e festive superiori (1861–1926), Lecce, Pensa multimedia, 2014. 149  La Settimana Israelitica, “Appello alle donne,” cit.

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each other, love each other.” Why not promote a conference? They needed to talk about themselves, their ideals, their motivations, but above all, the journal asserted, they needed to discuss the “Jewish child.” “Perhaps they can tell us what tomorrow’s Judaism will be like.” The teachers’ situation was only one example of the new relationships being established between women and the Jewish community. While the periodical was far from being a champion of female emancipation, La Settimana Israelitica did retreat from anachronistic and intransigent positions, preferring instead to face the reality of a female world that had been progressively valued in spheres other than that of the family. If women were to enthusiastically act for the community and if the estrangement of women from religious life was to cease hindering the movement for religious revival, then it would be necessary to grant women roles and spaces parallel to those they had earned elsewhere: “From the intellectual symposia of our Jewish spirits” to the works of culture and charity, “there is work for all. May our mothers, our wives, our sisters be with us.”150 This need was beginning to be recognized among the leadership of Jewish communities. Considering “the changed social and intellectual condition of women in our times” was precisely what one member of the Administrative Council of the Jewish community of Florence advocated. In a letter dated February 15, 1912, shortly after a notable article appeared in La Settimana Israelitica, Aristide Nissim once again informed the president of his desire to see the provisions of the current electoral regulations concerning women corrected, in the sense of granting greater freedom and fairness.151 According to Article 5 of the Electoral Regulations of April 1883, women, like minors and legally incompetent adults, could not hold office. Women had the right to vote, but only through their male representatives or delegates.152 Nissim expressed his disagreement with this  Ibidem.   Letter from the attorney Aristide Nissim to the Presidente del Consiglio di Amministrazione dell’Università Israelitica di Firenze, ACEF, Gestione Comunità. Verbali Consigli. E.1.17. 152  This specific aspect of the “woman question” has not been addressed so far. In the absence of a unitary organizational structure in Italian Judaism, the communities had different electoral regulations, some of which did not even include the right to vote for women through a representative. In the communities of Piedmont, regulated by the Rattazzi law of 1857, the Council was elected by male contributors, who were of legal age and literate. In October 1859, the Rattazzi law was extended to the communities of the Provinces of Modena and Parma, in March 1860 to Emilia and in October of the same year, to Le Marche. In Livorno, as in Florence, women were not able to hold office, but could vote through a 150 151

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point, arguing, on the contrary, the right of women to exercise their right to vote without restrictions, to place their own ballots directly in the ballot box, as a natural part of the evolutionary process affecting the female world. Thus, he “denied that women were incapable of personally expressing their own will, but needed the intervention of the male element to manifest it.” Furthermore, he added, a modification to the current Regulation was justified by the “outcry already raised by our female coreligionists.”153 Nissim was referring to a letter of protest that one of his female coreligionists, Mary Nathan Puritz (1869–?), a member of the educated Florentine bourgeoise and daughter of Ernesto Nathan and Virginia Mieli, had sent in December 1911 to the president of the community speaking out against the inconsistent and unjust treatment of women. Nathan Puritz declared that she had voted in the last elections held in the community, and that she had therefore acquiesced to the rule of the “delegate” so as not to surrender her opportunity to nominate people to the Council who were willing to consider issues such as the status of women, and who were willing, above all, not to put women on an equal footing with minors and legally incompetent adults. Puritz especially highlighted that while it was true the Rules dated back to 1883, it was equally true that 28 years had passed, and that women had evolved over those years; representative. In 1897 in the Florentine community, as an exception to the 1883 regulation, it was determined that not only regular contributors, but all those who contributed to the expenses of the community with an annual voluntary offering of 10 lire or those who possessed an academic degree could vote. In the community of Pitigliano, the law of August 1881 granted the right to vote to male contributors, who were of legal age and literate. However, the same law also extended the right to vote to all those who had obtained an academic degree or equivalent. It remains to be seen whether the ambiguity of the text was resolved in favor of women at the time. In the community of Pisa, which had adopted the Rattazzi law, women did not have the right to vote. In Siena, women were not eligible to vote, but the statute granted all contributors who were of legal age the right to nominate members of the Council; therefore, to the extent that women contributed to the expenses of the community, the right to nominate council members extended to them as well. The same criteria seemed to be adopted by the communities of the Veneto-Mantuan Provinces, namely, those which, before unification, were under Austrian rule and in which, as in Tuscany, the regulations prior to the proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy were maintained. In Mantua, Venice, Rovigo, Verona, Milan, and Padua, nominating officials was the responsibility of all financial contributors. In the community of Rome, the 42 member Council was elected by the male contributors who were literate and of legal age. See G. Bachi, “Il regime giuridico delle Comunità israelitiche in Italia dal 1848 ai giorni nostri,” R.M.I., XII, n. 7–9, April– June 1938, pp. 197–224. 153  Letter from the attorney Aristide Nissim, cit.

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therefore, “the regulations concerning women could also evolve.” She went on to affirm that, if no woman, offended and humiliated as she must have certainly have felt when reading article 5, has protested, then I will be the first to vehemently protest the place that has been assigned to us by the Jewish Congregation; I will be the first to rebel against being considered a “minor” or “legally incompetent adult” and not be given the same rights that have been assigned to men….How is this so? You consider a woman to be thinking and reasonable when you ask her to be part of the Jewish Congregation, when you ask her to contribute her money for community needs. You consider her thinking and reasonable when she donates to the congregation, even if her husband, her natural protector, has distanced himself from the Community. But when… she has to cast her vote for something that concerns her in the same way as it concerns a man who contributes as she does, why do you then put her on the same level as a legally incompetent individual, and take away her freedom of choice?154

What Puritz found humiliating was the obligation to rely on a representative for every act other than making a donation, a sense of humiliation that was augmented by the uncertainty whether the vote cast by the male representative would necessarily correspond to the will of the female individual he represented. It mattered little to Puritz that in non-Jewish congregations, women did not have the right to hold office, much less the right to vote. Puritz pointed out that in other religious congregations, the act of contributing was obligatory while in the Jewish community it was viewed as a choice which, in turn, presupposed that the individual’s reasoning, whether good or bad, was done autonomously, “to think for herself.” Therefore, if a woman was allowed to vote, as was her right, why not also allow her to cast that vote “in a decent, dignified way”? Why, instead, continue to “offend her by classifying her with children and legally incompetent adults,” those who lack understanding and must rely on others to act on their behalf? “I therefore protest with all the strength of which I am capable,” continued Puritz, “and I believe that all women who financially contribute will be of my opinion; I protest in the name of the rights held by conscious and thinking women, and I can only hope that the Administration will remove this Article 5 that sounds offensive to the 154  Letter of Mary Nathan Puritz to “Egregio Signor Presidente della Università Israelitica di Firenze,” ACEF, Gestione Comunità, Verbali Consigli, E.1.17.

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entire female class.”155 The letter was accompanied by a note from Ernestina Paper Puritz, the first female physician in Italy,156 who declared that she fully supported the position of her coreligionist and niece. In some ways, what the letter expressed was emblematic of how difficult it could be, especially for educated, upper-middle-class women like Puritz and Paper who supported the Federazione Femminile Toscana (Tuscan Women’s Federation),157 women who were socially engaged in aiding the disadvantaged underclasses and working for the improvement of women’s conditions, to reconcile their desire to maintain a connection with the Jewish community and support it, with their aspiration to be recognized as women who were as autonomous, independent individuals. This was not to suggest that the surrounding society was more equitable toward women, quite the contrary. Was that not all the more reason to work to guarantee rights for women rather than accepting discrimination from their own coreligionists, from the very community to which they belonged, a community which, in order to survive, needed the material contribution of women as well as men, and as Puritz had pointed out, when they  Ivi.  See footnote 60. 157  Ernestina Paper Puritz and Mary Nathan Puritz worked on behalf of women through the Federazione Femminile Toscana, an extension of the C.N.D.I.,  Consiglio Nazionale delle Donne Italiane, (National Council of Italian Women). The C.N.D.I. was established in 1903 and was the Italian branch of the International Council of Women, founded in Washington in 1888. See A. Buttafuoco, Cronache femminili. La stampa emancipazionista in Italia dall’Unità al fascismo, cit., p. 178. The C.N.D.I, composed mainly of upper-middleclass women and more enlightened aristocrats, encouraged and promoted all initiatives aimed at improving the moral, economic, and legal status of women. (On the National Council of Italian Women see M. Bartoli, Il movimento di emancipazione femminile in Italia e il Consiglio Nazionale delle Donne Italiane (1903–1923), Thesis in the Faculty of Magisterium in Florence, 1982–1983 and C. Gori, Crisalidi. Emancipazioniste liberali in età giolittiana, Milan, Franco Angeli, 2003.) Ernestina Paper headed the Hygiene Commission of the Federazione Femminile Toscana, a position she held again in 1920. In that same year Mary Nathan Puritz served as Counselor. Ernestina Paper used her medical training to benefit the Pro-Infanzia, an institution created in Florence in November 1911 to teach girls and young mothers to care for children in the most logical and hygienic way. As Paper herself reported at the International Women’s Congress in Rome in May 1914, the school had achieved “the dual purpose of teaching the young mother how to raise her child, even in a poor environment, since most of the measures taught to them can be put into practice even in poor families, and it has shown wealthy mothers of families how to employ people with the skills required for the care of their children.” See E. Paper, “Scuola ‘Pro-Infanzia’,” in Atti del Congresso Internazionale Femminile, Torre Pellice, Tipografia Alpina di Augusto Coisson, 1915, pp. 356–359. 155 156

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considered it opportune, these same men did not hesitate to recognize women’s capacity for discernment? Perhaps in this sense the words of Giuseppina Levi Artom could sound unfair. Taking her cue from the appeal to women launched in January by La Settimana Israelitica, she responded by contributing a controversial article on the “woman question” to the journal the following March. Levi Artom’s collaboration in the La Settimana Israelitica was probably due to her frequent stays in Florence with her son Elia Samuel, who was one of the leading students of the Rabbinical College.158 Levi Artom’s article returned to the same arguments previously dealt with and extensively discussed in the pages of The Jewish Banner in order to draw a very pessimistic picture portraying a reality with very little hope of winning back women to the cause of Judaism. Once again Levi Artom directed severe criticism at her female coreligionists who had strayed “from the right path”; in order to make acquaintances among the aristocracy, they had subjected themselves “to sacrifices and humiliations of every kind.”159 She also reproached the numerous “women of letters” and “female philanthropists” for their excessive diligence in working for the good of those of different religious faiths, while forgetting that they also had duties toward their own coreligionists who were equally in need of their care and attention. Why then, Levi Artom wondered, did the literate ladies not write books for Jewish children and offer lectures for their female coreligionists? Why did they not dedicate themselves to the study of sacred books and make every effort to convince all mothers to send their children to Jewish school? Why open Orphanages, pro-puerizie, Hospitals, Hospices, ricreatori (youth centers), Kindergartens for those who would most likely never lift a finger to help one of us, should we fall? Why not use all our means to help, lift, benefit and instruct our own coreligionists?160

158  Elia Samuel Artom served as a military rabbi during World War I in Belluno. He was also Deputy Rabbi in Ferrara and Alessandria, Rabbi in Tripoli from 1920 to 1923, in Alessandria from 1925 to 1926, in Florence from 1927 to 1935. From 1935 to 1939, he taught at the Rabbinical College in Turin and Rome. The information about Elia Samuel Artom was taken from E. Rossi Artom, Gli Artom, cit., p. 203. 159  G. Levi Artom, “Alle nostre donne,” S.I., III, n. 9, March 1, 1912. 160  Ivi.

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While Levi Artom’s arguments and disapproving observations did not refer to one specific case but were instead aimed at encapsulating a reality shared by many Jewish women wherever they lived, albeit in a generalized and somewhat distorted way, the journalist’s statements did describe several aspects of the situation in Florence regarding the social activities Jewish women sustained in close cooperation with their Gentile sisters. That association between Jews, aristocrats, and bourgeoisie, which Levi Artom viewed with hostility, undoubtedly had one of its most significant centers in Florence. For example, in November 1910, when the Federazione Femminile Toscana, which was founded by an aristocrat, Baroness Elena French Cini (1844–1922) and where Mary Nathan Puritz and Ernestina Paper worked together with other Jewish women, established the Asilo Materno, a center for the reception and care of single mothers during the last stages of pregnancy, the new institution depended on a large group of gentlewomen (and some gentlemen) who belonged predominantly to the prominent, cultured Jewish and non-­Jewish bourgeoisie for its management and financial support. The same association, where it was common to find the same people or at least, members of the same families, also sustained other initiatives such as those promoted by Bice Cammeo, for example the Ufficio di Indicazione ed Assistenza (Office of Direction and Assistance) founded in July 1904, and the Rifugio Immediato e Temporaneo per Fanciulli Abbandonati (Immediate and Temporary Refuge for Abandoned Children), created in January 1910. But where this collaboration between women of different social and religious profiles acquired particular visibility was undoubtedly the Lyceum. A cultural association founded in 1908 by Countess Berta Fantoni, Marchioness Gabriella Incontri, and Countess Beatrice Pandolfini (1868–1955), the Florentine Lyceum—the first to open its doors in Italy (the founding Lyceum was located in London)—was created to bring women together “in friendly conversation” who were from different backgrounds but who shared the same interest in art, painting, music, and literature, that is, all things in the intellectual sphere, as well as concern for social issues. The Lyceum represented an important intersection of women’s activities not only in the cultural sphere, in the form of exhibitions, lectures, concerts, and so on, but also in philanthropy. While the club dedicated one sector to philanthropic activities, many members participated in charitable activities that took place outside the club’s framework. In this way, the Lyceum constituted a sort of center for gathering, recruiting, and organizing the female forces already engaged or interested in

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engaging on the social front. While the women and noblewomen participating in this new association had the common goal of nurturing and expressing their intellectual interests, there were many who already supported charitable initiatives and who found in the Lyceum not only a space for socialization but also a further means to translate their concern for the most urgent social problems into action. The network of acquaintances fostered by the association enabled women to undertake new initiatives and brought in new members to support initiatives that were already underway, as evidenced in the membership lists of the Ufficio Indicazione ed Assistenza, the Rifugio founded by Bice Cammeo, the Asilo Materno, and especially the Lyceum. Philanthropic activity in Florence relied on the work of a group of industrious women from different social and cultural backgrounds. This was an itinerant group in that it moved across several contexts, and it was a group in which the Jewish presence, like the aristocratic one, was very strong.161 Among the nine women on the board of directors of the Asilo Materno, presided over by Countess Beatrice Pandolfini, were Elena Olivetti, Nina Sierra,162 and Countess Lidia Ottolenghi of Vallepiana,163 all members of the Lyceum and supporters of Bice Cammeo’s initiatives,164 along with many of their female (and male) 161  See Rifugio immediato e temporaneo per fanciulli abbandonati, Relazione dell’anno 1910, Florence, Stabilimento Tipografico G. Ramella, 1911, Ufficio di Indicazioni e assistenza, Relazione dell’anno 1907, Florence, Stabilimento Tipografico G. Spinelli, 1908, Relazione dell’anno 1908, Florence, Stabilimento Tipografico G. Spinelli, 1909, Relazione dell’anno 1909, Florence, Stabilimento Tipografico G. Spinelli, 1910, Bollettino del Lyceum di Firenze, I, December 1912 (until this date, the Lyceum did not have a publication), Relazione dell’Asilo Materno, 1912–1913, Florence, Stabilimento Tipografico Ariani, 1914. 162  Clara Jalla was also on the board of directors. Clara (neé Gay in Turin in 1859), belonged to a cultured and distinguished family of the Waldensian community of Florence, and was a further example of the strong social commitment of women from religious minorities. Clara’s name is associated with the periodical L’Alba, an instrument of the Christian Youth Union, published by the Claudiana Publishing House, directed in Florence by her husband Odoardo. On the periodical, see S. Franchini, M. Pacini, S. Soldani, Giornali di donne in Toscana. Un Catalogo molte storie (1770–1945), Florence, Olschki, 2007, vol.II, pp. 323–326. 163  Lidia Ottolenghi had married Adolfo Ottolenghi of Vallepiana (1857–1913)  whose father Emilio (born in Acqui, Piedmont, in 1830), had been made a count in 1883 for his generous donation to the Mauriziano Hospital in Turin. See G. Mola di Nomaglia, Feudi e nobiltà negli Stati dei Savoia, Lanzo Torinese, Società storica delle valli di Lanzo, 2006, p. 79. 164  Nina Sierra had written an article praising one of Bice Cammeo’s initiatives, specifically, the Ufficio di Indicazioni e assistenza: “It seemed right and proper to me to point out how this fine example of human solidarity can comfort and incite goodness, and shows how useful

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coreligionists. Out of the six Benemeriti members of the Asilo Materno, to which the queen herself, Helen of Savoy (1873–1952), belonged, three were Jewish, and there were many other Jewish names among the members and benefactors.165 Laura Orvieto (1876–1953), a woman of great culture and a well-known author at the time, was also among the Benemeriti members. Along with her friend and coreligionist Amelia Rosselli (1870–1954),166 also an established writer and a woman of high moral and intellectual stature, Laura Orvieto was among the first to join the Lyceum. She had greeted the founding of the Lyceum with enthusiasm on the pages of Il Marzocco, a journal to which Amelia Rosselli also contributed, and which was directed by Laura’s husband Angelo (1869–1967), an important

the good will of a small group of generous souls can bring to the underprivileged classes.” See the article by N. Sierra, “L’Ufficio Indicazioni e Assistenza di Firenze,” Vita Femminile Italiana, fasc. VI, April 1907, p. 444. 165  See, for example, la Relazione dell’ “Asilo Materno” 1912–1913, cit., pp. 2–9. 166  Amalia Pincherle Rosselli, known as Amelia, was born in Venice into a family (to which the writer Alberto Moravia (1907–1990), Amelia’s nephew, also belongs) with patriotic and liberal ancestors. The Risorgimento traditions of her husband’s family, Giuseppe Emanuele Rosselli (1867–1911), whom Amelia married in 1892, were also very strong. Amelia Rosselli had established herself as dramatist. In 1898 her drama Anima (Turin, S. Lattes & C., 1901) received an award and was performed in Turin. In the drama Rosselli deals with courageously, considering the times, one of the most painful and most silent realities of women’s lives: sexual violence. The work harshly criticizes the prejudices and hypocrisy of the “proper” bourgeoisie. The “woman question” appears in a significant part of her literary production and in her frequent articles in Il Marzocco, the Orvieto brothers’ journal (on Amelia’s intellectual and social commitment on behalf of women, see M. Calloni, “Ebraismo, italianità e questione femminile in Amelia Rosselli,” in I Rosselli: eresia creativa, eredità originale, edited by S. Visciola and G. Limone, Naples, Guida, 2005, pp. 42–62). In 1903, after separating from her husband, Amelia Rosselli moved to Florence where she continued her literary activity and her social engagement. Gifted with great courage and moral strength, Amelia Rosselli paid severely for her patriotic feelings and her aversion to the fascist regime. On March 27, 1916, her eldest son Aldo (1895–1916) died in the war. On June 9, 1937 her other two sons, Carlo (1899–1937) and Nello (1900–1937), supported by her in their anti-fascist activities, were murdered in France at Bagnoles de l’Orne by the assassins of the far-right organization “Cagoule.” See M. Calloni, “Il quotidiano della politica e dei sentimenti: una comunicazione femminile,” in Politica e affetti familiari. Lettere dei Rosselli ai Ferrero (1917–1943), edited by Id. and L. Cedroni, Milan, Feltrinelli, 1997, p.133. For more on the Rosselli family, see Epistolario familiare. Carlo, Nello Rosselli e la madre (1914–1937) edited by Z.  Ciuffoletti, Milan, Mondadori, 1997, (second edition), and A.  Rosselli, Memorie, edited by M. Calloni, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2001.

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figure in the Florentine intellectual world.167 Together with her friend Rosselli, Laura Orvieto was a member of the Federazione Femminile Toscana and supported the Asilo Materno as well as the other organizations founded by Bice Cammeo. Laura Orvieto wrote books for children to which Rosselli had also contributed some of her writings.168 In 1908 Orvieto published Leo and Lia with the Florentine publishing house Bemporad, followed in 1911 by Storie della storia del mondo, greche e barbare (Stories of World History, Greek and Barbarian), a book of enduring popularity with young readers for many years, and one in which the themes and motifs of the Jewish tradition emerged.169 Laura Orvieto was devoted to children; after her marriage to her cousin Angelo Orvieto, and before moving to Florence, Laura had worked as a volunteer at the Scuola e Famiglia (School and Family) in her native Milan where she was born in 1876. This institution was directed by Rosa Errera, an Italian teacher, children’s book author, and coreligionist of Laura Orvieto. Scuola and Famiglia followed the model of a similar institute in Turin founded by the Lombroso sisters, which provided care for the children of low-income workers after the regular school hours, in order to protect them from the moral and physical dangers of the street. Orvieto wished to duplicate the institution in Florence, by organizing with her husband, a very active philanthropist, a recreation center for poor children in La Pietra, a small suburb in the Florentine hills where their residence, “Il Poggiolino,” was located.170 167  See A. Boralevi, “Angiolo Orvieto, ‘Il Marzocco’, la società colta ebraica,” in “Il Marzocco”. Carteggi e cronache fra Ottocento e Avanguardie. (1887–1913), Atti del seminario di studi (12-13-14 dicembre 1983), edited by C.  Del Vivo, Florence, Olschki, 1985, pp.  213–233. For more on Laura’s collaboration with the journal, see C.  Gori, “Laura Orvieto: un’intellettuale del Novecento,” Genesis, III, n. 2, 2004, pp. 183–203. 168  See A.  Rosselli, Topinino, Turin-Rome, Casa Editrice Nazionale, 1905 and Topinino garzone di bottega, Florence, Bemporad, 1910. 169  C. Del Vivo, “‘La storia del mondo è fatta di tante storie”. Mondo classico e tradizione ebraica nella narrativa di Laura Orvieto’”, Antologia Viesseux, New Series. XV, n. 43, JanuaryApril 2009, pp. 5–34. 170  Storia di Angiolo e Laura, ACGV, Fondo Orvieto, c. 299, p. 139. This is an unpublished book that the Orvieto spouses wrote between 1936 and 1939, a time when the growing anti-Semitic sentiment led to the tragedy of the racial laws, and which follows the human and intellectual journey of the couple. Regarding Angelo Orvieto, the text mentions the numerous societies he founded, always in discussion with his wife, Laura. In the early twentieth century, Angelo founded the Society for the Research of Greek Papyri and the Leonardo da Vinci Society, the latter as a meeting place for artists, writers, and scientists in Florence. To establish these and other associations, Angelo Orvieto sought the contributions of other

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Florence seemed to possess the exact conditions and individuals to justify Levi Artom’s opinions. Laura Orvieto epitomized the image of the philanthropist and intellectual so problematically delineated by Levi Artom, who suggested that certain aspects of the situation in Florence and other cities merited a more moderate evaluation. It was no insignificant detail that this sizeable group of Jewish women who participated in charitable activities outside of the Jewish community such as working to ensure more welfare assistance and a better future for disadvantaged children, alleviating the needs of poor families and mothers at risk, and frequenting the salon’s intellectual circles, comprised almost completely the very women (which included Laura Orvieto) who founded the Pro Infanzia Israelitica in 1907  in order to provide for the poor Jewish children in Florence that could not be admitted to the existing institution, the Attias Orphanage.171 In subsequent years, Orvieto also took her alternating turn serving on the institution’s Comitato direttivo (Administration). Of this group, only Recha Margulies, the Rabbi’s wife, deserted the activities that Jewish cultural figures. See ivi, pp. 115–116 e pp. 131–132. The publication of the text written by Laura Orvieto was edited by C.  Del Vivo: L.  Orvieto, Storia di Angelo e Laura, Florence, Olschki, 2001. On Laura’s private life and intellectual activity, see C. Del Vivo, “Laura Orvieto: per una biografia,” in Laura Orvieto. La voglia di raccontare le ‘Storie del mondo’, Atti della giornata di studio, Florence, Palazzo Strozzi, October 19, 2011, Antologia Viesseux, New Series,  XVIII, n. 53–54, May-December 2012,  pp. 5–25. Laura Orvieto’s writing also touched on the difficult theme of mixed marriage. Together with her husband Angiolo, she authored a novel, long unpublished and one of the few that deals with Jewish themes. The novel tells the love story of Leone Da Rimini, a Jew, and Piccarda Guidi, a Catholic, who renounce their love so as not to abandon their respective faiths. On the history of the manuscript and for a reconstruction of the context in which it was written, see C. Del Vivo, Una storia a quattro mani, in L. Orvieto and A. Orvieto, Leone Da Rimini, edited by C. Del Vivo, Livorno, Salomone Belforte, 2016, pp. 13–39. 171  The Attias Orphanage provided only for children orphaned by both parents or by their father. There was no provision for boys and girls orphaned by their mother but who could not rely on the moral and material support of their father, nor for those children with parents, but who still needed to be removed from conditions of poverty, or dangerous morally and physically. See Orfanotrofio  Israelitico “Achille Leone Attias.” Relazione all’onorevole Consiglio dell’Università Israelitica di Firenze intorno alla gestione del primo quinquennio. The Pro-Infanzia Israelitica made up for this deficiency. The institution provided for the children to be placed in trusted families where they could lead a normal life and receive an appropriate education. See D. Prato, “Per i bambini ebrei,” S.I., I, n. 3, January 15, 1910 and Società Pro Infanzia israelitica, Relazione, Florence, Tip. Galletti e Cassuto, 1915, p. 6. On the contribution of Laura and the Orvieto family to this institution which was established on the initiative of Emilia Treves Finzi, cousin of Angiolo Orvieto, see L. Viterbo, “Impegno sociale ed educativo nella comunità ebraica fiorentina,” in Laura Orvieto. La voglia di raccontare le “Storie del mondo,” cit., pp. 65–73.

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originated from outside of the Jewish community. Laura Orvieto, Bice Salmon, Elena Benzimra, Elisa Benaim (1874–1970) and Giorgina Zabban had been associated with the Ufficio Indicazione e Assistenza since its foundation. Zabban, who was a generous benefactor of the Jewish Orphanage of Livorno,172 as well, together with Rachele Sforni (1861–1940) and Emilia Treves (1866–1922) was among the founding members of the Rifugio. Sforni, Zabban, Benzimra, and Ada Neppi Modona (1872–1944) were members of the Asilo Materno. All of them, including Annie Castelfranco and Lydia Sorani, were members of the Lyceum, as were some of the benefactors of the Pro Infanzia.173 All of this argued in favor of a much less clear-cut separation than the one Levi Artom imagined, with features of one group that did not necessarily exclude the other. In an article that appeared in the La Settimana Israeltica in January 1910, David Prato (1882–1951) spoke of the “great mission that for centuries and centuries…was entrusted to Israel.” He was referring to Bice Cammeo and the numerous Jewish women who assisted her at the Rifugio.174 In 1908 and 1909, the Jewish community, which maintained contact with the Ufficio Indicazione e Assistenza and received information about it, was listed as one of the permanent members of that institution, meaning that it was among those benefactors who contributed the considerable sum of 100 lire.175 The active and substantial presence of Jewish women and men in these organizations was undoubtedly a strong indication of their integration into the social fabric of the city. Jewish participation in these charitable organizations was an equally clear sign of the tight network of relationships the Jewish bourgeoisie maintained, regardless of the religious behavior and connection to the community of individuals and individual families. In this network of relationships, the bonds of kinship and women’s desire to establish their own territory both played their role, but this network  was also  woven together probably  with a shared lifestyle, education, and set of values and habits which delineated an identity not defined exclusively by class and gender.

 X.Y.Z., “L’Orfanotrofio Israelitico di Livorno,” V.I., LIX, fasc. 1, January 1911, p. 23.  Vedi Bollettino del Lyceum di Firenze, I, December 1912, pp. 104–110. 174  D. Prato, “Il Rifugio,” S.I., n. 5, January 29, 1910. 175  See Ufficio di Indicazioni e Assistenza, Relazione dell’anno 1908, cit., pp. 25 and 39 and Relazione dell’anno 1909, cit., p. 45. 172 173

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Levi Artom’s opinions thus appeared highly critical. In Florence and elsewhere, there were arguably more Jewish women who dedicated their energies to charitable or intellectual causes but remained outside of the community than Jewish women who remained within the community. However, the problem of women’s estrangement and indifference required other methods of interpretation and resolution. This seemed to be the general direction and attitude of La Settimana Israelitica, a direction that looked poised to eclipse the words of Levi Artom. Although the journal was reluctant to agree that women could dedicate their lives to interests and commitments outside of the Jewish community, it admitted the need to take into consideration other spheres of female activity besides the family, and to reassess community spaces in order to conform as much as possible to the new reality. This was the context for the journal’s positive reaction in May 1914 when the idea of creating a women’s association arose. La Settimana Israelitica reported that the initiative began with the presidents of Jewish women’s organizations in Germany and England. The journal made no mention of the president of the American National Council of Jewish Women, Sadi American (1862–1944), though she was most likely the person who formulated the ambitious project. Together with Berta Pappenheim (1859–1936), founder and president of the Jüdischer Frauenbund, they planned to bring together Jewish women from “the whole world” on the occasion of the International Women’s Congress in Rome,176 where the Jewish women’s organizations also 176  See N. Las, Femmes juives dans le siècle. Histoire du Conseil international des femmes juives de 1899 à nos jours, Paris, L’Harmattan, 1996, p. 30. The congress was held in the capitol from May 16 to 23, 1914. The main topics focusing on women related to housing, women’s work, care and welfare, child protection and the protection of immigrant women. See Atti del Congresso internazionale femminile, cit. On the congress of Rome, see also, M. Bartoli, Il movimento di emancipazione femminile in Italia e il consiglio nazionale delle donne italiane (1903–1923), cit. The German Jewish women’s movement, Jüdischer Frauenbund, founded in 1904 by Berta Pappenheim, not only carried out social assistance for the Jewish community, but also worked for the greater integration and recognition of women in Jewish society and the nation. Essential moments in the organization’s commitment to women were the fight against white trafficking and the right to vote in Gemeinde and in the wider national context. See M. Kaplan, The Jewish Feminist Movement in Germany. The Campaign of the Jüdischer Frauenbund, 1904–1938, cit. and I.  Lacoue Labarthe, “L’émergence d’une ‘conscience féministe’ juive. Europe, États Unis, Palestine (1880–1930),” Clio. Femmes, Genre, Histoire, 44, 2016, pp. 95–122. The Union of Jewish Women was formed in London in 1902 with the aim of promoting the social, moral, and spiritual well-being of Jewish women. Although it was intended to establish a connection between all Jewish women regardless of social or educational level, or their method of reli-

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participated, with the intention of creating “a women’s Union among the Jewish women of Italy.” Highlighting the aims of these movements, such as the increase of women’s participation in Jewish life, the improvement and “development in the Jewish sense” of their intellectual talents and the “use of their energies for Jewish purposes,” La Settimana expressed sympathy for this initiative because it recognized the cooperation of women in Jewish life as a fundamental need that united all aspects of Judaism, but the journal also acknowledged that the changing role of women was a problem that had to be handled “in totally new terms.” The journal attested that the Jewish cultural revival movement in Italy was characterized by an almost exclusively male participation and that “the champions of the new Judaism” had found in women—“mothers, sisters and wives”—to be “the proudest and most insidious adversaries.” While admitting that the decline of Judaism was largely linked to the estrangement of “women’s hearts” from the “ideal of Israel,” La Settimana was quick to blame the men of past generations who had paved the way for this exodus by neglecting the religious education of women and prohibiting them from actively participating in Jewish public life. While this view was as strongly in favor of women as it was polemical with men, it was immediately diminished by the journal’s statement that it did not want to promote “suffragism in Israel” or support “the hysterical agitations of the female ‘right to vote’ maniacs.” Such affirmations revealed the limits within which the new attitude of gious observance, the movement was mostly made up of upper-class women; the Union particularly directed its efforts for the better educated Jewish women seeking work. This aim was achieved: by the first year after its organization, through its educational and training programs, the Union had managed to improve the financial situation of its middle-class coreligionists and increase their social mobility. See L. Gordon Kuzmac, Woman’s Cause: The Jewish Woman’s Movement in England, cit., pp. 48–52 and, in particular, S.L. Tananbaum, “Democratizing British-Jewish Philanthropy: the Union of Jewish Women (1902–1930),” Nashim, n. 20, Fall 2010, pp.  57–79. Like their German coreligionists, English Jewish women demanded greater participation by women in religious and community life and national life. In November 1912, the Jewish League for Woman Suffrage was founded with the aim of obtaining women’s right to vote outside and inside the community. In the same year, the League began a campaign for women to vote for a place in the synagogue, an effort supported by the Jewish liberal movement. In 1914 women had partial voting rights in two synagogues and no restrictions in five others. They had thus managed to play a role in the management of the synagogue and a quasi-religious sanction of their presence in community councils. See L. Gordon Kuzmac, Woman’s Cause, cit., pp. 134–142. See, in addition, E. De Bruin, “Judaism and Womanhood,” Westminster Review, CLXXX, August 1913, n. 2, pp. 131–132.

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openness existed. However, this did not prevent the journal  from proclaiming aloud “that especially in an era…in which women’s activity has surged in those fields which perhaps it would have been better for women to shun, it was necessary that in Jewish life as well, the participation of women should intensify and ascend.”177 Thus, the misconception that the “Jewish duty” of a woman was inferior to that of a man had to cease. “Equal in rank, the Jewish duty of the woman must only be different in content. That alone remains to be determined. But who better to determine that content than the woman herself?” The creation of a women’s association was an important step in this direction because it would give women the opportunity to come together, to discuss, and to reflect on what it meant to be a Jewish woman. It was therefore to be hoped that Italian Jewish women would enthusiastically respond to the invitation of their foreign female coreligionists. The Women’s Congress in Rome could “perhaps acquire great importance in the still young history of the movement of cultural revival.”178 By uniting in an association of their own, Jewish women could reflect and decide on the methods and timing of their participation in the cultural revival movement, as well as suggest concrete proposals to overcome the problems that would arise from the new situation, not the least of which would be their potential comparisons and cooperation with male associations. The enthusiasm of the La Settimana Israelitica for the initiative by foreign Jewish women was quashed by the pessimistic and problematic observations of Giulia Cassuto Artom (1887–1936) wife of Elia Samuele Artom (who was the son of Giuseppina Levi Artom) on the inclination of her sisters in the faith and their possible participation in the Women’s Congress in Rome. In an article that the journal published on May 15, the day following the Congress about which Artom had made predictions, the author made no secret of her conviction that “the Jewish women of Italy” would slide into indifference in response to any attempt at unity, though she believed such unity could be of great benefit to the new revival movement. Her conviction relied on her opinions about the emancipated female Jewish sector, which was not so different from those of her mother-in-law, such as the marked propensity of the Jewish woman to take part in every area, in every kind of humanitarian and philanthropic work, to participate and compete “often widely” with men in public life and also to distance  La Settimana Israelitica, “Note e commenti,” S.I. V, n. 18, May 1, 1914.  Ivi.

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herself, sadly, from everything that should have spoken to her Jewish soul and motivate to labor with ardor and enthusiasm for the revival of her people. For this reason, Cassuto Artom insisted, even if an Italian Jewish woman had gone to Rome, she would have done so only as the member of some organization that was completely alien to the life and “ideals of Israel.”179 This being the case, according to Cassuto Artom, there had to be another option other than the one initiated by their European and American sisters in the faith in order to respond to the need to provide future companions for “the strong young men and champions of renewed Judaism,” capable of “helping them to pass on their sublime ideals to their children,” to lift their sisters out of their apathy regarding the problems of Judaism, and to encourage them to study and to determine which duties would lead them to follow the path with the same intensity as their brothers. The proposal of the European and American Jewish women came prematurely because true Jewish women, those who could become the future drive of Judaism, were far from knowing how to navigate public life with the same autonomy and security as their “emancipated” sisters, those 179  G. Cassuto Artom, “Alle donne,” S.I., V, n. 20, May 15, 1914. Cassuto Artom’s fear that there would be little Italian participation in the meeting was justified. As La Settimana Israelitica of May 29th reported, there were only about ten Italian women. Among the participants was Eugenia Ravà. After Berta Pappenheim and Sadie American—president of the National Council of Jewish Women—explained the aims of the conference and explained the aims of the federation, the establishment of an International League of Jewish Women was officially declared (see R. Kohut, “The World Organization of Jewish Women,” The Jewish Library, edited by L. Jung, New York, The Jewish Library Publishing, 1934, pp. 457–458). Ravà, speaking for her coreligionists, said that Italian Jewish women had not joined because they had not been able to first analyze the aims and scope of the new association thoroughly. The Jewish Banner of May 31, affirmed that Italian participants had called for a second meeting in order to provide the opportunity to invite more women, as well as the opportunity to explain in Italian the precise aims of the federation, since some of participants had not consented due to their poor understanding of the speeches made in English and German. Despite their lack of consent, when presidency was constituted, the participants decided to leave the third post of vice-president vacant so that it could be filled by a representative of the Italian Jewish women, after they decided to participate in the enterprise (the other two positions had been assigned to Sadie American and to an English woman, Miss Spielberg. The German Berta Pappenheim was the head of the organization). See U.C., “Dall’Italia. Il Congresso femminile ebraico,” S.I., V, n. 22, May 29, 1914 and “Notizie Diverse. In Italia,” V.I., LXII, fasc. X, May 31, 1914, p. 286. The International Association of Jewish Women, never actually became operational. See N. Las, Femmes juives dans le siècle. Histoire du Conseil international des femmes juives de 1899 à nos jours, cit., p. 30.

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Jewish women who were now lost to Judaism. True Jewish women were still young and shy, unprepared to respond to the call from their foreign sisters, but also unprepared to cooperate with men on equal footing in the movement for cultural revival: not that these women were inferior to men in terms of intellectual faculties, Giulia Cassuto Artom pointed out. These women were as capable of understanding the greatness of Jewish ideals as men were. Rather, it was essentially a problem of character, since the “truly Jewish woman” lacked audacity and “contempt for the judgment of the public,” qualities that were indispensable in order “to face the world boldly.” Their innate modesty prevented young Jewish women from freely expressing their feelings and thoughts. Of course, among Italian Jewish women there were some for whom taking part in public life was far from being a problem. But these were “emancipated” women, the journalist sarcastically pointed out; these were women for whom Jewish duties, “mainly made up of virtues that are ignored and flourish in the home,” had no attraction and even seemed trivial and restrictive to them. Bearing in mind the description of true Jewish women, Cassuto Artom allowed for the creation of a union for women, but it should be “a family and affectionate union”; its organizational criteria should be completely different from those preconceived by their foreign female coreligionists. According to Cassuto Artom’s vision, a union for “young Jewish women,” at least at first, must be structured and operated on the basis of a close correspondence between the members. Cassuto Artom considered an exchange of letters essential for women to become acquainted with each other, to establish a rapport, to forget their reserve, and to overcome that shyness which perhaps derived from “the Jewish woman having been considered inferior to the man.” Only then, strengthened by a “Jewishness” affirmed through “an intimate, friendly correspondence,” would Italian Jewish women be prepared to gather in one of the many Italian cities and clearly define their duties. Having overcome their reserve, women could then meet with men in “those charming youth conferences” where heretofore young women had made only occasional appearances, and contribute to a more exhaustive evaluation of the duties and labors of all Jews—men and women—in the face of the numerous problems confronting the Jewish community.180 Support for the creation of an autonomous women’s organization was not unanimous among women. For example, there were some, like Emma  G. Cassuto Artom, “Alle donne,” cit.

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Coen, who affirmed that the religious and cultural awakening of Judaism should not be different for men and women. Using the La Settimana Israelitica as her forum, Emma Coen not only expressed her skepticism about the feasibility of a female union, especially if it depended upon an exchange of letters between the members, but also declared the futility of any action that was separate from that of men. Coen was quick to point out that while it was possible to have women’s organizations in England and Germany that gave concrete results, that was due to the fact that the living conditions of women in those countries were very different, as was the consideration in which women were held. As for Italian Jewish women, what could be the possible benefit of any potential federation of women? This is the question that the journalist asked, who certainly showed no feminist sympathies. She also criticized the idea of correspondence between members as the primary organizational tool. How effective was an epistolary exchange to express ideals, aspirations, and hopes, an exchange that after a year would probably survive only thanks to the same enthusiastic organizers who were involved from the outset, perhaps 50 individuals at most, all of whom would still only know as much or as little as before? And even if the letter writing constituted a form of “training” that eventually led to forming a union, Coen added, assemblies with exclusively female participation, whether feminist or not, “never succeeded in doing anything substantial.” Even if “we were able to vote on an agenda in a disciplined manner, once we returned home, very few of us could align our actions with the very agenda that was voted on and approved.”181 In her article, the author claimed as a Jew the very rights that she felt were not due to her as a woman: women could not and should not have the same rights as men; however, the case of the Jewish woman was an exception because there was “equality (if not in form, in substance) of rights and duties.”182 Coen considered it an unfathomable waste of energy and potential to establish separate areas of action for men and women. All Jewish men and women indiscriminately found themselves involved in improving the future for a struggling Judaism, in fighting to uphold the same principles and achieve the same goals. In conformity with her ability for action, the woman was duty-bound to join the movement for the regeneration of the  E. Coen, “Sulla proposta di una federazione femminile,” S.I., V, n. 21, May 22, 1914.  Ivi.

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Jewish community freely, without having to be guided and protected in any way by a specific organization. Why create schisms where there were already common beliefs, aspirations, and ideals?183 Cassuto Artom, who was completely unconvinced by Coen’s views, responded: because “before the equality in the degree of women’s duties” there was “the disparity in the form, and the content, of those duties.” Since young people had already had the opportunity to discuss and define their duties, Cassuto Artom emphasized with clear reference to conferences for the youth,184 that it was necessary for women to do the same thing in a separate context before starting a partnership with their coreligionists. Who better than women could define “these feminine duties which do not consist only, for myself as well, in the simple repetition of so-called ‘religious practices’”?185 The topic’s importance and influence were evident in the fact that new contributions appeared to expand the debate. In June 1914, Adelaide Levi and Clara Ventura added their voices to those of Coen and Cassuto Artom. Adelaide Levi agreed on the value and need for women to help “the male movement,” but she nevertheless believed that this could be done in more ways than merely participating in Conferences and working in the Federazione giovanile ebraica Giovane Isreale (Jewish Youth Federation). This association was created in the aftermath of the Roman conference with the aim of combining the promotion of Zionist information with widespread action for the cultural and religious awakening of Judaism.186 183  Ivi. A few months after her article, Coen had the opportunity to put the ideas she was fighting for into practice. She assumed the position of commissioner of the Jewish National Fund in Italy. (See: Letter from the Hauptbureau des Jüdisches Nationalfonds [Den Haag] to Emma Coen, Verona, December 22, 1914. Central Zionists Archives, Jewish National Fund, [Keren Kayemet Leisrael], KKL1 59), a position that led her to work in a non-female environment. Keren Kayemet Leisrael was an organization founded in 1901 to raise funds for the purchase of land in Palestine. Even after the birth of the state of Israel, the Jewish National Fund has maintained its connection with the land: the money collected was donated to projects for the improvement and development of the land and reforestation. See Jewish National Fund, Enciclopaedia Judaica, Jerusalem, 1971, vol. 10, pp. 78–79. 184  1911, 1912, and 1914. The Conferences represented a chance for young people to affirm and define their Judaism, as well as providing opportunities to discuss the religious and cultural crisis affecting the community, which the movement wished to address with its own work. See M. Toscano, “Fermenti culturali ed esperienze organizzative della gioventù ebraica italiana (1911–1925),” cit., pp. 69–109. 185  G. Cassuto Artom, “Risposta a Emma Coen,” S.I., V, n. 23, June 5, 1914. 186  See M. Toscano, “Fermenti culturali ed esperienze organizzative della gioventù ebraica italiana,” cit., p. 90.

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However, Levi felt that above all, women should recreate a Jewish environment in their own homes, edifying others as “the wise woman of Sacred Scripture…on the solid foundations of morality and religion.”187 In this way, women would be much more useful “to the holy cause.” As for Clara Ventura, like Cassuto Artom, Ventura still considered that the time was not yet ripe for a female union as it had been envisaged by their female English and German coreligionists. She argued that in order to “form themselves as Jewish,” women should not isolate themselves in a separate organization from men, but participate and cooperate in the movement and progress “on the path to the future alongside the man, our companion in battle and labor.”188 Out of this vigorous exchange of opinions, opposing evaluations emerged regarding the role of women in the process of rejuvenating Italian Judaism which concluded with a brief intervention by Emma Coen. She reiterated that a separate solution was inopportune, and instead, women needed to join with Giovane Israele (Young Israel) and to cooperate with men in the “vital rebirth of Judaism.” Only once this goal was achieved, Coen proclaimed, could “a distinction be made between male and female duties, but for the moment, no…. Our duties are clearly specified: it is up to us to fulfill them.”189 After the exchange between alternating female voices, La Settimana Israelitica took up the debate, underscoring the validity and legitimacy of all the proposed solutions but ultimately opting with apparent regret for the more moderate one. For the moment, the journal considered it suitable to relinquish the prospect of direct cooperation between men and women because it considered the conditions and cultural support for such cooperation to be lacking. This lack was attributed to the particular cultural climate in Italy—which the Jews participated in—and which prevented “the straightforward camaraderie that is said to exist, especially among the Nordic peoples.”190 Until such a relationship of mutual trust and cordiality between men and women was achieved, which was indispensable for the success of “any effective publicity effort,” forming a women’s organization “aimed at spreading the same 187  A. Levi, “Sulla proposta di una Unione Femminile. Risposta alle signore Giulia Cassuto Artom ed Emma Coen,” S.I., V, n. 26, June 26, 1914. 188  C. Ventura, “In risposta alla lettera della signora Giulia Cassuto Artom,” S.I., V, n. 26, June 26, 1914. 189  E. Coen, “Sulla proposta di una Unione Femminile,” S.I., V, n. 28, July 10, 1914. 190  La Settimana Israelitica, “Note e commenti,” S.I., V, n. 29, July 17, 1914.

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enthusiasm and awareness to women less expert in Jewish matters” seemed the only viable solution.191 In the absence of establishing a direct collaboration with men, the journal added, there were still areas of immediate activity where the help of women could be invaluable: the collection of money for Palestine and the study of Hebrew. These two endeavors were considered best adapted to what were seen as innately feminine qualities such as love, kindness, patience, and the traditional mission of women to educate the young. As for seeking donations for Palestine, few people would dare to refuse a request if it came from a woman. And as for the study of Hebrew, by virtue of their role as “a child’s first teachers,” women had the opportunity to “indelibly impress the sounds and images of the mother tongue upon the child’s mind.”192 Besides merely reinforcing essentially traditional roles, there seemed to be an interest in taking more significant steps forward regarding women’s issues. At least in the Jewish community of Florence, which was the epicenter of the regeneration movement, there was an awareness of the need for more adequate solutions to solve the problems of Italian Judaism in their constantly changing social-historical context. A special commission was formed in November 1914 to revise the community statutes and electoral regulations while remaining firm on the rule to exclude women from the Community Council. In July, 1915, the commission approved the draft of a new statute that provided for “women’s eligibility to be members of those committees that were part of the individual sections of the Council,” which included Administration, Worship, Education, and Charity, and “to be set up for special purposes and functions.”193 In January 1916, the same commission approved an initiative to reform the electoral regulations. This reform not only affirmed the right to vote already granted to women, but also allowed them to submit  Ivi.  Ivi. 193  Relazione della commissione speciale al Consiglio di amministrazione dell’Università israelitica di Firenze sui progetti per il nuovo statuto organico e per il nuovo regolamento elettorale (29 gennaio 1916), ACEF, Gestione Comunitaria. Elezioni. E.23.4, p. 4. Article 11 of the draft Statuto organico dell’università israelitica di Firenze, approvato dalla commissione il giorno 11 luglio 1915, regarding the provisions and deliberations of the Council, entailed the “nomina di speciali commissari o commissioni o comitati permanenti o temporanei, di cui [potevano] far parte anche le donne e gli estranei al Consiglio,” (“nomination of special officials or special committees, both permanent and temporary, to which women and those who were not members of the Council could belong.”) ivi, p. 6. 191 192

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their ballots directly without requiring the intervention of a male mediator.194 Women also benefited from the expansions of rights granted to men. While the 1897 Regulations required that an individual hold a university degree in order to vote if not a financial contributor to the community,195 the reform drawn up by the commission stipulated that a high school diploma or a technical college diploma would be sufficient to vote. As for women being elected to the Council, the commission preferred to continue the policy of exclusion. It seems significant that at the time the Council considered the proposal, it had corrected the proposal in terms of women’s participation by specifying that women who met the conditions in Article 2 had the right to vote “even if they were married,” and it had also sanctioned their eligibility to be elected to the Council itself.196 Yet despite these promising resolutions, the issue of women’s participation in community affairs remained unresolved for many years to come. During this period, the outbreak of World War I absorbed the attention and energies of the Jewish community and redirected them to other urgent issues. One of these issues was the dual identity of being Jews and Italians, an issue that resurfaced powerfully in the face of the global military conflict.

194  Article 17 of the Progetto di regolamento elettorale dell’università israelitica di Firenze approvato dalla commissione il 29 gennaio 1916, required every voter, male or female, to either personally deposit his or her ballot or send it to president of the election headquarters in a special envelope provided by the community. ivi, p. 6. 195  See note 152. 196  Progetto di regolamento elettorale, cit., pp. 1 and 2.

CHAPTER 5

The War and Its Aftermath: Continuity and Change

The Great War The time has come. Our Italy has declared war.… Italy is at war, and we will give ourselves to Italy entirely. Every sacrifice will seem sweet, every privation will be a duty. We will give our all, we Jews, to our homeland: we will give our sons, our substance, our lives. Italy has the right to require everything from us, and we will give our all to her… Everyone—to work, to war!1

This solemn declaration in The Jewish Banner following Italy’s entry into World War I gives a comprehensive account of the patriotic fervor that flowed through the veins of the vast majority of Italian Jews, particularly those of the middle class, toward their homeland which was preparing to undertake a colossal ordeal, and all the emotional and material difficulties that ordeal entailed. This fervor was widely shared by their Italian brothers and sisters of other faiths but of the same social class. For Jewish Italians, however, entry into the worldwide conflict was charged with a particular emotional tension, spurred by the Jews’ willingness to sacrifice even their lives to repay the gift granted them by the monarchy, the gift of freedom that had made them full citizens and the protagonists of a process of integration into the wider national context that had been carried out with great success. 1

 “Guerra,” V.I., LXIII, fasc. X, May 31, 1915, p. 261.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 M. Miniati, Italian Jewish Women in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Italian and Italian American Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74053-5_5

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There was an anxiety to repay a debt but also a yearning for legitimatization. The Jews lived the war as the definitive validation of their right of citizenship, as a “sort of examination” of their level of nationalization2 and as a concluding chapter in their contribution to the “admirable epic” of the Risorgimento.3 Theirs was a patriotic enthusiasm full of strong Risorgimento overtones,4 and the Jewish community lived the war effort essentially as “crowning the movement of those ideas that had given civil dignity to the Israelites,” and as the completion of the enterprise “begun and well-performed by those giants of thought and action” who had worked and fought in the previous century.

2  See M. Toscano “Gli ebrei italiani e la prima guerra mondiale (1915–1918): tra crisi religiosa e fremiti patriottici,” Clio, XXVI, n. 1, 1990, pp. 79–97, now in Id., Ebraismo e antisemitismo in Italia. Dal 1848 alla guerra dei sei giorni, Milan, Franco Angeli, 2003, p. 114. The many prayers and sermons of rabbinate representatives reflected this fervent patriotism. See Id., “Religione, patriottismo, sionismo: il rabbinato militare nell’Italia della Grande Guerra (1915–1918),” Zakhor, VIII, 2005, pp. 77–133; I. Pavan, “Cingi o prode la spada al tuo fianco. I rabbini italiani di fronte alla Grande Guerra,” Rivista di Storia del Cristianesimo, III, n.2, July–December 2006, pp. 335–358; J. Levi, “The Great War as Reflected in Italian Rabbinical Sermons: Rav. S. Zvi Hirsch Margulies, Rav Ya’akov Bolaffio, and Rav Giuseppe Levi,” European Judaism, 48, n.1, Spring 2015, pp. 83–89. For an analysis of Italian Jewish behavior in wartime, see: M. Toscano, “Ebrei ed ebraismo nell’Italia della grande guerra. Note su un’inchiesta del Comitato delle Comunità Israelitiche Italiane del maggio 1917,” in Saggi sull’ebraismo italiano, edited by F. Del Canuto, Rome, Carucci, 1984, pp. 349–392, now in Id., Ebraismo e antisemitismo in Italia. Dal 1848 alla guerra dei sei giorni, cit., pp. 123–154; Id., “Gli ebrei italiani, la guerra e l’intervento. Un dibattito tra italianità, religione e sionismo,” in L’Italia neutrale 1914–1915, edited by G. Orsina and A. Ungari, Rome, Rodorigo, 2016, pp.  217–229; M. Perissinotto, Gli ebrei italiani di fronte alla Grande Guerra (1914–1919), PhD thesis, Università degli Studi di Trieste, 2014–2015. V. Wilcox,  “Between Faith and Nation: Italian Jewish in the Great War,” in The Jewish Experience of the First World War, edited by E. Madigan and G. Reuveni, London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2019, pp. 183–206. 3  Felice Tedeschi, “Prefazione” in Gli Israeliti italiani nella guerra 1915–1918, edited by Id., Turin, F. Servi, 1921. In the preface of his commemorative work on the Jewish contribution to wartime efforts, Tedeschi affirmed that, “with the war of redemption now having been fought and won, you can truly say Italy is complete, with her true borders at the Alps, that sure rampart, and not far from the embrace of the sea, these pages should form the final chapter of a book which still needs to be written and it is desirable to write which would tell the story of the cooperation of Jewish citizens to the admirable epic of the Risorgimento.” ivi, p. 6. 4  Considering the global conflicts of the Great War as an extension of the struggles of the Risorgimento was not exclusive to the Jewish community. See A Gibelli, La Grande Guerra degli Italiani, 1915–1918, Milan, BUR, 2015, pp. 42–45.

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This is Italy perhaps as Carlo Alberto had envisioned and desired it to be, despite the Austrians; it is certainly the Italy most firmly desired by the practical and honest character of Vittorio Emanuele; this is the Italy prepared by the diplomatic skill of Cavour; this is the Italy conquered by the valiant arm of Garibaldi and a hundred others; but above all, this is the Italy imagined and dreamed of, deeply contemplated and truly divined by the prophetic and essentially Jewish mind of Giuseppe Mazzini.5

So wrote Samuele Colombo (1868–1923) in La Riforma Italiana in 1916. Here the author, clearly expressing the feelings of most of the Jewish community, placed patriotic adulation alongside a reconfirmation of the Jewish people’s aspiration to become the foremost advocates for the values of peace and justice for all people. By incorporating the conflicts of World War I into the battles of the Risorgimento, “a significant syncretism between patriotic faith and Jewish religious ideals [came about], which, although transformed in the aspiration for peace and harmony among peoples, was nevertheless a Jewish justification of the Italian cause.”6 This was a response to Italian Judaism’s need to deal with a long-standing problem that the war now brought to the fore once again with great force, namely, the search for a balance between religious values and civil obligations.7 This problem was felt especially keenly by young people, rabbis, and intellectuals, those segments of Italian Judaism who, despite their small numbers, had been the instigators and soul of Judaism’s cultural and religious awakening at the beginning of the twentieth century. Their fearful anticipation of the expected upheaval created by the war for European Jews was far more intense than the patriotic enthusiasm so widely shared by their coreligionists. The war, with its duties and demand of loyalty to their respective governments, forced European Jews to face each other as enemies on the battlefield, to shatter that pact of brotherhood established by their shared religious belonging, their shared cultural roots, as well as by their shared historical memory and their inclusion in a collective humanity:

5  S. Colombo, “La guerra d’Italia e l’ebraismo,” La Riforma Italiana,  V, n. 11, November 15, 1916, p. 10. 6  M. Toscano, “Gli ebrei italiani e la prima guerra mondiale,” cit., p. 116. 7  See Ibidem and M. Perissinotto, “Il difficile equilibrio tra identità ebraica e patriottismo durante la Grande Guerra,” in The New Italy and the Jews. From Massimo D’Azeglio to Primo Levi, edited by J. Druker and L. S. Scott, Annali di italianistica, 36, 2018, pp. 283–303.

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Two hundred thousand! They are the children of the same people, one in blood, one in history, many share the same language and ideals: now a ghastly fate would have us on the battlefield pitted against each other, weapons in hand, as enemies.… Let us always remember that if we are to fight other people’s wars, we can never celebrate a triumph of our own, because every victory inevitably marks for us our own misfortune on the other side.8

Despite the cry of alarm and their dramatic emphasis on the tragic consequences of the conflict, this minor group within Italian Judaism still firmly supported the war effort. This is the first time, at least on such a grand scale,…that in our new legal and political position, we have had to take an active, immediate and personal part in the conflict between all the Nations where we are citizens. However tragic our fate is, we could not shirk the consequences and remain completely loyal, not after having accepted citizenship. And in this terrible test, the civic loyalty of the Jews in all the States of Europe has been above any possible criticism.9

In their painful consent to support the war, the Jews’ commitment as Italian citizens was accompanied by their hope that Italy would work on behalf of those Jews from other countries who were living under oppression. The creation in 1916 of Pro-Israel, a non-Jewish Association for the defense of Jewish rights, would constitute one of the most significant 8  A. Pacifici and Q. Sinigaglia, “Nell’ora della nostra tragedia duecentomila ebrei in campo gli uni contro gli altri,” La Settimana israelitica, V, n. 32, August 7, 1914. Quinto Sinigaglia, member of the Florence City Council, during a council meeting on May 30 observed, “that at the 23 May meeting, he believed that a true and just resolution was not reached regarding the religion functions to be performed in the Temple; otherwise he would have announced his abstention from the vote, not because his convictions as an Italian citizen prevented him from sharing the feelings that animated his colleagues of the Council, but because he is of the opinion that the Jewish University [the community], as an institution that represented all of Judaism, could not forget the suffering of their brothers who find themselves on the opposite battlefield, and therefore the University must express an appropriate reserve.” Nino Olivetti, another member of the council, had another opinion, arguing that Italian “Jews” could not and should not refrain from sharing their general enthusiasm and hope for a victory of the Italian Army, “not only as individuals but also as a community, with the Jewish University being composed of Italians and good Italians.” Olivetti’s speech was supported by the President and other council members. “Personally,” Quinto Sinigaglia associated himself “with the votes for an Italian victory.” See Università Israelitica di Firenze. Adunanza del 30 May 1915. ACEF. Gestione Comunità. Verbali Consiglio. E.1.18. 9  “L’ora della prova,” La Settimana Israelitica, VI, n. 21, May 28, 1915.

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fulfillments of this expectation.10 Its organization was preceded by the creation of the Committee for the Jewish Cause and the Florentine Committee for Oppressed Jews, founded respectively in January and June of 1915. These associations came about from initiatives by Jewish individuals, but within each organization, the non-Jewish presence was significant.11 Jews were also motivated to join the war movement by the awareness of living in a great moment of history, and therefore felt they had a specific mission to carry out, which encouraged the consent of the Jewish population and eased its pain over a war between “children of the same people.” Across the centuries, having passed through countless events which left “indelible marks in the flesh and now in all the armies launched…toward mutual destruction,” the Jews were to be and were more than others, capable of resuming priestly ministrations among the peoples, in work capable of exalting the greatness of the hour that is coming.…We must scourge all mediocrity…all animosity and hatred. We must have the courage to proclaim that if in the life of States, war can sometimes be a necessity, hatred is never necessary.… We must remind those who have

10  See, for example, the composition of the Florentine Committee in La ignorata tragedia di un popolo, Florence, Tipografia Fortunato Sanesi, 1915, p. 2. The pamphlet was published by the committee with the intent of informing the public of the unfair treatment that the Jews were subject to in Germany, Austria, and, in particular, Romania and Russia. 11  In August of 1916 La Giovine Europa, an anti-war journal that was very sensitive to the issue of Jewish oppression, printed a document in which the Florentine Committee delineated the purposes of the new movement to relieve oppressed Jews. “The non-Israelite Association, which is pro-Jewish, has as its main purpose that of elaborating and presenting to the future Congress of Peace the proposition for Jewish civil equality in the countries where it is not yet recognized, such as Russia, Poland, and Romania. As for the countries in which social equality is recognized but the equality of the members of the Jewish race is still held in inferior conditions, the Association proposes an information campaign so that this condition of inequality comes to an end.” As for the creation of a Palestinian state, the association planned to propose to the Congress of Peace the elimination of the obstacles which opposed the eventual realization of the project and that recognized the Jews’ “total liberty to emigrate to Palestine,… liberty to conquer and maintain, and equality of those indigenous to Palestine itself, whatever form of government it comes to be in one form or another it is subjected to.” “Pro causa ebraica,” Giovine Europa, IV, n. 8, August 9, 1916, pp. 150–151. For the deployment of oppressed Jews see M. Toscano, “Gli ebrei italiani e la prima guerra mondiale,” cit. and, especially, Id., “Il movimento ‘Pro causa ebraica’ tra filantropia e politica (1915–1918). Note e problemi di ricerca,” in Gli ebrei italiani nella Grande Guerra (1915–1918), Atti del convegno. Museo Ebraico, Bologna, November 11, 2015, Florence, Giuntina, 2017, pp. 57–72.

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forgotten that every soldier is a son, that every flag represents an ideal, that every country is sacred.12

Despite the diversity of their zeal and their positions, the Italian Jews were energized by the same ideals, as well as by the hope and desire that out of the torment of war, a new world would arise in which the values of peace and Jewish love would triumph, a world where all nationalities, including the Jews, would obtain full legitimacy. In May 1915 they took an oath that they maintained for the entire duration of the war, serving in the army13 and using their energy and resources to support the numerous, widespread welfare committees that arose to aid those who would pay the highest material and human costs of the war.14

The Crisis of the Jewish Community During the War Years The outbreak of World War I caught Italian Judaism still dealing with the crisis of identity and institutions that had accompanied them along the path to integration.15 From the early years of the twentieth century, the credit and responsibility went to the youth movements for debating the issues that surrounded the profound religious, cultural, and ideological needs that troubled the life of the Jewish community. These youth movements also worked to reawaken Judaism from the state of torpor into which it seemed to have fallen.16 Their efforts were essentially limited to an elite group and had therefore not succeeded in creating an awareness of  “L’ora della prova,” cit.  For a detailed investigation of the Jewish presence on the frontline, see P. Briganti, Il contributo militare degli ebrei italiani alla Grande Guerra 1915–1918, Turin, Zamorani, 2009. 14  During the war years The Jewish Banner accurately and regularly reported on the significant presence of Jews in the lists of those assisting active-duty soldiers and their families, serving in the Red Cross, and taking part in civil preparation committees, as well as participating in the many activities performed in various Italian cities by these groups. For examples see “Gli israeliti italiani e la guerra,” V.I., LXIII, fasc. XI, June 15, 1915, pp. 310–322; “La guerra. Corrispondenza da Firenze,” V.I., LXIV, fasc. II, January 31, 1916, p. 35. 15  This crisis was due in part to organization problems and the difficulties experienced by the military rabbinate. See M. Toscano, “Religione, patriottismo, sionismo: Il rabbinato militare della grande guerra (1915–1918),” cit. 16  See M. Toscano, “Fermenti culturali ed esperienze organizzative della gioventù ebraica italiana. (1911–1925),” Storia Contemporanea, XIII, n. 6, December 1982, pp. 915–961 now in  Id., Ebraismo e antisemitismo in Italia. Dal 1848alla guerra dei sei giorni, cit., pp. 69–89. 12 13

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the crisis or a commitment to resolve it among the vast majority of Italian Jews; however, their efforts nevertheless proved to be of great importance, as evidenced by the fact that, at the eve of Italy’s entry into the war, The Jewish Banner, through the voices of several illustrious official figures in Italian Judaism, seemed to share the same views. Emphasizing the tremendous religious and cultural crisis that threatened the already precarious equilibrium of the Jewish community, the journal insisted on the need for Italian Jews to take a decisive stand toward themselves and the international events involving their brethren in the faith, which involved rediscussing the duties to be fulfilled.17 “We must be Jews, is the motto which summarizes all the action that must be taken for the revival of our Jewish spirit,” wrote Anselmo Colombo in the pages of The Jewish Banner in April 1915, “but for such action to be effective,” Colombo continued, “it is necessary to have a clear concept of the political-religious principle of Judaism and the consequent duties that derive from it in relation to our high Palestinian ideals: first, toward our brothers who still suffer prohibitions and persecutions; and second, toward ourselves.18 Colombo indicated that the main objective of efforts by Italian Jews should be complete rights and complete equality for their coreligionists in Europe, in this case Romanians, Poles, and Galicians, who suffered unfair treatment. Jews in Italy must rise up against “ferocious intolerance, but not confuse the right to complete equality with the absolute and universal principle not only of the distinction of Jews from other religions and races existing in the States in which they live, but of the political recognition of that distinction,” because such confusion would lead European Jews to be considered foreigners and their bond of religion and “race” to be transformed into a political party.19 Nevertheless, the hope remained, as it should, for a future of love and peace in which Jerusalem would be recognized by all nations as a symbol of truth and justice. And to achieve this Messianic era, “the independence of Israel” was the condicio sine qua non. The aspirations of the Italian Jews, Colombo continued, should therefore be limited to the legal recognition of the national independence of their coreligionists in Palestine; for European Jews, this was the right to be able to observe their own religion in the country in which they lived, “without  See M. Toscano, “Ebrei ed ebraismo nell’Italia della Grande guerra,” cit., p. 128.  A. Colombo, “Facciamo gli ebrei,” V.I, LXIII,  fasc. VII, aprile 15, 1915, pp. 173–175. 19  ivi p. 174. 17 18

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any other restriction than that which may derive from the duties of civil coexistence.” For the Jews of Palestine, who already possessed the land and all the requirements to be considered a people, there was support from the Jewish community to grant them a form of independence such as guaranteeing them establishment of a central point of refuge for all those who wanted an entirely Jewish life.20 A change of attitude toward the general principles of Zionism trickled out of the notes from Colombo’s presentation that revealed a Jewish consciousness still capable of redefining itself while simultaneously redefining the “meaning of being Jews in the Italian experience.” This reinterpretation of identity in turn bore witness of a Judaism in which it was still possible to detect some indication of vitality.21 Italy’s entry into the war greatly limited the spaces for a discussion on self-consciousness and cultural renewal instead gave the patriotic majority a tremendous advantage over the minority who desired a Jewish lifestyle that was more totalizing. The “nationalization of the Jews,” their patriotic fervor, corresponded to a general state of detachment from Jewish religion and culture. This was exacerbated by the limitations of religious and cultural life within Jewish communities and institutions linked to them: first, schools were unable to train the rising generation that Judaism needed and especially to provide them with cultural tools adapted to the new times and new needs.22 At first, the war spurred Jews to return to religion, but the phenomenon was short-lived and was connected more to the struggles of the moment rather  Ibidem.  M. Toscano, “Ebrei ed ebraismo nell’Italia della Grande guerra,” cit., p. 128. 22  The critical state of teaching in Jewish schools had already been clearly highlighted by Elia Samuele Artom (1887–1965) at the second Jewish youth convention in Turin in 1912. (See E.S. Artom (1887–1965) La scuola ebraica in Italia, Florence, Tipografia  Giuntina, 1913). The results of the investigation in May of 1917 sponsored by the Committee of Jewish Communities confirmed the evidence that emerged from the report by Artom. The Jewish scholastic organization was deficient in several regards. Religious and civil teaching was characterized by its backwardness. Except for a few exceptions, Jewish schools were not able to guarantee a full curriculum of elementary instruction. Furthermore, due to lack of means, it was not rare for multiple classes to merge into one, forcing the not-always-qualified teacher to take care of students from different grades all at the same time. That being the case, those who attended Jewish schools belonged to financially unstable families who received money and clothing in exchange for the low quality of the instruction provided to their children. Families of the lower-middle and middle classes who were more financially secure, preferred to send their children to schools that could offer a higher quality of instruction. See M. Toscano, “Ebrei ed ebraismo nell’Italia della grande guerra,” cit., pp. 144–150. 20 21

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than a need to take on a religious component of life with all its historical and cultural significance. As E.D. Colonna wrote in the pages of The Jewish Banner in the summer of 1916, with the exception of the most disenfranchised segment of the population, absenteeism and indifference defined the behavior of the majority of Italian Jews with regard to religion and, more generally, to all issues related to the life and future of the community. Colonna denounced “the miserable spectacle…of skepticism and more or less ostentatious disregard,” which was an indication of how much “the work of disintegration and dissolution” was extending across all Jewish communities, obstructing any initiative that tended “to reinvigorate the spirit of a healthy and sincere, profound Judaism.”23 Colonna was especially concerned about the young people who, left alone to face the dangers of assimilation and armed only with a scanty education about the “aspirations of the people of Israel,” were destined to become “false Jews,” hypocrites or indifferent toward religion. Let the school, then, find a solution. The younger generation needed a real Jewish school where religious instruction was not isolated from the other disciplines, as was so often the case, because “religion taught in this way, separate from any other instruction, loses three quarters of its effectiveness.” Schools needed to provide an all-inclusive education that would awaken in young people “the sacred pride of calling themselves Jews.”24 Of course, Colonna affirmed, the process of enervation that plagued Judaism was due to more than the lack of education alone, though he saw education as the starting point for remedying the decline. The problem had more to do with the more general difficulty of a social life in need of rebuilding, as Anselmo Colombo wrote in The Jewish Banner in September, 1916. As religious feeling had dwindled, and as Jewish education had been usurped by “purely civil education and the spirit of religious charity [surrendered to]…an ostentatious affirmation of secularism,” Jewish social existence had been undermined at its foundations. “The spirit of assimilation” pervaded the souls of all Jews, consequently transforming them “into Italians without faith and without religion.”25 The ghettos had opened and Jewish life had collapsed, Colombo noted with 23  E.D.  Colonna, “Rimedi supremi,” V.I., LXIV, fasc.  XIV–XV, July 31–August 15, 1916, p. 386. 24  Ibidem. 25  A.  Colombo, “Facciamo gli ebrei,” V.I., LXIV, fasc.  XVII–XVIII, September 15–30, 1916, pp. 471–473.

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pain. This observation was far from regretful, since it was certainly not emancipation that Colombo questioned but rather his coreligionists’ use of it, especially those leading the communities. In his opinion, the leadership had been incapable of “making patriotic sentiment inseparable from that of religion. If there is a time when we Italian Jews must increase our faith and intensify our gratitude, it is precisely now, when we have passed from a state of degrading servitude to one of purest liberty.”26 After reiterating that the ghettos were the last thing to lament, Colombo called for reconstruction of Jewish social life by organizing gatherings and activities that allowed young people to find the entertainment that they had begun to look for elsewhere. Here Colombo extended the discussion to the problematic issue of mixed marriages, the “terrible scourge,” as the phenomenon of exogamic unions had once been defined.27 Such unions could have been avoided if Jewish families had continued to interact socially, attended Jewish gatherings, and raised their children in the context of belonging to the community. This was the goal that Jewish communities had to establish for themselves if they wished to put an end to the “intrusive scourge of assimilation.”28 On the issue of the “terrible scourge” of mixed marriages, Angelo Sereni (1862–1936), president of the Committee of the Italian Israelite Communities (Comitato delle Comunità israelitiche Italiane), had already commented. In July 1914, addressing a letter to the various presidents of the Communities, Sereni pointed out the seriousness of the problem and the urgency to resolve it, and asked for their cooperation in the search for the most effective remedy. Sereni believed that mixed marriage, particularly in the smaller Jewish communities, was due to the low number of men interested in marriage and to the “lack of that fellowship among coreligionists in the Communities that aims to acquaint families and young people so they know and appreciate one another.” To this end, he strongly recommended taking steps to recreate conditions that would draw families in the community together.29  Ivi. p. 471.  A. Colombo, “I matrimoni misti,” V.I., LXII, fasc. 21, November 15, 1914, p. 585. On the issue of mixed marriages in the Jewish press and the scale of the phenomenon specifically in the context of Turin, see C. Foà, Gli ebrei e i matrimoni misti. L’esogamia nella comunità torinese (1866–1898), Turin, Zamorani, 2001. 28  A. Colombo, “Facciamo gli ebrei,” cit., p. 472. 29  Letter from president Angelo Sereni to “the presidents of Università Israelitiche,” Rome, July 1914, Archivio dell’Unione delle Comunità Ebraiche Italiane (from now on AUCEI). Fondo attività del consorzio delle comunità israelitiche fino al 1923, busta 51/57, fascicolo 51. 26 27

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Among the responses Sereni received was one from the president of the community of Verona, who believed that mixed marriages were essentially the result of the weakening “of feelings among our coreligionists, more than [a question] of religion, it was [a question] of race.” Proof of this was the significant increase of mixed marriages in the period following emancipation, which led him to say that this serious problem was a consequence of the “mistaken and unfortunate tendency toward assimilation” that had taken over. The president of the Verona community further affirmed that even considering the range of causes and dynamics, mixed marriages were frequent across all social classes. Among the wealthy, upper-middle, and bourgeois classes, it was nearly always the man who crossed the boundary of endogamy and married a Catholic woman when marriage offered the possibility of elevating her socially, at times even allowing her to pass from “an inferior social status to…an enviable position.” When it was Jewish women who “sacrificed the ideal patrimony of their faith,” the reason was often the opportunity to acquire a noble title. All this was the consequence of the young people’s lack of a meaningful Jewish education; they forgot the “place of superiority” which the Jewish people had occupied in the context of history. Furthermore, they seemed to consider their people “in a state of abjection,” so that without giving it a second thought, they embraced the religion followed by the majority as the indispensable means for “getting ahead in cultured society.”30 As far as the lower classes were concerned, continued the president of the Veronese community, it was predominantly girls who contracted mixed marriages and their decision was most often dictated by convenience. Having reached a certain age, being deficient in means, and fearing a life of solitude or a difficult family situation, they accepted marriage from the first man who came along without thinking about the disastrous consequences. What, then, could be the solution? For the poorer classes, he said, the communities should make The limited responses received by Angelo Sereni do not allow for either the quantification of the phenomenon or to recreate the complete picture of the situation; some documents do, however, provide detailed and significant information on the principal causes of the mixed union. 30  Lettera del Presidente della comunione israelitica di Verona al Presidente delle comunità israelitiche italiane, Verona, 24 dicembre 1914. AUCEI, busta 51/57, fascicolo 51. 11 Letter from the President of the Jewish community of Verona to the President of the Italian Jewish communities, Verona, December 24, 1914. AUIJC, envelope 51/57, issue 51. On the significance and usage of the term “race” in the Jewish context, see G.L. Mosse, Toward the Final Solution.  A History of European Racism, New  York, Howard Fertig, 1978, pp. 113–127.

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use of the persuasive power they still had, even if in recent times, he pointed out polemically, the leaders had neglected even the simplest remedies to prevent this calamity from spreading. In some communities they supported mixed marriages by contributing to dowries, when distributing charitable financial assistance, they cited the principle of equality as motivation for making no distinction between those who had a “normal Jewish lineage” and those who did not. Some religious councils and directorships, for example, hired employees whose wives were Catholic and whose children were baptized. As a first step, the president of the Veronese community proposed that, when offering jobs or distributing charitable benefits, the Councils of the Communities (Consigli delle Comunità) and the directors of the charities should take into greater account if recipients had entered into mixed marriages, “if not absolutely excluding them from perceiving advantages, at least delaying and distancing them” from families whose members were all of Jewish extraction. For the aristocratic and wealthy classes, the work to be done was mainly in raising awareness and preaching the religious and ethnic damage that mixed marriages caused. For the middle class, the discourse was embarrassing. Indeed, the president of the Community of Verona did not hesitate to affirm that the unjust reputation of the Jews being “money hungry” could justifiably be bestowed on those young people of modest means who nevertheless aspired to find partners with a rich dowry and who managed “marriage negotiations using the same systems and methods that a merchant transacts his business.” The message for this class, then, should focus essentially on the “serious disdain” that such practices brought to the whole “race,” a message that should be accompanied by concrete actions to facilitate the marriage of those girls with little money. However, there was also work to be done that had nothing to do with social class, namely, an effort directed at every father to convince him to do his duty to plant firmly in the heads of his children how much pain they would cause to their parents if they went outside the boundary of an endogamic marriage.31 Rabbi Samuele Colombo shared the view that the family should play an essential role in efforts to counter the rate of mixed marriages. Assigned by the president of the community of Milan to report to Angelo Sereni on this serious problem, Colombo appealed to all “worthy and deserving” Jews to make “every home an ideal temple and school of Judaism” and for “every parent to be a teacher and priest of the truths and greatness of  See ivi.

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Judaism.” These efforts must extend beyond the walls of the home, involving those who had become indifferent and those who were lost to Judaism to all participate in their enthusiasm. Colombo suggested another effective way to deal with the affective relationship between parents and children. There were many parents who nurtured their own ancestral faith and who lamented that their children had not followed them on this path. Colombo also observed that when children were confronted with the loss of their father or mother, they were willing to do anything to fulfill their wishes. Parents should therefore take advantage of this state of mind in their children and remember to command them, “either verbally in life or in writing to read later,” to remain Jewish and to safeguard themselves and their children from the most terrible of all evils: a mixed marriage. “May those parents who feel the pride of being Jews close their noble life with these words of exaltation to Judaism.”32 Another significant response to Angelo Sereni was that of Giuseppe Musatti (1841–1928), president of the community of Venice. Like the president of the community in Verona, Musatti also considered mixed marriage an “evil that came from another good…: liberty, the equality of rights extended to the Jews.” He argued that the Jews had proven unable “to endure good fortune as heroically as they had endured misfortune for centuries,” whereas now they used their freedom to reject every means within their power that would impede them from “assimilating.”33 What remedy could there be? The effective solution, Musatti affirmed, was in a new direction and a new ideal with which to energize Judaism, namely to cultivate Zionism: Zionism has arisen to restore dignity to…conscience, love for one’s brethren, the desire to respect the ancient answers, the ancient traditions… Let us cultivate Zionism: it will give us the courage to declare ourselves Jews, it will keep us united, even if we are dispersed, in the hope of one day finding ourselves in a land of our own, proud of a glorious past, desirous of a more glorious future.34 32  Lettera di Samuele Colombo ad Angelo Sereni, Presidente della Università israelitica di Roma, (no date) AUCEI, busta 51/57, fascicolo 51. Letter from Samuele Colombo to Angelo Sereni, President of the Università israelitica di Roma, AUIJC, envelope 51/57, article 51. 33  Lettera di Giuseppe Musatti alla Presidenza del Comitato delle Università Israelitiche Italiane, Venezia, 9 dicembre, 1914. AUCEI, busta 51/57, fascicolo 51. Letter from Giuseppe Musatti to the Presidency of the Italian Jewish Universities Committee, Venice, December 9, 1914. AUIJC, envelope 51/57, article 51. 34  ivi.

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Children and adolescents should be especially nurtured, with parents taking care that children’s lives would develop in a “purely Jewish” context, that their socialization and schooling should take place in the schools of the Community, where they would learn not only the Hebrew language and history but also the importance and way of leading a Jewish life. The road ahead was long, Musatti recognized, all the more so considering that the sympathies and interest in Zionism were the mindset of the minority. Without a doubt the phenomenon of mixed marriages was an indication of the high level of integration achieved by Italian Jews and their progressive abandonment of religious observance. This abandonment, however, was not only a consequence of integration but also due to the lack of cultural reference points, which created a sense of “emptiness” from the general inability of Jewish institutions to represent the historical and cultural values of the Jewish tradition in a form that was intellectually appropriate to the climate and mentality of the early twentieth century.35 These institutions also failed to consider expressly the beliefs of and provide satisfactory answers for those Jews whose link with Judaism went beyond religion. To that “category of Jews,… the most numerous category, particularly in countries with the most liberal governments,” frequently and ardently belonged those who “most of all” defended not only Judaism but also the Torah, for they considered it “not as dogma, but as a human book, as a monument of law, as a work of unsurpassed poetry,” as a reader who presented himself as “religious” wrote in the The Jewish Banner of November 1916. He referred to that group of Jews who believed that a cultural and historical sense of Judaism was necessary alongside a religious understanding. This reader concluded his passionate speech with a warm invitation to “reveal what was always the Jewish spirit beyond the dross of a blind faith in dogma and show what is the intellectual and spiritual heritage of the Jewish people,” the only valid means to “give an understanding of the race, an understanding that goes beyond faith.”36 According to the results that emerged from the Committee’s investigation in May 1917 (an investigation promoted to analyze the problem of the decline in religious devotion), the majority of Italian Jews, continued to cultivate some connection to their religious tradition despite their tepid feelings toward religion. The phenomenon of Jews completely  See M. Toscano, “Ebrei ed ebraismo nell’Italia della grande guerra,” cit., p. 130.  Letter from Donato Bachi, V.I., LXIV, fasc.  XXI–XXII, November 15–30, 1916, pp. 566–569 cit. in ivi, pp. 130–131. 35 36

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abandoning their religion occurred to a lesser degree than had been highlighted by the Jewish press and in particular by the alarmed articles that had appeared in The Jewish Banner prior to the Committee’s investigation. For the most part, Jews lived and managed their religion essentially as a domestic issue, disconnected from its historical and cultural contents and meanings. This attitude relegated religion to a dimension that was subordinate to “secular and rationalist” culture. While such behavior minimized or ignored the richness and wholeness of the Jewish tradition, it still seemed sufficient for keeping the Jews from crossing the threshold into assimilation. Essentially, a disconnect between religious and cultural identity had occurred among the vast majority of Jews. Religious identity survived mainly through respect for certain practices such as circumcision, which took on the character of a “sentimental connection” with a historical tradition rather than a sign of cultural and national belonging. As a result of such changes in recognition of tradition, cultural identity was now inadequately supported. In reaction to deficiencies in traditional culture, Jews sought for certainties and a point of reference outside of their own historical and religious tradition. Having lost or forgotten the element of a “Jewish nation,” the need for faith and belonging was appeased by adapting to the cultural models of the surrounding society. Thus Italian Jews began adhering to the values and ideals of the nation and those social movements that “allowed the reincarnation of the archaic myths of the community, and fulfilled the demands of faith and certainty.”37 The most dramatic consequence of the emerging integration of the Jews into Italian society during the war years was their “deculturation,” which can be understood as a loss of sensibilities and historical memory, and an inability to nationalize themselves while still preserving “the sense of belonging to a collective historical identity.”38 Despite the numerous obstacles and difficulties that Italian Judaism had to face during the war, those same obstacles did not deter those forces that had given rise to the movement of Jewish cultural rebirth at the beginning of the century, from re-emerging and continuing their program of returning Judaism to its ethical and cultural greatness.39 Undoubtedly, the outbreak of the war had abruptly interrupted the process of Jewish cultural  M. Toscano, “Ebrei ed ebraismo nell’Italia della grande guerra,” cit., pp. 143–144.  ivi p. 132. 39  See M. Toscano, “Fermenti culturali ed esperienze organizzative della gioventù ebraica italiana. (1911–1925),” cit., pp. 69–109. 37 38

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renewal and the activities associated with it, but this interruption did not seem to weaken the spirit or the ideals of advocates for renewal. In January 1916 the journal Il Corriere Israeltico—“tireless guardian of Israel’s traditions”—merged with La Settimana Israeltica—“proud champion of Israel’s aspirations”—the weekly Israel was born.40 Printed weekly in Florence, Israel was directed by Dante Lattes (1876–1965) and Alfonso Pacifici (1889–1981). Both men were already active in the movement of cultural renewal and were authoritative voices for that minority who was aware of what was happening to Jewish culture in Europe and in “the homeland of Israel.” The foundation of the new periodical was an event of great importance for Italian Jews, a vital and urgent moment of confrontation with their conscience and identity that led to a desire to reclaim their origins and traditions. Though he disapproved of Zionism and the concept of Jewish nationalism supported by Israel, Felice Momigliano, a leading figure in the Italian Jewish intelligentsia,41 spoke of the Florentine weekly as a “courageous Jewish periodical,” the product of those “young idealists” who had been able to “save themselves from the narrow mentality and cowardice evident in too many ‘restyled’ Jews; [these young people] breathe in and fill their lungs with the prophetic air that [compelled] the apostolate of restoring the Jews of Italy to a dignified understanding of their true nature.”42 One of the main topics in the publication’s program was Zionism, which, although understood and lived differently by Lattes and Pacifici, represented for both men the unrivaled instrument for reconstructing the religious, cultural, and national unity of Judaism.43 “The name of Israel is  See A. Milano, “Un secolo di stampa periodica ebraica in Italia,” cit., p. 121.  See A. Cavaglion’s study, Felice Momigliano. Una biografia, (1866–1924), Bologna, Il Mulino, 1988. 42  F. Momigliano, “Il giudaismo di ieri e di domani,” Bilychnis, V, fasc. VII, July 1916, p. 16. 43  Both Lattes and Pacifici saw returning to the Terra dei Padri (Land of our Fathers) as a solution to the Jewish issue. For Lattes mainly, Zionism was a path to cultural and political rediscovery. For Pacifici, on the other hand, Zionism was related to his integral conception of Judaism, intended as a culminating order that embraced every aspect of individual life. On this topic see D. Bidussa, “Il sionismo in Italia nel primo quarto del Novecento. Una ‘rivolta’ culturale?,” Bailamme, n. 5–6, December 1989, pp. 168–244; G. Luzzatto Voghera, “Dante Lattes: ebraismo, nazione e modernità prima della grande guerra,” Bailamme, n. 8, December 1990, pp.  113–138; M. Molinari, Ebrei in Italia un problema di identità. (1870–1938) Florence, Giuntina,  1991, spec. pp.  45–56; D. Bidussa, A.  Luzzatto, G. Luzzatto Voghera, Oltre il ghetto. Momenti e figure della cultura ebraica in Italia tra l’Unità e il fascismo, Brescia, Morcelliana, 1992; S. Della Seta and D. Carpi, “Il movimento 40 41

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a name that signifies unity, universality, a union that cannot be reduced to some generic definition that considers Judaism a religion or a race or something else; [it is] an entity that partakes in all these concepts, and surpasses them.”44 This totalizing conception of Judaism exemplified the ideological environment in which the periodical operated and labored to defend and affirm Jewish heritage, to give Jews the widest and most exhaustive vision possible of universal Jewish life in all its historical and cultural vitality, to acquaint them with the reality of the various Jewish communities across Europe and the world, to show them “what is among the most ancient and seminal  ideals of Judaism: its resurgence around Zion.”45 The new publication offered readers an “entirely Jewish” vision, where the reality of individual Jews and their communities played a marginal role with respect to the greater spiritual and cultural issues that excited “the Italian segment of Israel,” issues that the paper intended to address.46 The Florentine weekly’s special attention to the current state of crisis of Italian Judaism and their efforts to overcome that crisis extended to include issues surrounding women. Compared to other publications that had preceded it, Israel did not seem to assign this problem a high priority. However, its intent to unify all Jews—men and women—in a project of renewal and religious, cultural, and national redefinition necessarily implied that the periodical would have to confront women’s reality, which was no  simple task, especially during the war years. In October 1916 in the pages of The Jewish Banner, Anselmo Colombo denounced the “secular ostentation” that characterized the current behavior of many women and that loomed as a grave threat to the future of the family and the Jewish community as a whole. In his article, Colombo urged his female coreligionists to consider the responsibility they would have to answer for if they had not done everything possible to avoid the disaster that would result from the sionistico,” in Ebrei in Italia, Annali, 11, II, Dall’emancipazione ad oggi, Turin, Einaudi, 1997, pp. 1323–1329; S. Airoldi, “Practices of Cultural Nationalism. Alfonso Pacifici and the Jewish Renaissance in Italy (1910–1916),” Quest. Issues in Contemporary Jewish History. Journal of Fondazione CDEC, issue 8, November 2015. (http://www.quest-cdecjournal. it/about.php?issue=8; Id., “Liberalism, Zionism, and Fascism: Alfonso Pacifici’s ‘Ebraismo integrale’,” in The New Italy and the Jews. From Massimo D’Azeglio to Primo Levi, cit., pp. 29–48. 44  A. Milano, “Un secolo di stampa periodica ebraica in Italia,” cit., pp. 121–122. 45  Ibidem. 46  For an example, see “Il nostro questionario,” Israel, I, n. 17, May 4, 1916.

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rising generation remaining uneducated in the principles of their “ancestral religion.” Only through education, he concluded, could mothers save their daughters from assimilation and mixed marriages.47 Such exhortations however, clashed with the conditions of women’s lives which, during the war years, had become even more complex and variable than ever before. In fact, for Jewish women, the war created a time of greater encounter and merging with women of other faiths, and gave rise to a new reality where all women, both Jewish and non-Jewish, had the opportunity to express their own strengths as well as to experience “new forms of autonomy.”48

The Involvement of Jewish Women in the War The merging of the conflicts of the Great War with the struggles of the Risorgimento characterized the patriotic discourse of the age, but the disruptive dynamics of the international conflict were greater than the epic battles for the unification of Italy. The war dramatically affected not only the lives of those who took up arms to defeat the enemy, but also just as dramatically affected those who remained on the “home front,” a concept and expression that was born out of World War I. This was a modern and long-lasting war whose conclusion would require mobilizing the entire Italian population and unifying their emotional and material energies, as was also the case in other countries involved in the conflict. “War has ceased to be a militaristic function and has become a national function: today war is not only made by the soldiers who leave home but also by the civilians who stay home.”49 And of that “greater part” that remained behind, it was women in particular, “of the greater part…the majority,”50 who took on the burden of meeting the material and emotional  needs inflicted by the war by undertaking a variety of roles and initiatives which were dictated primarily by their social class.

47   A.  Colombo, “Facciamo le ebree,” V.I., LXIV, fasc.  XIX–XX, October15–31, 1916, p. 509. 48  S. Bartoloni, “L’associazionismo femminile nella prima guerra mondiale e la mobilitazione per l’assistenza e la propaganda,” in Donna Lombarda, edited by A. Gigli Marchetti and N. Torcellan, Milan, Franco Angeli, 1992, p. 65. 49  Donna Paola (Paola Baronchelli Grosson), La donna nella nuova Italia. Documenti del contributo femminile alla guerra, Milan, Quintieri, 1917, p. 146. 50  Ibidem.

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The extensive involvement of women in, and their indispensable contribution to the emotional and material support of the “home front” was a phenomenon common across all of the warring countries.51 In January 1915, when the winds of war were already blowing in Italy, Margherita Sarfatti52 (1880–1961) went to France to observe women’s mobilization in the field. Her two-month stay in a country already embroiled in the war resulted in more than an inspection of Parisian women’s wartime initiatives. In fact, in the same year, her experiences were transformed into 51  For information on female deployment in World War I, see F. Thébaud, La femme au temps de la guerre de 1914, Paris, Stock, 1986; Id. “La Grande Guerra: età della donna o trionfo della differenza sessuale?,” in G. Duby and M. Perrot, Storia delle donne. Il Novecento, edited by F. Thébaud, Rome-Bari, Laterza, 1992, pp. 33–90. Behind the Lines: Gender and the Two World Wars, edited by M. R. Higonnet and J. Jenson, New Haven-London, Yale University Press, 1987; The Upheaval of War. Family, Work and Welfare in Europe, 1914–1918, edited by R. Wall and J. Winter. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1988; S. R. Grayzel, Women’s Mobilisation for War, in 1914–1918—on line International Encyclopedia of the First World War, edited by U. Daniel, P. Gatrell, O. Janz, H. Jones, J. Keene, A. Kramer, and B. Nasson, issued by Freie Universität Berlin, October 8, 2014. https://doi.org/10.15463/ ie1418.10348. 52  Margherita Sarfatti, (née Grassini 1880–1961), descendant of a wealthy Jewish Venetian family, renowned socialist intellectual, was among the most important art critics in Italy and an entertainer in one of the most prestigious salons of the day. After moving to Milan with her husband Cesare, she started attending emancipationist movements mainly in Ersilia Majno’s Unione Femminile as well as Pro-Suffragio events in 1909. She directed the socialist newspaper La difesa delle lavoratrici (Defense of the Female Workers) in 1912, and throughout the entire wartime period participated in various activities in the emancipation movement. See Donna Paola, La donna nella nuova Italia, cit., pp. 180–181. Sarfatti’s activism seems understandable considering her intellectual need to have the space and freedom of movement she lacked in the Socialist Party and Avanti. The articles that Margherita Sarfatti wrote for the Unione Femminile newspaper and other publications dealt mainly with art and literature. Themes relevant to emancipation were completely ignored in her prose. See S. Urso, Margherita Sarfatti. Dal mito del Dux al mito americano, Venice, Marsilio, pp.  29–42. During the time of World War I, Margherita Sarfatti’s life was intertwined with Mussolini’s, as she was his mistress for more than 20 years and then became his biographer. Though she inspired Fascism, this eclectic, intellectual woman was forced to leave Italy in 1939 due to the racial laws. Margherita Sarfatti’s legendary and contradictory life was the basis for numerous studies including S. Marzorati, Margherita Sarfatti. Saggio biografico, Como, Nodo, 1990; P. Cannistraro and B.R. Sullivan, Il Duce’s Other Woman, New York, Morrow & Co., 1993; R. Festorazzi,  Margherita Sarfatti. La donna che inventò Mussolini,  Castabissara, Colla, 2010;  S. Bartoloni, “Margherita Sarfatti. Una intellettuale tra nazione e fascismo,” in Di generazione in generazione. Le italiane dall’Unità a oggi, edited by M.T. Mori, A. Pescarolo, A. Scattigno, S. Soldani, Rome, Viella, 2014, pp. 207–220; R. Ferrario, Margherita Sarfatti. La regina dell’arte nell’Italia fascista, Milan, Mondadori, 2015; A. Frattolillo, Margherita Grassini Sarfatti. Protagonista culturale del primo Novecento, Fano, Aras, 2017.

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a book, The Female Military in France [La milizia femminile in Francia], which the author dedicated to Italian women “as an act of faith,” stating in the text that she had written “when the declaration of war by Italy was foreseeable, but had not yet come.”53 The narration is marked by intense emotional reaction; Sarfatti grants significant space to the shocking impact of witnessing seriously wounded and mutilated soldiers, “ghosts…pestilent and bleeding trunks…shreds of flesh…mule-like and miserable fragments” and the heroic work of women.54 She praises not only the professional nurses or Red Cross volunteers, but all the women “who saved the situation,” regardless of their social position, by organizing hospitals and helping the wounded during extended train stops. An “immense, shadowy, anonymous female army” of which teachers were “the vanguard and the chosen body.”55 In cities as well as in villages, when regular hospitals became overwhelmed by the immense waves of the sick,56 teachers transformed their school rooms into hospitals, working alongside aristocrats and members of the wealthy middle class who made their homes available to house the recovering wounded, and still these teachers did not fail to fulfill their school duties.57 Margherita Sarfatti recounted how in the Ville Lumière, the efforts of female Red Cross volunteers, young and old, from all social classes, were joined by those of women belonging to the elite: intellectuals, aristocrats, and prominent bourgeois (Jewish and non-­ Jewish); all these women worked together to create specialized hospitals, provide food and shelter for refugees, and set up workshops to produce clothing for soldiers and civilians as well as provide work for the countless women who had lost their employment due to the war or who had been ruined by the war and reduced to a state of desperation.58  M. Sarfatti, La milizia femminile in Francia, Milan, Ravà, 1915.  ivi p. 43. For Sarfatti’s experiences in France see P. Cannistraro and B. R. Sullivan, Il Duce’s Other Woman, cit., pp. 128–129. 55  The great contribution made by female teachers on the home front occurred in Italy as well as S. Soldani shows in “Al servizio della patria. Le maestre nella Grande Guerra,” in La mobilitazione civile in Italia (1914–1918), edited by D. Menozzi, G. Procacci, S. Soldani, Milan, Edizioni Unicopli, 2010, pp. 182–215. 56  M. Sarfatti, La milizia femminile in Francia, cit., pp. 31–32. 57  ivi pp. 63–66. 58  “The Duchess of Grammont” (1875–1954) founded the hospital for facial injuries, ivi, p. 44. (Elisabeth de Gramont, an eccentric and progressive woman, very well known in the literary, artistic, and musical worlds, along with her sister Corisande (1880–1977) suggested centralizing contributions on behalf of the soldiers and then redistributing them to their various organizations. See F. Rapazzini, La duchessa rossa: Elisabeth de Gramont da Proust a Marx, Milan, Sylvestre Bonnard, 2007, pp.  261–262.) “Ms. Thompson” (Henriette 53 54

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“It almost seems that these efforts possess Aladdin’s lamp, that one has only to ask and will see the desire satisfied,”59 described Gina Lombroso Thompson, 1859–1946, née Crémieux, niece of Adolphe Crémieux, (1796–1880, lawyer and politician from 1834 until his death, vice president of Concistoire Central des Israélites de France), and wife of Gaston Thompson, at the time Minister of Commerce and Industry). She was responsible for the foundation of an optometry hospital financed essentially by private donations (M. Sarfatti, La milizia femminile, cit., p. 44). Madame Jules Ferry, Mathilde Eugénie Risler, (1850–1920), widow of the well-known statesman, was the head of one of the 60 shelters spread throughout the entire French territory for the éclopés, the exhausted soldiers in need of rest (ivi p. 58). The management of the severe problem of French and Belgium refugees was almost completely in the hands of women. The many refugees remaining in Paris, mainly professionals and intellectuals, were cared for by the Mairies d’Arrondissement (Town Councils), in particular those that enlisted the active support of women. Many other refugees reached small cities and villages where they took over working in the fields or trades of those called to the front lines. Cécile Brunschvigc (née Kahn, 1877–1946), was a feminist of the Jewish upper class who was very involved on the social front. She was the secretary of L’Union française pour le suffrage des femmes starting in 1910 and in 1915 she led the work sector of the Conseil national des femmes françaises that fought against the unjust payment of workers in the weaponry field. In 1917 she went on to promote a school for the formation of suritendantes d’usine, social assistants in factories. See Ch., Bard, Les filles de Marianne. Histoire des féminismes, 1914–1940, Paris, Fayard, 1995, pp.  32 and 74; F. Thébaud, La femme au temps de la guerre de 14, cit., particularly pp. 170–210. Cécile Brunschvicg, in her role as President of the Female Committee in the XVI Arrondissement, was responsible for successfully borrowing vacant apartments from property owners and providing empty rooms or beds in houses. The famous writer Daniel Lesueur (pseudonym for Jeanne Loiseau, 1854–1921, whose works were translated in Italy) took charge of providing food for the refugees (see M. Sarfatti, La milizia femminile, cit., p.  81). Jeanne Loiseau went on to found a foyer for soldiers on the front lines with the American Mary Mather. See: Foyer du Soldat Mary Mather. Oeuvre franco-americaine au front, (on line). Louise Cruppi, (1862–1925, née Crémieux), Henriette Thompson’s cousin, and a musician, woman of letters, and renowned member of the National Council of French Women (see Y. Cohen, “Le Conseil National des Femmes Françaises (1901–1939). Ses fondatrices et animatrices juives, Archives Juives,” 2011/1, 44, pp. 94–99) together with her husband rescued needy children in those areas that had or were about to be invaded by the Germans by taking the children to Alta Garonna, where Louise Cruppi typically lived for part of the year, and entrusting them to local families (see M. Sarfatti, La milizia femminile, cit., pp.  81–82). In addition, Louise Cruppi established a manufacturing workshop to help unemployed teachers. Valentine Thomson, (1881–1944), daughter of Henriette, and director of the newspaper La Vie Féminine also established three workshops as well as numerous groups in the countryside that brought together needy children and women to care for them. ivi pp. 91–95. 59  G. Lombroso Ferrero, L’assistenza civile in Francia nel momento attuale, Turin, Officine Grafiche della S.T.E.N., 1915, p. 3. Gina Lombroso stayed in Paris for only 15 days. The study is the report of a conference held in Turin on March 7, 1915 initiated by the Comitato femminile di preparazione (Female Committee of preparation) and then published bimonthly

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Ferrero (1872–1944) with admiration. Like Sarfatti, she too was in France at the beginning of 1915 (though her tour was of shorter duration and confined exclusively to Paris), in order to observe the many initiatives begun at the outbreak of the conflict to support the war effort by the Government and Municipalities, and by also private contributors, who were mostly female. The conclusions reached by Gina Lombroso in her brief but precise report were no different from those of Sarfatti, even though the latter, a socialist and suffragist,60 emphasized the injustice evidenced in the fact that the courage and self-sacrifice of the French women were not recognized with the right to citizenship, a right that France continued to deny their women. Lombroso Ferrero’s concise but meticulous report concluded with a tribute to the work and self-sacrifice of her French sisters, and her hope that, in the event Italy should become involved in the war, her fellow Italian sisters would demonstrate the same capabilities: In France, no one doubts…that it is the women, each working to alleviate whatever misery that has fallen before her eyes, it is the women…who have truly alleviated the misery produced by the war, who have made it so the country can wait confidently and calmly for the advent of peace. It is on women that the greatest responsibility for “public assistance” has fallen, and the greatest glory will follow. Most…of the child care centers, shelters, workshops, kitchens…were instigated by and continue now because of women. In these circumstances, French women have had the opportunity to demonstrate the wealth of initiative, ingenuity, foresight, and love that they possess…assuredly, women will rise from this trial expanded… May is supreme trial, if Italian women are called to it, cause a sense of national solidarity and a spirit of self-sacrifice to triumph among us Italian women that the women of other countries have revealed, and thus contribute effectively to the final victory.61

in the illustrated journal, La Donna. One thousand copies of the publication were printed to be sold to benefit of childcare centers and to collect donations of hospital supplies by the Comitato femminile torinese (Turin Women’s Society.) 60  Margherita Sarfatti was part of the Comitato lombardo pro-suffragio (Lombardy ProSuffrage Committee) since its foundation in February 1909. 61  G. Lombroso Ferrero, L’assistenza civile in Francia, cit., pp. 15–16. Margherita Sarfatti concluded her poignant discourse by declaring she was certain that when the turbulent time of war had ended, that “the image” would emerge, “greater than ever of She who did not let herself falter or stray.” M. Sarfatti, La milizia femminile, cit., p. 111.

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Just as the Turin intellectual hoped, soon the “Aladdin’s lamp” would no longer be evident only in the war efforts of French women, but in those of Italian women as well. In 1914, even before Italy’s entry into the conflict, those women’s organizations which already had a long-standing experience of working on behalf of women’s and children’s rights were the first to foresee the necessity of responding to the inevitable repercussions of the European war on a neutral country such as Italy, as well as to foresee the need to prepare for the event of an unwanted abandonment of neutrality. Among the many organizations that emerged was the Milanese National Women’s Union (Unione Femminile nazionale). In September 1914, Ersilia Majno, the founder of the Union reminded readers on the pages of the Milanese newspaper Il Secolo (The Century) that although neutral, Italy was not immune from the harmful consequences of the war that were overwhelming other European countries. The influx of refugees, the downturn in economic activity, and the increases in unemployment and the cost of living required the immediate intervention of institutions as well as the efforts and solidarity of all women. Hence at the beginning the Union’s relief work was to guarantee displaced people safe housing and to provide jobs for unemployed women by establishing manufacturing workshops.62 During the war period, those same workshops would constitute one of the essential centers for the efforts to support soldiers and women throughout Italy.63 Also in September 1914, the more moderate National Council of Italian women (Consiglio nazionale delle donne italiane) launched an appeal to its members to identify how many of them could provide assistance and were willing to do any useful work for “our homeland.”64 All of the women’s organizations that had gravitated toward “practical feminism” and had extensive experience in the area of social assistance now organized 62  Ersilia Majno’s article appeared in Il Secolo on September 3, 1914 with the title of “Our Duty” (Il nostro dovere). See G. Gaballo, Il Nostro Dovere. L’Unione Femminile tra impegno sociale, guerra e fascismo (1899–1939), Novi Ligure, Edizioni Joker, 2015, pp. 159–162. 63  See B. Pisa, “Un’azienda di Stato a domicilio: la confezione di indumenti militari durante la grande guerra,” Storia Contemporanea, XX, n. 6, December 1989, pp. 953–1003. 64  The appeal by the President of the CNDI, Gabriella Spalletti Rasponi (1853–1931), dated August 18, 1914, appeared on the pages of La Nostra Rivista, I, n. 9, September 1914, p. 798, a publication directed by the Milanese writer Sofia Bisi Albini. It also appeared on the pages of Attività femminile sociale (official publication of the CNDI), II, n. 9–10, September 15–October 15, 1914, p. 190.

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themselves to provide the population with the services necessary to withstand the impact of war even before Italy decided to abandon neutrality. When Italy entered the global conflict, these associations faced the new challenges by offering their own organizations’ time and resources and by increasing programs on behalf of the soldiers who had been called up, their families, and all those the war had left in need. Italian women’s associations not only dedicated themselves to the serious problem of refugees from the war zones on the north-eastern borders,65 but also dedicated intense effort to increasing the number of manufacturing workshops,66 setting up child65  In Milan, Teresita Pasini (also known by the pseudonym Alma Dolens, 1869–1948), a noblewoman of Umbrian origin and an activist for women’s rights, deserves the credit for forming a Comitato Nazionale per le Colonie dei Profughi (National Committee and Subcommittees for Refugees) to guarantee that they would receive moral and material support in the cities where they arrived. After consulting with Salvatore  Barzilai, who was then the unofficial minister to the Terre irredente (i.e., the regions of Trentino and Venezia Giulia, which at this time were still under the domination of the Austrian–Hungarian Empire) and after completing the required procedures, the promoting committee which Margherita Sarfatti was part of was created. Sarfatti, along with her coreligionist Anna Errera, was part of the executive committee, created to help the unfortunate residents in remote mountain areas to receive information about their relatives who had been interred or were prisoners of war. They took over these duties from the local authorities, who had been incapable of carrying out the task. In May 1916 the National Committee called on the government to improve the economic condition of refugees by facilitating their employment and guaranteeing special consideration for pregnant women and nursing mothers. See Donna Paola, La donna nella nuova Italia, cit., pp. 180–182. 66  Graziella Sonnino Carpi (born Carpi 1884–?), member of the Women’s Union, wrote on the pages of Assistenza Civile, (from now on A.C.) the journal of the Federazione nazionale dei comitati di assistenza civile (National Federation of Civil Assistance Committees), that the first manufacturing workshops were established in Milan in 1915 before the storms of war had struck Italy. A response to this “delicate social issue,” and the material difficulties that afflicted unemployed female workers, and also the mothers left husbandless when the first military call ups came, was found by pairing the work of social assistance with providing quick, accessible manual work: “War materials were needed so that Italy could prepare for war.” The issue was resolved by employing women in the production of military clothing. This became source of earnings but also “one of the most helpful ways to apply female activities to the benefit of the Italian armies.” G.  Sonnino Carpi, “Lavorare è vivere,” A.C., I, n.  12, June 16, 1917, pp.  529–530. Graziella Sonnino Carpi was vice president of the Philanthropy Section of the Lyceum as well as a member of the Office III of the Comitato Centrale di Assistenza per la Guerra (Central Committee of Assistance for the War) which was responsible for finding jobs for the unemployed and for assisting refugees. (See Comune di Milano, Comitato Centrale di Assistenza per la Guerra. Relazione dal I Febbraio al 31 Dicembre 1916, Milan, Stabilimento Tip.-Lit. Stucchi, Ceretti e C., 1916, p. 5.) That committee nominated Sonnino Carpi as president of the Female Workshops (Laboratori

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care centers for the workers’ children, organizing soup kitchens, providing assistance for completing the bureaucratic procedures for legally recognizing children fathered out of wedlock by soldiers, and giving legal assistance for performing marriages by proxy and to legalize cohabitating couples in order to guarantee individuals could benefit from the relevant government subsidies.67 It was a “parallel war,” affirmed Albano Sorbelli,68 the other but no less important side of the “mechanical” war, being a vast “quantity of conditions and things” involving those on the home front in a daily battle, a battle in which also Jewish women were active protagonists.

femminili) which were under the control of the Lyceum. See V. Piccini, “L’Attività delle socie del Lyceum di Milano nelle opere di assistenza per la guerra,” Bollettino del Lyceum di Milano, II/III, n. 2, October 1915, pp. 7–8. In the postwar years, together with coreligionists and members of the Unione Femminile, Nina Rignano Sullam, Ada Treves Segre, and Graziella Sonnino Carpi were part of the executive committee of a school designed to retrain women who were dismissed from factories where they had substituted men during the war. See G. Gaballo, Il Nostro Dovere, cit., p. 270. 67   For more on the women’s mobilization in the war effort, see S. Bartoloni, “L’associazionismo femminile nella prima guerra mondiale e la mobilitazione per l’assistenza civile e la propaganda,” in Donna Lombarda (1860–1945), cit.; Id., Donne di fronte alla guerra. Pace, diritti e democrazia, Rome-Bari, Laterza, 2017; B. Pisa, “La mobilitazione civile e politica delle italiane nella Grande Guerra,” Giornale di Storia Contemporanea, IV, n. 2, December 2001, pp. 79–103; Id., “Italiane in tempo di guerra,” in La mobilitazione civile in Italia. (1914–1918), cit., pp. 59–85; Id., “La propaganda politica delle non politiche,” in La Grande Guerra delle italiane. Mobilitazioni, diritti, trasformazioni, edited by S. Bartoloni, Rome, Viella, 2016, pp.  167–187; A.  Molinari, Donne e ruoli femminili nell’Italia della Grande Guerra, Milano, Selene, 2008; Id., Una patria per le donne. La mobilitazione femminile nella Grande Guerra, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2014; Id., “Operatrici sociali per la patria,” in La grande Guerra delle italiane, cit., pp. 151–166; E. Schiavon, “Interventismo nella Grande Guerra. Assistenza e propaganda a Milano e in Italia,” Italia Contemporanea, n. 234, March 2004, pp. 89–104; Id., Interventiste nella Grande Guerra. Assistenza, propaganda, lotta per i diritti a Milano e in Italia (1911–1919), Florence, Le Monnier, 2015; Id., Dentro la guerra. Le italiane dal 1915–1918, Florence, Le Monnier, 2018; A.  Scardino Belzer, Women and the Great War. Femininity under Fire in Italy, New  York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. Donna Paola (Baronchelli Grosson), La donna nella nuova Italia, cit. Donna Paola’s book constitutes an essential point of reference for the history of female mobilization in the Great War. 68  A. Sorbelli, “L’Accanto alla guerra. ‘L’Ufficio Notizie’,” La Lettura, XVI, n. 1, January 1, 1916, pp.  63–69. Albano Sorbelli (1875–1944) was a noted figure in the history of Bologna. Historian and bibliophile, also director of the Archiginnasio Library, Sorbelli dedicated her writings to political history and culture, particularly of Bologna. Sorbelli was very close to Clara Archivolti Cavalieri in her work to establish free lending libraries in elementary schools throughout the Kingdom of Italy. See Chap. 3 of the present volume.

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The Great War marked another significant moment in the association between Jewish and non-Jewish women. In line with a historical pattern of Jewish women joining their efforts to those of their sisters of other faiths with ever increasing frequency (without foregoing their contributions to support their disadvantaged coreligionists within individual Jewish communities), Jewish women who belonged predominantly to the middle and upper-middle classes mobilized with other Italian women to create a critically important welfare system during the war. Those Jewish women who had been active in non-Jewish women’s associations continued their work within these organizations. The others responded to the emotional and material needs imposed by the war by working in various voluntary organizations that mobilized with the outbreak of the conflict. The high level of integration of Italian Judaism was evident in Jews’ participation in the war and in the determination of Jewish women to work alongside their sisters of other faiths for patriotic and humanitarian action.69 We find the Jewish woman, this shadowy, quiet, female soul, slipping among the hospital wards; we see her in the organizing committees, industrious, peace-making, enterprising; we admire her, alone, instigator of charitable, daring enterprises. Her gentle hand is generous with money and caresses, her speech is discreet, yet resonates with conviction, her resolute action begins and is completed and then, evading applause, unconcerned with praise, she returns, satisfied, to the unseen circle of her habitual duties.70

In grandiloquent tones, The Jewish Banner, the official voice and forum for the patriotic sentiments held by wide segments of the Jewish bourgeoisie, set aside its previous criticism of Jewish women’s excessive participation in charitable organizations outside of the Jewish community. Seeing the labors of its female coreligionists on behalf of the war effort, the journal expressed its pride in “the ancient soul of Israel” that “in historical and decisive moments, finds itself whole and firm.” All those Jewish civilians who could not be soldiers and thus remained behind had already affirmed “through the power of thought and action” that Italian Jews served not 69  It is important to underscore that this study considered the major social features affecting the Jewish female experience during World War I; the views of those Jewish women who joined the Socialist party and therefore overtly supported the anti-war position of the Socialists were not specifically analyzed. 70  N.N., “L’ora presente e la donna israelita,” VI., LXIV, fasc.  XXIII–XXIV, December 15–31, 1916, p. 606.

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only as “coadjutors” but also the “avant-garde” of every noble initiative, and moreover, “even the women” had given and continued to give “their contribution with the refined, graceful, modest, and dignified creativity that is the mark of the true women of our race.”71 For many men and women, and particularly for a conservative periodical like The Jewish Banner, the time was not ripe for seeing the labors of Jewish women performed outside the walls of the home through any lens other than that of a maternal devotion, but that same devotion should diligently return inside those domestic walls every day. In reality, despite the overt gender implications, the volunteer work accomplished by Jewish and non-Jewish women went far beyond the traditional stereotype of the mother’s gentle hand and sweet caress of her beloved offspring. With the war, the “natural” predisposition of women to care for  the welfare of others transformed into “social and health service” for the benefit of the working classes, who were more affected by the consequences of the conflict. These services filled the void left by a neglectful, absent State (or at least remarkably inefficient in this area). Women’s volunteerism did not necessarily suggest their approval of the war. “Italian women did not call for war. Few took part in demonstrations in favor of intervention, while many decided to support patriotic efforts on the home front.”72 And theirs was an unprecedented patriotism, one that was not limited to passive waiting, silent suffering, or merely ­traditional moral support; rather, their patriotism acted and created new skills, transforming talents conventionally attributed to gender into actual, professional practice, such as nurse and social worker, useable skills even in a future peace.73 Donna Paola affirmed: Devotion to our absent loved ones can no longer be encapsulated in the anguished waiting for their return; it must be activated in the work of paving the road that will lead them back to the peaceful homes, jobs resumed, income restored … What a truly sanitary remedy for their pain in all this tumult of action and thought, in this forced distraction from the obsession that consumes the imagination of those who wait frozen in the dreadful anticipation of news, when what is imagined is always far worse than what is true. If all this, which is vast, and yet individual, did not prove the usefulness  Ibidem.  S. Bartoloni, “Introduzione,” in Donne di fronte alla guerra. Pace, diritti e democrazia, cit., V. 73  See A. Molinari, Una patria per le donne, cit., pp. 34–35 and Id., “Operatrici sociali per la patria,” in La Grande Guerra delle italiane, cit., pp. 154–155. 71 72

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of women’s function in times of war, then irrefutable proof of social necessity would still confirm it.74

The concrete result of the “tumult of acts and thought” evoked by Donna Paola, as well as one of the most important institutions established by the “parallel war” was undoubtedly the Office for News for Military Families (Ufficio per notizie alle famiglie dei militari). The Office was initiated in Bologna by the Countess Lina Bianconcini Cavazza (1861–1942). The mother of two sons serving at the front, she “sensed in her heart the doubts felt by all mothers, by all Italian wives”75 and recognized the loneliness felt by women who were scattered across the countryside, unable to inquire and learn the fate of their loved ones. The noblewoman was a moderate feminist, and she and her husband were well-known for their many philanthropic activities and support of the local economy through efforts such as the Aemilia Ars.76 Bianconcini Cavazza had already ­developed the idea for the Office as early as January 1915 so it could be immediately operational in case Italy became involved in the war. Her institution soon branched out with Sections and Subsections across the country, serving as a liaison between soldiers who had been deployed and their families in order to facilitate contacts and compensate for the severe lack of supplies, a shortcoming that the State had demonstrated during the war in Libya. In October 1915 the Office for News for Military Families was officially recognized by the Ministry of War (Ministero della Guerra)  and the Ministry of the Navy  (Ministero della Marina).77 In 74  Donna Paola, La funzione della donna in tempo di guerra, Florence, Bemporad, 1915, p. 11. 75  G. Fanciulli, L’Ufficio per notizie alle famiglie dei militari, Rome, Direzione della Nuova Antologia, 1915, p. 2. 76  The Aemilia Ars foundation, established in 1898, served a double purpose: it offered women without steady employment and those unable to leave their homes due to health or family reasons a chance to earn money and improve their homes by learning traditional needlework patterns and adapting them to modern ones. Lisa Bianconcini Cavazza introduced a study of the traditional art of tatting. See S. Albertoni Tagliavini, “Industrie femminili emiliane,” in Le Industrie Femminili Italiane, Milan, Pilade Rocco e C., 1906, pp. 109–110. Female Industries were created in 1903. The administrative council and the patrons’ committee included the names of women from the educated Jewish upper-middle class, among which were Letizia Pesaro Maurogonato (1851–1912), daughter of senator Isacco, Virginia Nathan and Liliah Nathan Ascoli (1868–1930), Virginia’s daughter. Ivi, p. 13. 77  For an analysis of the organization, operation, and activities of the office see A. Sorbelli, “L’accanto alla guerra. ‘L’Ufficio Notizie’,” cit.; G. Fanciulli, L’Ufficio per notizie alle famiglie dei militari, cit., pp.  2–11; Note sulla costituzione e sul funzionamento dell’Ufficio per

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carrying out its tremendous volume of work, the “admirable performance”78 of the News Office depended upon an army of volunteers whose ranks included several Jewish women, some of whom held positions of great responsibility, as in the case of Bona Viterbi (1859–1931) who headed the Padua section and Alina Wollemborg79 who headed the Rome section.80 notizie alle famiglie dei militari di terra e di mare, Bologna, Cooperativa Tipografica Azzoguidi, 1916; Ufficio per notizie alle famiglie dei militari di terra e di mare, Cenni intorno all’opera dell’Ufficio centrale dal Giugno 1915 all’aprile 1918, Bologna, Tipografia di  Paolo Neri, 1918; E. Erioli, ‘“L’Ufficio per le Notizie alle famiglie dei militari’: una grande storia di volontariato femminile bolognese,” Bollettino del Museo del Risorgimento di Bologna, a. L, n. 4, 2005, pp. 75–89; L. Gaudenzi, “La Grande Guerra e il fronte interno attraverso le carte dell’Ufficio per notizie alle famiglie dei militari di terra e di mare,” Storia e Futuro. Rivista di storia e storiografia on line, n. 36, November 2014; A. Molinari, “Operatrici sociali per la patria,” cit., pp. 160–166; E. Schiavon, “Nel cuore del rapporto tra fronte e fronte interno,” in Trame disperse. Esperienze di viaggio, di conoscenza e di combattimento nel mondo della Grande guerra (1915–1918), edited by M. Severini, Venice, Marsilio, 2015. 78  “Convegno delle Assistenze Civili in Italia e Assemblea della Federazione Nazionale Comitati di Assistenza Civile,” A. C., I, n. 7–8, 1–16 April 1917, p. 328. 79  In 1903 Alina Fano married Leone Wollemborg (1859–1932), famous economist and statesman. Leone Wollemborg was the founder of the first Cassa rurale, (Credit Cooperative for Agricultural Workers), an institution created to improve the moral and economic condition of the agrarian class. In 1909 he established the Federazione italiana delle Casse rurali (Italian Federation of Agrarian Credit Cooperatives), and became its president. He served as a member of Parliament from 1892 to 1913 and as Minister of Finance in 1901. In 1914, Wollemborg was then appointed to the office of Italian Senator. During the years of World War I, he assumed the presidency of Comitato di assistenza civile di Roma (Commission for Welfare Assistance of Rome). See R. Marconato, La figura e l’opera di Leone Wollemborg: il fondatore delle casse rurali nella realtà dell’Ottocento e del Novecento, Treviso, La vita del popolo, 1984; G.L. Luzzatto, “La simbiosi ebraico-italiana in pubblicazioni di nozze a Padova e Bologna,” R.M.I., XLV, n. 4–5, April–May 1979, pp. 175–187,  now in Id., Scritti politici. Ebraismo e antisemitismo, edited by A. Cavaglion and E. Tedeschi, Milan, Franco Angeli, 1996, pp. 232–234. 80  For an example see, Ufficio per Notizie, Cenni intorno all’opera dell’Ufficio Centrale, cit., pp. 29–37; Relazioni del Comitato fiorentino di preparazione e di assistenza civile per i mesi marzo-novembre, Florence, Palagio dell’Arte della Lana, 1915, pp. 40–43; Ufficio per notizie alle famiglie dei militari di terra e di mare, Elenco delle sezioni, delle sottosezioni e dei gruppi, Bologna, Cooperativa Tipografica Azzoguidi, 1916, p. 22 and p. 45; Un anno di vita del Comitato Nazionale Femminile. Sezione di Padova. (21 February 1915–21 February 1916), Padua, Premiata società cooperativa tipografica, 1916. L’Ufficio Notizie of Florence was coordinated along with the Comitato fiorentino di preparazione civile directed by Angiolo Orvieto. Among the volunteers of the Ufficio the names Laura Orvieto and Amelia Rosselli are particularly noteworthy. They worked in other charitable organizations alongside their female coreligionists who were also involved in philanthropic work. Bona Viterbi was the de facto president of the Comitato femminile in Padua (which also included her coreligionists Lietta Romanin Jacur e Matilde Treves de Bonfil) as well as the Section head for

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Italy’s defeat at Caporetto gave rise to a refugee crisis, and an increased need to reunite families dispersed by the invasion. The Central Office of Bologna (Ufficio Centrale di Bologna)  entrusted the Refugee Division (Riparto Profughi)  and the Refugee Correspondence Office (Corrispondenza Profughi) respectively to Clara Jacchia and Pia Sanguinetti who availed themselves of the help of Bice Finzi, Luisa Modena, and Laura Jacchia.81 Jacchia was also involved with the Pro esercito, an organization in charge of sending gifts to the soldiers that would give material and emotional  comfort. Laura Jacchia was the secretary, Lisetta Jacchia (Laura’s mother) was the vice-president and Antonietta Bolaffio served as the bursar. These three women were also responsible for the work of making ration warmers and underclothing that prevented the spread of parasites and pests. Antonietta Bolaffio, along with Cesira Carpi Norsa, and Natalia Pincherle donated her private funds to “Gold for the Homeland,” (Oro alla Patria) a program to collect gold and silver in order to lower the exchange rates and “give proof of female sacrifice to the Homeland.”82 The Bologna Office proved to be especially effective in its efforts on behalf of the children of soldiers who had been called up. As stated in a report on the activity of the Civil Action Committee (Comitato di Azione Civile), one of the branches of the Committee, the Women’s Section, “evinced its charitable and very active work” by establishing day care centers for children from 14 months to six years of age whose fathers were fighting at the front.83 The Correspondence and the Ufficio Notizie per i militari (Office for Military News), ivi, p. 8. The Ufficio Notizie per i militari in Parma, which, like the office in Florence, was aligned with the Comitato fiorentino di preparazione civile, lists the names of Enrichetta Melli Artom, Giulia Tedeschi De Benedetti, and Ines Bassani. Anita Bassani Levi and Carolina De Benedetti Carmi were listed among “visitors,” charged with the role visiting local hospitals multiple times every week to collect the names of recovering soldiers and gather updates about the status of their health. See Comitato parmense di preparazione civile: Relazione per l’Ufficio notizie, Parma, Tipografia S. Orsatti and C., 1919, pp. 2–5. 81  See Cenni intorno all’opera dell’Ufficio Centrale, cit., p. 19 and p. 28. 82  See Guida pratica delle Opere e della Beneficenza di guerra nella città e provincia di Bologna, edited by the Comitato di assistenza alle famiglie rurali (Rural Family Assistance Committee, Bologna, Tip. L. Cappelli, 1917, p. 22; p. 61; p. 70; p. 74. 83  See Bologna durante la guerra. L’Attività del Comitato di Azione Civile, Bologna, P.  Neri,  1915. See, furthermore, Relazione della V Sezione del Comitato di Azione Civile (Sezione Femminile) Febbraio 1915–Febbraio 1916. Letta dalla presidente nell’assemblea della sezione stessa il giorno 2 aprile 1916, Bologna, A. Garagnani Tipografia, 1916. As a result of the two reports, the number of child care centers increased to five. Vito Banco’s essay, “La mobilitazione civile a Bologna (1915–1918),” Percorsi storici, n. 4, 2016, (on line), indicates

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Committee referred to the day care centers for the children of deployed soldiers, stating how much those centers owed to the commitment and financial contribution of Elena Sanguinetti Ghiron.84 Assistance for children was a crucial area of aid work considering the massive sacrifice of human lives that the war had brought. As the noblewoman Antonia Nitti Persico wrote in April 1917: The war, imposing on us the moral obligation to assist the families of our soldiers, has confronted us with urgent problems and needs, for which we do not have the luxury of delay. The war destroys or weakens, albeit in part, those segments of the population who are best suited to work. The emigration that will follow the war will create new shortages. By safeguarding the growing children, we prepare strength for renewal, we can significantly mitigate the losses…The feminine Intuition, which I value in all its marvelous grandeur, makes me affirm with certainty that we know we are saving the new generation, assisting it at its dawn.85

Whether from ethical duty, a wise approach of prevention, or concern for the future of children which Jewish women had always promoted and which the war had  made more  urgent, the dedicated work of Jewish women (and men) in Bologna was anything but an isolated case. In Turin, Paola Lombroso Carrara redoubled her social commitment and efforts on behalf of children. She had already promoted important initiatives,86 such as establishing the first nursery school in May 1915 for the children in Villa Perroncito in Cavoretto, near the capital of Turin whose fathers were soldiers on active duty and who had been left without maternal care. In 1917 similar schools were established in Villa Moris, Villa Becker and Villa Beria, and then in Villa Sacconey and Villa Gioia in that there were instead six centers. There were 500 children listed at the time of their opening and the number would reach 2300 by the end of 1919. See ivi. 84  Elena Sanguinetti Ghiron was also active in the Aiuto Materno, a program that provided baby formula and rations of milk for children whose mothers could not nurse. Sanguinetti Ghiron was president of the Segretariato per l’infanzia (Committee for Children), an organization that was responsible for finding places in the city’s institutions (whether male or female) for those children whose mothers had died or whose fathers had perished in the war. The organization also helped to find places in hospitals and summer camps for sick and frail children. See Guida pratica delle Opere e della Beneficenza di guerra nella città e provincia di Bologna, cit., pp. 2–3; p. 75. 85  A. Nitti Persico, “L’assistenza all’infanzia,” A.C., I, n. 7–8, April–16, 1917, pp. 303–305. 86  See D. Dolza, Essere figlie di Lombroso. Due donne intellettuali tra ’800 e ’900, Milan, Franco Angeli, 1990, pp. 110–140.

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1918.87 By the end of the war, over 600 children had been assisted. Alongside the nursery schools established by Paola Lombroso Carrara there were also “Children’s Rooms,” (Stanze dei bambini) child care centers that tended children from one to six years of age for the entire day, children whose fathers had been called up and whose mothers worked to survive economically, and were therefore not in a position to care for them. After overcoming some initial difficulties, these “Children’s Rooms” quickly grew to eight in number and were able to offer assistance to 400 children. The credit for the success and smooth functioning of this institution goes to Elisa Levi Rignano, “a slight little woman, made bold by the fervor of her soul,”88 president of the Children’s Rooms Committee which included her coreligionists Ida Maestro, Nina Levi, Bettina Sacerdote, Giulia Segre Artom, and Ines Todros De Benedetti.89 In Florence, Bice Cammeo, active emancipationist and member of the Women’s Union, had already founded the Rifugio immediato e temporaneo per i fanciulli abbandonati (Immediate and Temporary Refuge for Abandoned Children) in 1910, which drew on the economic support of many members of the Jewish community as well as prominent members of the local aristocracy and bourgeoisie.90 This institution, which had seven centers, also took in refugee children and the children of deployed soldiers. Bice Cammeo was also a member of the Comitato per il latte e sussidi alimentari ai bimbi deboli e convalescenti (Committee for Milk and Food Aid for Weak and Convalescent Children), founded in the summer of 1917, which worked in concert with the Office of Direction and Assistance. For both institutions, the work and financial contribution of

87  See R. Sacchetti, “Fanciulli profughi e figli di soldati nelle ville di Torino,” A.C., II, n. 7, July 1918, pp. 307–310. To accumulate the necessary funds to take care of convalescing children, Paola Lombroso Carrara started the Associazione Dpu (“Dieci per uno” or “Ten for One” Association). The association collected money from selling postcards: a group of ten girls and boys would work together to sell 20 postcards a month for five months in order to support one child for that period of time. The other women who participated in the intensive philanthropic activity of Paola Lombroso Carrara were Emma Sacerdoti Nizza, Adele Rabbeno, Elvira Artom Fubini, Rina Vitta Zelman, and Elena Artom. See D. Dolza, Essere figlie di Lombroso. Due donne intellettuali tra ’800 e ’900, cit.,  pp. 132–133 and Donna Paola, La donna nella nuova Italia, cit., pp. 157–158. 88  N.N., “L’ora presente e la donna israelita,” cit., p. 607. 89  See Donna Paola, La donna nella nuova Italia, cit., p. 158. 90  See Chap. 3.

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the Jewish members were essential.91 In Rome, Amalia Besso Goldman (1865–1929) was patron of Pro-Infanzia and served as a member of the Board of Directors with Bona Luzzatto Weill-Schott. Since 1896, Amalia Besso had been involved with the Pro-Infanzia and the consistent growth of that institution was largely due to the work of this enlightened philanthropist. During the war, the Pro-Infanzia opened its doors to the children of deployed soldiers, and among its ever-increasing membership, there was a large number of men and women from the Jewish and non-­ Jewish upper-middle class.92 In Milan, “readily supported by the most notable individuals” (Jewish and non-Jewish) of the Lombard capital, the Opera di prevenzione tubercolare infantile (Effort for the Prevention of Childhood Tuberculosis) was established. The program took care of newborns of mothers with tuberculosis whose husbands were serving in the military. It also welcomed soldiers’ older children into day care centers established especially for them; for, although they were not yet affected by the disease, these children were destined to become victims due to their daily contact with their mothers. The Comitato delle patronesse (Committee of Patronesses), which had the responsibility of publicizing this institution and increasing its funds, included Alba Padoa Errera, Nina Leonino Alatri, Elvira Ottolenghi Vitali (also a member of the Comitato Promotore or Promotion Committee), Bice Levi Levi, and Lisetta Morpurgo (also active in the Comitato Propaganda or Publicity Committee). The names of Vittoria Cantoni Pisa, Gina Cases, Ernestina Forti, Margherita Sacerdoti, Ada Treves Segre (member of the Women’s Union) were among those of the current members.93 91  See Rifugio immediato e temporaneo per fanciulli abbandonati, Relazione dell’anno 1915, Florence, Stabilimento Tipografico G. Ramella, 1916; Rifugio immediato e temporaneo per fanciulli abbandonati, Relazione dell’anno 1916, Florence, Stabilimento Tipografico G. Ramella, 1917; Rifugio immediato e temporaneo per fanciulli abbandonati. Rifugi pei figli di richiamati e profughi, Relazione dell’anno 1918, Florence, Stabilimento Tipografico, (no date); Comitato per il latte e sussidi alimentari ai bimbi deboli e convalescenti, Florence, Stabilimento Tipografico E. Ariani, 1919. 92  See C. Procaccia, “‘Nghacìiri’” si nasce? Famiglie ebraiche a Roma tra Otto e Novecento. Alcuni casi di studio,” in Ebrei a Roma tra Risorgimento ed emancipazione (1814–1914) edited by Id., Rome, Gangemi, 2014, pp. 114–116; Società Romana Pro Infantia, Relazione morale e finanziaria dell’anno 1916, Rome, Tipografia Artero, 1917. 93  See Opera di prevenzione tubercolare infantile eretta in ente morale con decreto prefettizio, 13 May 1916, n. 13.385, Milan, Lito-tipografia G.  Abbiati, 1916. Vittoria Cantoni Pisa (1888–1972) was the daughter of the senator Ugo Pisa (1845–1901), founder of the Cassa di Maternità di Milano (Milan Maternity Fund) in 1904 and the sister of Fanny Norsa Pisa

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In smaller cities as well, Jewish women did not hesitate to pour out time, efforts, and energy on behalf of children. In Ferrara, according to what The Jewish Banner reported, the Nido Cavour (Cavour Infant Care) was among the best organized welfare institutions. The Cavour Infant Care had been founded by a group of “Israelite” ladies who managed and financed it. The owners of the villa where the institution was located were also “Israelites” as was the doctor who supervised the health and hygiene conditions. With tones of patriotic pride, The Jewish Banner announced the Catholic affiliation of the children aided by the institution and the existence of an independent structure for the poor children of Jewish soldiers who had been called up, where approximately twenty non-Jewish children were also welcomed.94 Similarly, in Livorno, Argia Treves and her husband Edoardo had welcomed into her “sumptuous” residence, Villa Regina, the young children of needy soldiers whose mothers were obliged to work and could not provide the necessary care. “A host of gentlewomen (1884–1968), activist in the Women’s Union. See Dizionario biografico delle donne lombarde, edited by R. Farina, Milan, Baldini & Castoldi, 1995, pp. 881–882. In 1929, Vittoria Cantoni Pisa would become the president of Associazione donne ebree d’Italia, (ADEI, Association of Jewish Women in Italy), founded in 1927. See Adei-Wizo, Adei, dalla nascita ai giorni nostri, Venice, Stamperia di Venezia, p. 25; M. Miniati, “‘Non dimenticare’. Il ruolo formativo e culturale dell’Adei (Associazione donne ebree d’Italia) dal dopoguerra a oggi,” in Presto apprendere, tardi dimenticare: l’educazione ebraica nell’Italia contemporanea, edited by A.M. Piussi, Milan, Franco Angeli, 1998, in subsequent version, “‘Donne ebree impegnate’: il ruolo formativo e culturale dell’ADEI (Associazione donne ebree d’Italia) dal dopoguerra a ad oggi,” in Le Signore del thè delle cinque. I primi anni dell’Adei a Venezia (1928–1945) tra “tzedakà” e cultura ebraica, edited by E. Tagliacozzo, Venice, Edizioni Stamperia Cetid, 2012, p. 109; S. Follacchio, “Associazionismo femminile e nation building. Il contributo dell’Associazione donne ebree d’Italia,” Chronica Mundi, vol. 12, Issue I, 2017, p. 99. Fanny Norsa Pisa together with Nina Rignano Sullam, one of the founders of Unione Femminile (Women’s Union), was part of Ufficio II, Assistenza alla fanciullezza (Office II, Childhood Assistance), a division of the Comitato centrale di assistenza per la guerra (Central Aid Committee) for the city of Milan. Margherita Sarfatti worked in the same office. See Comune di Milano, Comitato Centrale di Assistenza per la guerra. Relazione dal 1 febbraio al 31 Dicembre 1916, Milan, Stabilimento Lito-tipografia Stucchi, Ceretti e C., 1916, p. 4. 94  See “La guerra. Corrispondenza da Ferrara,” V.I., LXIV, fasc. XVI, August 31, 1916, p. 423. The Cavour Infant Care (Nido Cavour) had become operational on July 1, 1915, thanks to Lidia Contini  (1885–1960), Berta Hirsch, Rinda Hirsch, Emilia Ancona, Olga Calabresi, and Emma Minerbi, who initiated the project and paid for all the expenses. Ettore and Mario Finzi, Ciro Contini (1873–1952), Ettore Calabresi (1870–), and Giulio Hirsch were the owners of the villa where the care center was headquartered. See Ferrara per i soldati d’Italia, Bologna, Stabilimenti Poligrafici Riuniti, 1916, p. 3l e p. 33.

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and young ladies” saw to the welfare of the young children.95 In the small Tuscan village of Pitigliano with its a purely agricultural economy, a nondenominational nursery school was established due mainly the efforts of a group of Jewish women. The foundation of the school proved to be providential for the many mothers who had to replace the men in the work of harvesting and threshing.96 The assistance given to the women in the countryside who were forced to shoulder a double burden of work was indispensable in caring for the orphans of the farm workers who died in the war. In a pamphlet printed in 1917 by the Patronato Piceno (Piceno Patronage) for the orphans of those workers, the anonymous author was very explicit on the benefit of the discussed charities: To say that we must bring about vigorous and vital institutions to effectively aid to the orphans of peasants who died in the war is not merely a question of charity: of that flat and hasty charity which serves to satisfy the vanity of some lady who, with little expense, dispenses with the inconvenience she finds underfoot… [Rather] it is justice…but also expediency. Tomorrow, when the war is over,…we shall have to rebuild the wealth that the war has destroyed.97

In short, the “charity” of women was not given great consideration, and in general, there was no reference to women’s possible involvement in the Patronato’s publications. Agriculture had been and remained a man’s job. Solving issues in agriculture concerned the orphans in need of protection and who were sent to work in the fields and the landowners who were asked to cooperate, not women.98 The female benefactors of children were not taken into great consideration, nor were the orphaned daughters of  See Donna Paola, La donna nella nuova Italia, cit., p. 156.  See C., “Corrispondenza da Pitigliano,” V.I., LXIII, fasc. XIII, July 15, 1915, p. 361. 97  Patronato Piceno per gli orfani di contadini morti in guerra (Piceno Patronage for orphans of peasants who died in the war), Per un dovere, Ascoli Piceno, Tipografia Economica Tassi, 1917, p. 3 and p. 6. 98  As can be seen in the statutes of these organizations, patrons proposed assisting orphans of poor farmers who had died or been disabled in the war, in order to educate them in conformity with their social condition and teach them “the art of the fields which preferably they will pursue.” For an example, see Statuto del Patronato provinciale di Novara per gli orfani dei contadini morti in guerra, Novara 1918;  Patronato della provincia di Pesaro e Urbino per gli orfani dei contadini morti in guerra, Statuto approvato dall’Assemblea generale dei Soci nell’adunanza del 18 marzo 1917, Pesaro, Tipografia Buona Stampa, 1917. The Patronato of the province of Florence admitted one or more “women” onto the local committees who were assigned “special functions of giving assistance.” See Provincia di Firenze, Patronato per gli orfani dei contadini morti in guerra, Regolamento, Florence, G. Ramella, 1917, p. 5. 95 96

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peasants. Aurelia Josz, who had founded the first Scuola pratica agricola femminile (Women’s Agricultural Practical School) in Niguarda in 1902,99 raised the issue of female orphans of agricultural workers in an article published in Il Secolo in November, 1915: It is praiseworthy and wise to affirm the convenience and usefulness for the future that the children of those who loved the soil and who left it only for the holy cause will continue to work the land … No labor is more noble than tilling the earth, no one is more useful to our country and to the future of our people, no one is more meritorious. We must accentuate this truth with faith and we must work in harmony.100

Josz applauded the arrangements made by the Honorable Antonio Teso (1862–1922) and Ugo Patrizi (1865–1936) to house the orphans together in groups where they could be given a practical and moral education, suitable for those who would live “from the renewed agricultural life of the nation, of the greatest Italy,” but she questioned what the fate would be of the female orphans and reiterated the importance of women’s contribution to revitalizing the agricultural sector: There was no mention of the girls and I wonder if these great men intend that they be placed in the old regional orphanages to become seamstresses, typists, and even teachers. This would be in keeping with practice, but it would not be logical. If we intend to intensify our efforts, if we think about what the war itself has revealed: the tremendous importance of arte madre [agriculture], of its value in the most serious contingencies of national existence, if we intend to intensify our efforts for the benefit of agriculture, we cannot, we should not neglect the most powerful factor: the part that is played by women. … How can we hope to prevail in the fight against illiteracy, alcoholism, against problems of sanitation in general, how can we trust in the practical affirmation of the canons of modern agriculture, cooperation, mutuality without the help of this new housewife? …There is in Italy, at the gates of Milan, a school that meets the purpose…built specifically for these little orphan girls: it is the Agricultural Practical School of Niguarda. I call upon all to follow this model of school, for the love awakened by this noble misfortune [of war], and for a wider vision of patriotic love, let us establish home centers that are also schools where our nation will welcome the daughters of the soldiers who gave their lives for our homeland.101  See Chap. 3.  A Josz, “Le orfanelle,” Il Secolo, November 18, 1915. 101  Ivi. 99

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In December 1919 an agricultural society was established in Croara near Bologna for young orphaned girls whose farmer fathers had died in the war. The institution was founded by the Comitato provinciale di Bologna per l’assistenza civile e religiosa degli orfani di guerra (Provincial Committee of Bologna for the Civil and Religious Assistance of War Orphans), and as the name of the Committee indicated, it had an obvious Catholic leaning as nuns were responsible for the education of the orphans; thus the society went in the opposite direction of Josz’s innovative aims as seen in a lay school such as the Women’s Agricultural Practical School.102 The other crucial activity that showed the mobilization of women was providing health care for the army. In various Italian cities, courses for nurses were established by the Red Cross, White Cross, Green Cross, and

102  In a letter addressed to Luigi Luzzatti (1841–1927), member of Parliament of the Kingdom and President of the Opera Nazionale degli Orfani dei contadini (National Committee for Farm Workers’ Orphans), Lodovico Barbieri (1843–1927), Lieutenant General, Senator of the Kingdom and President of the Committee, praised the “work of these godmothers and the great good that they do, especially on the moral level” and complained of “the Socialist Party’s aversion to Bologna and the province for the religious word added to welfare assistance.” See the letter of Lodovico Barbieri, president of the Comitato provinciale dell’Opera Nazionale per l’assistenza civile e religiosa agli orfani dei morti in guerra (Provincial committee of the National Effort for welfare assistance and religious to the orphans of those who died in the war) to His Eminence, cav. Luigi Luzzatti, Minister of the State, President of the Opera Nazionale degli Orfani dei contadini, Bologna, November 29, 1920. Archive Luigi Luzzatti. Busta 306, Orfani di Guerra. Fascicolo 1 A. The Gruppo di Madrine (Company of Godmothers) was formed in December 1917 to offer material aid and above all, religious assistance to widows and to their offspring. The “constant selfdenial” of these Madrine (“godmothers”) made it so that many women, embittered by suffering, overcame their hostility and allowed their children to practice religion and study Catholic doctrine and sacraments. “It was through these children and their innocent prayers that many mothers returned, reformed and comforted to the Church and to religion.” See Relazione sulla gestione morale ed economica svolta durante l’anno 1918 dall’Opera Nazionale per l’assistenza civile e religiosa degli orfani dei morti in guerra nella provincia di Bologna, Bologna, Stabilimento Tipografico  Luigi Parma, 1919, pp.  8–10. See, furthermore, Relazione sulla gestione morale ed economica svolta durante l’anno 1919 dall’Opera Nazionale per l’assistenza civile e religiosa degli orfani dei morti in guerra nella provincia di Bologna, Bologna, Stabilimento Tipografico  Luigi Parma, 1920. Relazione sulla gestione morale ed economica svolta durante l’anno 1921 dall’Opera Nazionale per l’assistenza civile e religiosa degli orfani dei morti in guerra nella provincia di Bologna, Bologna, Stabilimento Tipografico Luigi Parma, 1922(?), pp. 13–17.

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Samaritan School.103 In Florence this school organized numerous courses that grew and performed so well that they caught the attention of Laura 103  These courses, which appeared everywhere, were able to train hundreds of Red Cross nurses, a phenomenon of vast proportions studied by S. Bartoloni in Donne al Fronte. Le infermiere volontarie nella Grande Guerra, Rome, Jouvence, 1998; Id., Italiane alla guerra. L’assistenza ai feriti, 1915–1918, Venice, Marsilio, 2003; Id., Donne nella Croce rossa italiana tra guerra e impegno sociale, Venice, Marsilio, 2005. S.  Bartoloni. “Da una guerra all’altra. Le infermiere della Croce Rossa fra il 1911 e il 1945” in Guerra e pace nell’Italia del Novecento. Politica estera, cultura politica e correnti dell’opinione pubblica, edited by L. Goglia, R. Moro, L. Nuti, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2006, pp. 149–174. See also Le crocerossine nella Grande guerra. Aristocratiche e borghesi nei diari e negli ospedali militari: una via per l’emancipazione femminile, edited by P. Scandaletti and G. Variola, Udine, Gaspari Editore, 2008. Jewish women made their contributions to the Red Cross nurses in the military hospitals located in cities and on the warfront. Fanny Luzzatto, was a descendant of a prominent family of an “extremely close-knit Jewish-Gorizian microcosm” and sister of the illustrious Fabio Luzzatto, interventionist turned volunteer in the Alpini, the Italian Army’s mountain infantry. See A. Cavaglion, “Introduzione,” in G.L. Luzzatto, Scritti politici. Ebraismo e antisemitismo, edited A. Cavaglion and E. Tedeschi, Milan, Franco Angeli, 1996, pp. 15–17. Fanny Luzzatto was decorated with bronze medals of valor for her wartime efforts. “Voluntary nurse for the Red Cross in the war hospital n. 11, in Cormons, completed her noble mission even during the attacks of enemy artillery on the city, inspiring calm in those who were hospitalized with her admirable composure, carrying out her work of giving relief with a firmness of the spirit and steady courage. Cormons, August 1915–March 1916.” This is the statement in the report made to the Secretary General of the Ministry of War Affairs in June of 1919 to guarantee the awarding of the medal, and adding “annual Lire Cento soprassoldo” [annual stipend]. See Ministero della Guerra. Segretariato Generale, documento per attestare del conferito onorifico distintivo, firmato dal Ministro Segretario di Stato per gli Affari della Guerra, Rome, addì June 19, 1919. Archivio Fondazione Luzzatto. Even more emblematic of the commitment, devotion, and patriotism of Red Cross nurse Fanny Luzzato is the letter from the Medical Director Major of the Military Hospital of Ferrara: “To support this glorious war she…lavished the treasures of mercy and philanthropy in caring for our courageous injured and ill men. Her efforts, offered in the Italian way in the Military Hospitals of Udine, Cormons, Ferrara…awakened the admiration of everyone, and among all the instances [of sacrifice, she stands] as a rare example…With the thanks of Officials and of the Medical Corps, I repeat that more than any honor and praise, she will be thanked for…the pleasant echo…of the blessings that many beneficiaries and their families today send to her through me.” The Medical Director Major, Antonio de Napoli, Letter of “Encomio e ringraziamento,” Ferrara, 10 February 1919. Archivo Fondazione Luzzatto. Concerning the work of Fanny and her mother Adele (1838–1917) to aid soldiers, see V. Marchi, “Forti come un uomo.” Due esemplari figure di crocerossine ebree friulane: Adele e Fanny Luzzatto” in L’apporto degli ebrei all’assistenza sanitaria sul fronte della Grande Guerra, edited by R. Supino and D. Roccas, Turin, Zamorani, 2017, pp. 111–124. Among the voluntary nurses of the Red Cross, decorated for their work in the hospitals on the frontlines, besides Fanny Luzzatto, the names of Emma Fano (bronze medal), Maria Vittoria Jung (silver medal), Lidia Ottolenghi di Vallepiana (bronze medal), Elena Rietti

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Orvieto. This Florentine intellectual had made an appeal in July 1915 in Il Marzocco, a journal established and directed by her husband Angelo,104 to all the women in Florence to contribute their efforts to providing for the needs of the soldiers at the front.105 (bronze medal) were listed. See P.  Briganti, Il contributo militare degli ebrei italiani, cit., pp. 313, 327, 336, 346, 352. Silvia Treves (1891–1987) gives other important evidence of the contributions of Jewish women on the frontlines and of the patriotic involvement of Jewish Italians. In her unpublished journals, Silvia Treves, member of one of the most cultured and remarkable Jewish Florentine families, talks about her work in the military hospital in Florence after attending a preparatory course in Rome, an experience that influenced her decision to leave for the front. A significant moment in her writings is when she recounts the profound connection between nurses and patients, a relationship that constitutes an emblematic example of how much the war, with its inevitable dramas, represented an important and further moment of interaction and fusion between Jewish and Italian experience. In September 1916, in Florence, Silvia wrote: “If I think back to those dark nights in the wagons, to those badly wounded men, their suffering and my desire to help them, to ease their suffering and my instinctive impulse to transmit to them the strength that came from my affection,…from my grateful admiration for what they suffered for us, I realize that I have never experienced other moments like those, for their closeness of feeling and for the vibrant sympathy that I felt in me.” These strong patriotic and human words are joined with praise for the work—“true rest for the spirit, suffocates the sorrow, the doubts, the uncertainties, the remorse, the dismay, the desires, the aspirations, the regrets, and transforms them into a beautiful action and a healthy weariness”—(July 1916) which further attest to how Jewish and non-Jewish women’s mobilization for the war effort, regardless of their individual position on female emancipation, brought women to a common experience of work as a possibility of a new existence. See: S. Treves, Diari inediti, private family archive Treves Levi Vidale. I wish to express my thanks to the family for their generous granting of access to the family archive. Regarding her experience as a Red Cross nurse on the frontline, Silvia Treves published “Diario di guerra di una crocerossina fiorentina,” Rassegna storica toscana, XX, n. 2, July–December 1974, pp.  233–278. The letters of Red Cross nurse Luisa Ambron (1899–1991) to her mother provide a vivid testimonial of the times. Ambron, cousin to Silvia Treves, was assigned to the Hospital of Santa Maria Nuova in Florence. Edited by L. Viterbo, the letters are published in “Dalle lettere di una crocerossina del 1916,” Antologia Viesseux, XXII, n. 66, September– December, 2016, pp. 33–46. 104  See A. Boralevi, “Angiolo Orvieto, Il Marzocco, la società colta ebraica,” in Il Marzocco. Carteggi e cronache fra Ottocento e Avanguardie. (1887–1913), Atti del seminario di studi (12–13–14 dicembre 1983), edited by C. Del Vivo, Florence, Olschki, 1985, pp. 213–233. See A. Cavaglion,  “Introduzione,”  in  G.L.  Luzzatto,  Scritti politici. Socialismo e antifascismo, cit., pp. 15–17. 105  “That our efforts, whether voluntary or remunerated, may reach our fighters, that it may be accompanied by our thoughts…of love for all of the soldiers in the good cause, in the great name of Italy.” L.O., “Lavoro femminile gratuito e retribuito,” Il Marzocco, XX, n. 29,

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Laura, in such direct contact with the ardor of the homeland…joyfully undertakes the creation of a corps of nurses, parallel to that of the Red Cross, to serve in the Military hospitals which, unlike those of the Red Cross, are extremely deficient in assistance. Women of good will but inexperienced who volunteer must be trained in a short time, then each one will be given the most appropriate place in a hospital.106

The work of Jewish women in support of the army was also very useful in solving the serious problem of the high number of soldiers freezing at the front. Special credit for improving this predicament was due to Aurelia Josz. With the help of students at her school, in the course of a year, Josz and her students produced nearly 10,000 warm articles for the soldiers at the front.107 The war also posed the obvious problem of rescuing and rehabilitating the unfortunate soldiers who had been permanently maimed on the battlefield. In Milan, Fanny Finzi Ottolenghi was responsible for creating a care center which initially gave medical assistance to those who were unable to work, and then later provided rehabilitation and job placement for workers who had been crippled by injury or illness. During the July 18, 1915. In her piece, Laura Orvieto addressed an issue that had come to the attention of a Florentine newspaper, including material for an article that had created a certain disruption among women who served as volunteers. The issue under debate was that women who were not needy and therefore able to donate their work knitting and sewing for the army free of charge should leave the opportunity for work to those women for whom the small daily income provided a bit of relief to their families. In Florence, the Unione Fiorentina di beneficenza (Florentine Union of charity work), which Bice Cammeo supported, acted in this direction. Having received a commission to produce a large quantity of linen for soldiers, the Union provided essential sewing materials to needy women, thus allowing them to earn a modest sum. While she was convinced about the necessity of first providing work for women in strained financial situations, Orvieto nevertheless maintained that there was enough work for everyone, and there was no reason to blame those women who could work as volunteers and force them to do nothing. “We think that even if the work doesn’t necessarily bring in a financial compensation, it always brings a moral support, which, just like the other, we need in order to live.” 106  Storia di Angelo e Laura, Archivio contemporaneo del Gabinetto Viesseux. Fondo Orvieto, c. 299, p. 155, now in L. Orvieto, Storia di Angiolo e Laura, edited by C. Del Vivo, Florence, Olschki, 2001, p.  117. See also Donna Paola, La donna nella nuova Italia, cit., p. 68. The Samaritan Schools were an international federation started in Germany for the purpose of providing training in first aid. Courses were held in hospitals, schools, villages, mutual aid societies, and public universities. See E. Schiavon, Dentro la guerra, cit., p. 133. 107  After careful study, Aurelia Josz was able to find an efficient method for producing a special combination of fabrics to use in making clothing to protect the feet against freezing. See Donna Paola, La donna nella nuova Italia, cit., p. 105.

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war, Finzi Ottolenghi allowed this institution which bore her name to house soldiers crippled in battle and also provided considerable funds for the facilities that the new institution required.108 This is how the city of Milan managed to provide the first hospital for amputees. The hospital’s inauguration took place in September 1915, and was referenced in the The Jewish Banner with tones of deep admiration and pride—“actions such as those carried out by Fanny Finzi Ottolenghi honor Israel”—and included an invitation to all coreligionists to draw an example of what were “the common duties towards the Italian homeland to teach their children.”109 In Ancona, Eleonora Almagià (née Baruch 1852–1932), “with delicate and exquisite feeling” placed a spacious villa at the disposal of the Comitato marchigiano Pro-mutilati (Committee for Crippled Soldiers  of  Le Marche), accompanying the offer with a generous financial donation for the premises to be converted into a school and manufacturing workshop to employ the disabled.110 In 1917 in Florence, the Comitato per Assistenza dei mutilati in guerra (Committee for the Assistance of the Soldiers Mutilated in War) was given a large building owned by mother and daughter Matilde Forti Orvieto (1845–1935) and Alice D’Ancona Orvieto (1875–1969), to establish a school for professional rehabilitation. In accordance with the wishes of these two donors, once the war was over, the school would also care for handicapped or crippled children, or adults who had been disabled by work injury, misfortune, or illness.111 Also in Florence at the end of 1915, the Commissione di Assistenza e di Patronato (Commission for Assistance and Patronage), a division of the Committee for Crippled Soldiers, established a convalescent home in Villa Bondi. Ettore Levi (1880–1932), who  See ivi, pp. 116–117.  See “La guerra. Corrispondenza da Milano,” V.I., a. LXIII, fasc. XVIII, September 30, 1915, p. 508 and Federazione Nazionale dei Comitati di Assistenza ai militari Ciechi, Storpi, Mutilati: L’opera svolta in Italia, 1915–1918, Rome, Tipografia dell’Unione Editrice, 1918, pp. 133–135 and 148–160. See B. Bracco, La patria ferita. I corpi dei soldati italiani e la Grande guerra, Florence, Giunti, 2012. 110  “La guerra. Corrispondenza da Ancona,” V.I., LXV, fasc.  XIX–XX, October15–31, 1917, p. 443 and Federazione Nazionale dei Comitati, cit., p. 7. Its objective was to train the following professions: postoffice and telegraph employees, commercial offices (such as warehouse workers, shop assistants, office workers, correspondents, and bookkeepers), and draftsmen for engineering or industrial design. 111  “La guerra. Corrispondenza da Firenze,” V.I., LXIV, fasc.  IV, February 29, 1916, p. 98, and Federazione Nazionale dei Comitati, cit., p. 88. 108 109

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later founded the Ufficio italiano d’igiene (Italian Department of Hygiene) in 1921, lent his medical expertise to the center, and Red Cross nurses Mary and Nina Sforni, who belonged to a large wealthy Jewish family, directed the manufacturing workshops, organized an elementary school at their own expense, and also taught the students in first grade. The Committee also set up a special commission, which Amelia Rosselli was part of, to assist amputees during their stay in the hospital and helped provide them with housing after their discharge.112 The involvement of Jewish women in social and civil causes did not prevent them from supporting the charitable activities initiated by their Jewish communities. In Rome, for example, where the number of destitute had always been particularly high, the Deputazione Israelitica di Carità (Jewish Charity Delegation) felt women’s cooperation was needed in order to accomplish its activities following the outbreak of the war. The rabbi, the president of the Community, and the president of the Jewish Charity Delegation called for an organizational meeting, which a large number of women attended and which concluded with the establishment of a Patronato delle signore (Ladies’ Aid Committee) for the emotional, material, and religious support to the families of deployed soldiers.113 One particular area of focus for women’s social work was considered to be of the utmost importance, namely providing religious assistance to the 112  Federazione Nazionale dei Comitati, cit., pp. 88–90 and p. 93. See also Comitato per Assistenza dei mutilati in guerra.  Relazione della Commissione di Assistenza e di Patronato, Florence, Stab. Tipografico per minorenni corrigendi G. Ramella, 1917. 113  A meeting on July 21, 1915 of the administrative council of the Jewish Charity Delegation mentioned that very few women failed to respond to the call. The meeting took place on June 7, and on June 9, the executive committee was appointed. See Curiosando... nei verbali della deputazione dal 1886 al 1953, edited by A. Piperno, Florence, Editrice la Giuntina, 1991, p. 106, and “Gli israeliti italiani e la guerra,” V.I., LXIII, fasc. XI, June 15, 1915, pp. 318–319. As for the task of providing religious support, The Jewish Banner of June 30, 1915 announced that the Commissione delle assistenze sociali (Committee for Social Assistance) of Rome, which depended on the Comitato generale per la mobilitazione civile (Committee for the Civil Mobilization)—the author of the correspondence was likely referring to the Sezione assistenza del Comitato romano di organizzazione civile (Assistance Division of the Committee for Civil Organization in Rome)—was divided in three groups, one of which was in charge of providing religious support through local congregations of different denominations. In the Jewish community, the Ladies’ Aid Committee (Patronato delle signore) assumed responsibility for providing religious support. See “La Guerra. Roma,” V.I., LXIII, fasc. XII, June 30, 1915, p. 333. For an accurate analysis of the situation in Rome during the war period, see: A. Staderini, Combattenti senza divisa. Roma nella Grande guerra, Bologna, Il Mulino, 1995 and in particular pp. 75–137 on welfare activity.

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families of the soldiers. This focus justified the need for creating separate activities from those of secular and other religions’ charitable societies. In fact, without any religious purpose, maintaining religious distinctiveness would have appeared out of place and dangerous, as Anselmo Colombo commented a few days after the meeting in Rome in the The Jewish Banner of June 15, 1915. If, however, the families of soldiers who had been called up needed help to maintain their religion observance, then differentiating activities by religion was more appropriate than ever. How could… our good Jewish women participate in the works of public charity where after-school activities are held on Saturdays, where meals at school serve nothing kosher, where the same work is done in parishes and churches? The need for activities of our own consists only in this: that Jewish families must be placed in a position to remain religious.114

The aims of the welfare work, Colombo reiterated in The Jewish Banner of the following month, should therefore not be exclusively material, as was unfortunately often the case, but should also contribute to ensuring that the conditions for religious observance continued to be a force in the lives of individuals. There could be no nobler undertaking than restoring to “Israel…its splendor of piety and civilization,” Colombo emphasized, referring to the creation of the Ladies’ Aid Committee.115 This work was as meritorious as it was difficult, he added, because women would find themselves having to struggle with the leaders of the Jewish communities who were accustomed to thinking of Jewish social assistance as only a matter of “humanity and civic duty”; also, families receiving assistance had long been accustomed to obtaining help from the Jewish Charitable Works programs (Opere Pie ebraiche) “independently of any spirit of religiosity,” and even the children, who were accustomed to moving around in the schools, and after-school and recreation centers of the city would perhaps refuse to give priority to Jewish centers.116 However, Jewish women would  “Gli israeliti italiani e la guerra,” V.I., LXIII, fasc. XI, June 15, 1915, p. 319.  A. Colombo, “Collaborazione del pubblico,” V.I., LXIII, fasc. XIII, p. 319. 116  Ibidem. The fears of Anselmo Colombo were not completely unfounded. In the correspondence from Rome in the successive issue of The Jewish Banner, an article discussed a school club that was to be instituted by the Ladies’ Aid Committee but that never came about. There was a proposal by Eugenia Ravà to extend the time of Talmud Torà, to avoid children becoming a burden to their families during the summer months. “Many of the most distinguished young women” supported the proposal to create an after-school club, and the 114 115

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win, Colombo declared confidently. The war, the specter of death, and the request for prayers on behalf of relatives fighting at the front had helped to awaken religious feeling. The moment was opportune for “a gentle hand, a trusting soul” to “hasten the budding of new life in Judaism” and to ensure that this return to religion would not only be a momentary need of comfort in a time of pain and suffering, but would also be a solid basis for the Judaism of the coming times. However, contrary to the hopes of Colombo, the efforts of the ladies on the Committee in providing religious assistance to families appeared to develop far more slowly than the efforts of the same women in providing emotional and material support.117 These activities, like those that Jewish women participated in outside of the Jewish community alongside their non-Jewish sisters, proved to be very beneficial from the beginning. In addition to raising the money that allowed the Jewish Charity Delegation to continue providing a weekly allowance to the families of active-duty soldiers, each of the women serving on the Ladies’ Aid Committee assumed responsibility for two families, providing the necessary direction and support to complete all of the family’s required paperwork when their relatives were called to duty, and to report to the Delegation when the support it offered was still inadequate. The Committee also saw to providing the necessary documents to legalize those marriages whose formal procedures had been interrupted by the outbreak of war, preparing baby clothes and supplies for the newborns who arrived “while their fathers offered their lives to the motherland,” and finding work for the numerous mothers who lacked the means to support their families, as well as making woolen clothing for Jewish soldiers at the front. The effective, sustained efforts of the Ladies’ Aid Committee, together with the work carried out by the Delegation, caused same Pro-Cultura organization volunteered their best associates and the brightest students in their Hebrew classes to ensure that language study was included among the after-school activities. (see “Gli israeliti italiani e la guerra,” cit., p.  319). The failure of the initiative stemmed from an insufficient number of children, because families chose not to enroll their children, given their distance from the location on the other side of the Tevere, and the shortened schedule when compared to local schools. This gave rise to the comment from the Roman correspondent who reasserted that assistance from the Committee and the Charity Delegation, which was managed by the presidency, should be religious. By limiting that assistance exclusively to charity, it was clear that families, after due consideration, preferred to direct their children toward local schools. See “La Guerra. Roma,” V.I., LXIII, fasc. XIV– XV, July 31–August 15, 1915, pp. 390–391. 117  A.  Colombo, “Collaborazione del pubblico,” V.I., LXIII, fasc.  XIII, July 15, 1915, p. 376. 27.

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The Jewish Banner to express the hope that the charitable work in Rome would serve as an example and motivation to other Jewish communities who relied on Civilian Committees (Comitati cittadini) to deal with the wartime needs rather than becoming effective themselves.118 The city of Rome also provided an emblematic example of how deeply Italian Jews identified with their nation, an identity that was fortified during the war period and translated into women’s welfare activities for the benefit of the population of the entire city and were frequently carried out by the same women who dedicated their energies to aiding the Jewish community. In March 1917, Attività femminile sociale (Female Social Action), a publication of the  Consiglio nazionale delle donne italiane (National Council of Italian Women), which reported in detail on the wartime efforts of women, called its readers’ attention to one “Segretariato del popolo” (Secretariat of the People), which had distinguished itself by being managed exclusively by women and for being extremely effective in the work it carried out. The Secretariat in question had been established by Ermelinda Sereni (1871–1957), who was already involved in the charitable activities of the Jewish community as a member of the Ladies’ Aid Committee board of directors and who was also the wife of the president of the community, Angelo Sereni. Active as of June 1915, the Secretariat could boast prominent and varied activities. It dealt with the distribution of food vouchers, milk, prepaid envelopes for military correspondence, and clothing for soldiers, children, and the elderly, all of which was made or supplied by the director herself, Ermelinda Sereni, and her collaborators and coworkers, Rosina Piperno, Dina Pontecorvo, and Elda Milano (1898–1994) (the latter two were related to the Sereni family). The Secretariat was also responsible for providing employment for needy women knitting and sewing, writing to soldiers whose relatives were illiterate, appealing to the Ministry of War to grant military pensions in those cases, which, although not covered by the “Decreto Luogoteneziale,” were still “morally and materially deserving,” and completing the many government documents in order to legitimize marriages and births, and helping individuals to qualify for military benefits including reduction of rents, health care, repatriations, and free travel. The Secretariat did not receive any contribution from the Comitato di Organizzazione Civile (Civil Organization Committee) because the premises housing its 118  See “La guerra. Corrispondenza da Roma,” V.I., LXIII, fasc.  XIII, November 15, 1915, pp. 611–612; A. Piperno, Curiosando nei verbali della deputazione, cit., pp. 106–107.

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headquarters had been provided free of charge by Angelo Sereni, who also provided the necessary materials and costs of maintenance.119 While the welfare work directed by this small, active group led by Ermelinda Sereni was not dissimilar from the work that their non-Jewish sisters contributed to the same organizations, nor to the group’s work in other aspects of women’s mobilization for the war effort, the work nevertheless seemed to be articulated according to the essential features of charity and aid to the needy which was so characteristic of the Jewish tradition. As the Attività femminile sociale itself emphasized, the Secretariat aimed primarily “not to give temporary and uncertain help” but “to arouse in those who have been neglected, by means of moral support, practical advice and direct or indirect material aid, the energy and will necessary to use their own strength and abilities.”120 The involvement of Jewish women in the war effort far exceeded the examples mentioned so far. These instances however are representative of a wartime experience that marked for women, as well as for men, another vital time of interaction and fusion with Italian society, the beginning of a phase that would see the Jewish situation totally immersed within the wider national context. Patriotism and the desire to work for their homeland created an even stronger foundation for the union between Jews and Italians of another faiths. Though this union already boasted a 50-year history, it found its own affirmation and definitive legitimization from the war. It was a union in which women had played and were playing a central role and which would later take on further significance and various forms for women.

119  See “Benemerenze femminili,” Attività femminile sociale, V, n. 3, March 1917, pp. 93–96. As recorded in a written testimony of Elda Milano, the young niece of Ermelinda Sereni, the Secretariat saw to verifying the validity of cases of poverty asking for assistance. “A committee of men was organized that went into homes to verify if women had told the truth. If not, they didn’t receive anything.” At the end of the war, Elda Milano received an award for her public service along with a certificate and a bronze medal. Elda Milano Spizzichino, Kibbutz Malkiya, Hagalil, Israel, February 22, 1992. 120  “Benemerenze femminili,” cit., p. 94.

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Female Identity, Jewish Identity, and Social Engagement The war and in particular the common effort to support their homeland that Jewish men and women had supported alongside their fellow countrymen had undoubtedly helped to shift and blur the already fluid distinction between Jewish identity and Italian identity. In the Jewish community, the pride in their devotion and loyalty to the homeland which was demonstrated by a large segment of Italian Judaism, went hand in hand with an awareness of their religious and cultural specificity. That distinction had always been problematic and was certainly not easy to maintain in a climate of intense patriotism, which, by bringing everyone together under one flag and requiring everyone’s energies, left little room and little time for differences. It is therefore significant that in December 1915, the Jewish women of Ferrara supported a manifesto in praise of “Christmas Poetry.” The following year the melancholy prose was published that the writer Ada Cagli della Pergola under the pen name “Fiducia,” a former contributor to The Jewish Banner dedicated to the soldiers at the front,121 on the occasion of their second “war Christmas.” Both examples give proof of how the commonality of their ideals and their efforts led Jewish women to share in the sadness with their sisters of different faiths during a holiday that was so important for the latter, now saddened by mourning and loneliness. This commonality sometimes seemed to induce Jewish women to venture “a little too far along the path of assimilation,” as The Jewish Banner remarked regarding the excessive malleability of their female coreligionists in Ferrara,122 in rather conciliatory tones. While not necessarily implying that these women were on a path of no return, the comment 121  Ada Cagli Della Pergola, (1876–?) had in the past contributed inspiring pages to The Jewish Banner celebrating the holiness of Passover and the sanctity of rituals marking girls’ religious coming of age (see: “È Pasqua,” V.I., XLVII, fasc. III, March 1899, pp. 77–79; “La maggiorità religiosa delle fanciulle,” V.I., XLVIII, fasc. VI, June 1900, pp. 197–199). Now she described with sadness and gloom the second miserable Christmas during wartime for the soldiers on the frontline: “This day was for [our soldiers] as well, full of a close and quiet happiness, sweetened with an innocent, childlike sense, which recalled forgotten prayers to the lips, and childhood memories to the mind. Christmas, a whitened cradle, a soft rosy cheek, a wandering angel that awakens. The holiday of the Nativity, so human and touching, encapsulates their entire life. Mother, bride, children, all far away.” Fiducia, “Natale di guerra,” Attività femminile sociale, IV, n. 12, December 1916, pp. 335–336. 122  G.  Bassani, “La guerra. Corrispondenza da Ferrara,” V.I., LXIII, fasc.  XXIV, 31 December, 1915, p. 7.

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highlighted the problematic balance between Italianness and Judaism which pre-dated the war, and would certainly continue after the war’s conclusion. First gradually, then extensively involved in social assistance and manufacturing activities,123 both Jewish and non-Jewish women had developed a greater awareness of themselves, of their own capabilities and the value of autonomy, both economic and organizational from their experiences mobilizing to promote efforts on the homefront. At the end of the war, women envisioned a transition to a new era that would finally allow them to live as equals to men as fully participating and responsible citizens. As published on September 1916, on the pages of Attività femminile sociale Vast is now the number of women in banks and public offices, who took the place of those men that were called to rally around the flags. The female component, whose intellectual incapacity everyone was panting to prove before the war, has demonstrated to the astonishment of humanity the opposite of what was naively and maliciously asserted…Let us look beyond the war; the woman-surrogate…who returns home to curl up in her own house, does not exist; though she will surrender a position to him whose duty it is to fill it, she will be able to occupy others, which our victorious and improved homeland will easily offer to her.124

Similar opinions and view were recorded during this same period in the writings of Jewish women who had distinguished themselves in the cultural landscape of the time. In her text Le donne che lavorano (Women at Work), published in 1916, Virginia Treves Tedeschi, a well-known writer and supporter of women’s suffrage,125 addressed all Italian women, 123  For more on this specific period of women’s mobilization for the war effort, see the study of B. Curli, Le italiane al lavoro 1914–1920, Venice, Marsilio, 1998; Id., “Le travail des femmes pendant la Première Guerre mondiale,” Histoire & Société, n. 8, octobre 2003, pp. 85–96; Id. “Dalla Grande Guerra alla Grande crisi: i lavori delle donne,” in Il Novecento 1896–1945. Il lavoro nell’età industriale, edited by S. Musso, Rome, Castelvecchi, 2015, pp. 201–251. See particularly pp. 213–223. 124  L. Costa, “Le donne e gl’impieghi,” Attività femminile sociale, IV, n. 9, September 1916, pp. 228–230. 125  Virginia Treves Tedeschi (1849–1916) was born in Verona, moved to Milan after her wedding to Giuseppe Treves, a member of a prominent family of editors, and under the pen name of Cordelia, authored a prolific literary production that brought her great notoriety at the turn of the century. Treves was always interested in women’s issues, but her first concern

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claiming that work was the crucial instrument for female emancipation. Treves Tedeschi envisaged a new family dynamic in which men and women, equally engaged in working, became one another’s sounding board in a relationship freed from traditional, solidified hierarchies. If all will think about their own business, the family will work as smoothly as the wheels of a machine that turn perfectly, and the home will become a safe haven where children returning from school and parents from work will meet and peacefully share their ideas.126

The war, observed the writer, had made the women’s cause take giant steps forward. Bringing about “a miracle in the midst of all war’s horrors to reveal to us and to the world our strength and our value,” the conflict had triggered an irreversible process that allowed women to retain their hard-won places even in the future after peace had returned. After the war, life will be more difficult…many things will have to be set in order…there will be work for everyone, and after the evidence that women have brilliantly given, all careers will be open to her. I hope that the new woman will respond to the call and understand that work can provide the greatest joy.…So let us go forward with courage, and let us all work, for us, for our family and humanity.127

Such affirmations were in harmony with those of Enrica Barzilai Gentilli, a writer and fervent patriot from Trieste.128 In a nineteenth-century was mainly compassion for those suffering in difficult situations. In 1909, Treves Tedeschi’s participation alongside Alessandrina Ravizza (1846–1915) and Linda Malnati (1855–1921), prominent figures in the women’s movement, to found the Comitato Lombardo Pro-Suffragio Femminile (Pro-Suffrage Women’s Committee of Lombardy) marked the author’s definitive awareness regarding the necessity to bring fundamental changes to the judicial and economical condition of women. See A. Arslan, “Scrittrici e giornaliste lombarde tra Otto e Novecento,” in Donna lombarda. 1860–1945, edited by A. Gigli Marchetti and N. Torcellan, cit., pp.  268–270; Dizionario biografico delle donne lombarde, cit., p.  1062; E. Schiavon, Interventiste nella Grande Guerra, Assistenza, propaganda, lotta per i diritti a Milano e in Italia (1911–1919), Florence, Le Monnier, 2015, p. 18. 126  V. Treves Tedeschi, Le donne che lavorano, Milan, Treves, 1916, pp. 18–19. 127  ivi, p. 203. 128  Enrica Barzilai (1859–1936) was from a wealthy and well-educated family of the Jewish middle class of Trieste. In 1884 she was married to Alberto Gentili, also from Trieste, with whom she shared a love for culture, a love for Italy, and “irredentist tension” that at the beginning of the war led her to develop an aversion for the Germans and the Slovaks

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drama by Ettore Dominici, La Dote (The Dowry),129 the misfortunes of a poor husband afflicted by debts from his wife’s extravagance, whose dowry is nothing but an illusion, is contrasted with the venerable fortune of his brother whose true and greatest wealth is the wisdom of his wife (though she is poor and without dowry) and her prudent management of money. Inspired by the drama, Barzilai Gentilli observed how the experience of the war contributed to draining the practice of the dowry of all meaning. After learning in the tragic period of the war, “to be enough in and of herself,” a woman, the writer affirmed, would no longer be content ‘to be kept just to lavish smiles and charm,” but wanted to be “a wise companion, a genuine partner to her husband.” The love for work, the knowledge and experience of the “virtue of sacrifice” constituted a new form of capital for women, more secure and more solid than what had determined the opportunities for and convenience of marriage in the past. This new feminine capital in the years to come would not only make unions more likely between “two beings in love,” but would also allow women to feel proud of more actively participating in building a future for her children.130 The views of Amelia Rosselli and Laura Orvieto were not far different from these. As they had repeatedly expressed in the past, marriage and motherhood were and should remain the most important elements of female existence; important but not exclusive. On other occasions these two intellectuals had already asserted the right and duty of women to become aware of their own power and dignity; in this sense, expressed in openly racist terms. See T. Catalan, “Linguaggi e stereotipi dell’antislavismo irredentista dalla fine dell’Ottocento alla Grande Guerra,” in Fratelli al massacro. Linguaggi e narrazioni della Prima guerra mondiale, edited by Id., Rome, Viella, 2015, pp. 39–68; Id. “The Construction of the Enemy in two Jewish Writers: Carolina Coen Luzzatto and Enrica Barzilai Gentilli,” in Rethinking the Age of Emancipation. Comparative and Transnational Perspectives on Gender, Family, and Religion in Italy and Germany 1800–1918, edited by M. Baumeister, P. Lenhard, R. Nattermann, New York-Oxford, Berghahn Books, 2020, pp. 353–375. A popular performer in salons and cultural circles (such as the Lyceum, for example) as well as a capable lecturer, Enrica Barzilai Gentilli was the author of novels and theatric texts, some of which were inspired by themes of divorce and maternity. See R. Curci and G. Ziani, Bianco, Rosa e Verde. Scrittrici a Trieste fra ’800 e ’900, Trieste, Lint, 1993, pp. 87–95. 129  E. Dominici, La dote, Commedia in tre atti, (1872), Milan, Carlo Barbini, 1890, 3rd edition. 130  E.  Barzilai-Gentilli, “Il fallimento della dote,” Attività femminile sociale, IV, n. 11, November 1916, p. 277.

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intellectual pursuits and work formed a vital intersection. Work was not necessarily connected to financial remuneration. “Work for work’s sake,” Laura Orvieto wrote in 1911 in the Marzocco, a journal that a few years in the future would welcome the publication of Treves Tedeschi’s book.131 Work for the good of others. In a household where the man already makes a sufficient sum to support the family, could not an energy of industriousness emanate from the woman that elevates the female spirit and dignity, and expands a wider horizon to human individuality?132

In 1920 on the pages of the Almanacco della donna italiana (Almanac of the Italian woman), Orvieto showed herself to be completely in step with the times and changes in the postwar period, affirming the need to adapt the education of young women to the transformations in the family, a family that was no longer an “absolute monarchy” but a “republic…the free will of two beings who unite to find the best way forward in perfect equality,” a family that needed a responsible and organized woman. These were qualities that young women could acquire by being trained to work and being “free to judge for themselves.” Women as artists or scholars, dedicated to social work or domestic labor, women of letters or who were “passionate about poultry breeding,” whatever their inclination, mothers needed to leave their daughters free to follow the chosen path but should not remove motherhood from their training. “That great feeling of motherhood which all women, in general, possess, and which is the inspiration of their own nature should be cultivated in all women.”133 Marriage and motherhood, as Amelia Rosselli wrote later to her friend Gina Lombroso, were the “full manifestation of a woman’s life” but were no longer “separate things, disconnected from social life which has changed so much.” They were the “intimate goal” to which every woman should aspire, but a goal that could be reached even if she possessed serious intellectual interests or was “forced” by necessity to work.

 G. Caprin, “Le donne domani,” Il Marzocco, XXIV, n. 20, May 15, 1919.  Mrs. El (Laura Orvieto), “Il lavoro e la donna,” Il Marzocco, XVI, n. 39, September 24, 1911. 133  L. Orvieto, “Come educherò le mie figlie,” Almanacco della donna italiana, I, 1920, pp. 116–125. 131 132

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I was walking along a path yesterday and saw a young couple in front of me…They must have been recently married, they were holding hands tenderly. They were counting up their expenses, and they added up what he had saved in salary and what she had saved; and they calculated how many days they could stay…I couldn’t help but think: ‘Here is a truly modern couple.’134

Aside from an intellectual elite who were attentive and sensitive to the changes taking place in society and eager to alter the life path of young women belonging mainly to the lower-middle, regardless of their religious affiliation, it remained to be seen how these same social changes were felt and received by other women, especially those who were fully integrated into the social context, but who were still much less visible, women for whom the Jewish community continued to be an important area of interaction with the world, even if not necessarily the only one. In this same period, women who had been involved in activities to alleviate the suffering of the Jewish population in those areas of Europe most affected by the violence of the war also aided their coreligionists who resided in that part of Palestine that British troops had not yet reached, and were therefore the victims of atrocities perpetrated by the Turks.

 Letter from Amelia Rosselli to Gina Lombroso. Florence, August 19, 1922 in Politica e affetti familiari. Lettere dei Rosselli ai Ferrero (1917–1943), edited by M. Calloni and L. Cedroni, Milan Feltrinelli, 1997, pp. 152–154. In 1917 Gina Lombroso, together with the help of Amelia Rosselli, founded the Associazione divulgatrice donne italiane ADDI (Association of Italian Women for the promotion of Social Studies). The association promoted the participation of Italian women in the scientific, social, political, and philosophical developments of the country by entrusting women with studying, critiquing, and disseminating studies in history, economy, politics, and philanthropy, and so on, that didn’t circulate widely and were therefore only accessible to a small public. On the work of the ADDI see: D. Dolza, Essere figlie di Lombroso, cit., pp. 174–181. Gina Lombroso, unlike her sister Paola Lombroso Carrara and Amelia Rosselli, considered the domestic and maternal roles as the entire and complete expression of female existence. This view would be amply illustrated in her work, L’anima della donna (Bologna, Zanichelli, 1920), a volume very much in tune with Jewish tradition and with the themes discussed in the Jewish press in the late 19th century. Paola Lombroso and Amelia Rosselli, while considering the private sphere as the main sphere of fulfillment for women, did not however exclude the possibility of other pursuits provided that they were compatible with a woman’s domestic and maternal roles. 134

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Women and Jewish Communities: New Needs and Old Models In February 1917, Israel published an appeal from the Jewish women of Ferrara who had formed the Ladies Aid Committee, and addressed to their coreligionists in order to raise awareness of the poverty and suffering among the struggling Jews in Poland. The women aimed to solicit a generous financial contribution for the victims of the war, especially children, who were in need of all the essentials in order to withstand the hardships of winter. The newspaper, which had responded to the appeal by immediately establishing a fund, emphasized how the “gentle women of Israel” had shown with these efforts that they understood the profound meaning of Jewish “nationalism” which caused all Jews to consider themselves one, united by the same spiritual, historical, and cultural bond, despite belonging to different geographical, political, or linguistic environments. “The anguish of the Jewish body and spirit has moved their sweet, unforgetting souls, which in this tragic hour of humanity, reaches beyond guarded borders.”135 Indeed, as evidenced in the lists of donors published in Israel and The Jewish  Banner, it was mainly women who collected the contributions throughout the various Jewish communities, and their participation was strongly represented among the names of those who generously donated.136 Similarly, a few months later, fundraising on behalf of the Jews in Palestine, promoted by the Comitato delle Comunità Israelitiche Italiane (Commission of Italian Jewish Communities) with an appeal drafted by the president Angelo Sereni, saw the women of various Jewish communities actively participate in collecting donations.137 This was nothing new, since charitable activities such as fundraising were hardly unfamiliar to Jewish women. As far as the gathering of funds was concerned, particularly on behalf of Palestine, the debate which had occupied the pages of La Settimana Israelitica in 1914 over the role of 135  “Le donne ebree di Ferrara agli Ebrei d’Italia. Per soccorrere il popolo d’Israele che muore nella zona di guerra orientale,” Israel, II, n. 7, February 15, 1917. 136  See, for example, “Sottoscrizione a favore dei bimbi Ebrei della Polonia, vittime della guerra,” Israel, II n. 10, 8 March 1917; “Pro-bimbi ebrei della Polonia Russa,” V.I., LXV,  fasc. V–VI, March 15–31, 1917, pp. 128–131; fasc. VII–VIII, April 15–30, 1917, pp. 181–185; fasc. IX–X, May15–31, 1917, pp. 229–232. 137  In the Comitato Fiorentino di Soccorso (Florentine Aid Society), for example, three of the seven members were: Elisa Benaim, Elena Benzimra, and Recha Margulies. ACEF, Gestione Comunità, Raccolte per Israele, E.16.1.

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women in the time of the revival of Italian Judaism, had concluded by designating this kind of fundraising activity as ideal for Jewish women. However, to this ongoing tradition of charity, new elements were added which did not break with tradition, but which suggested that women were prepared to express in other forms that same love and spirit of sacrifice that had been so exalted by Israel, replete with rhetorical flourishes. Not only were women striving to alleviate the suffering of their desperate coreligionists in distant lands, they were also taking responsibility for managing their own communities, particularly those whose existence was seriously at risk, provided, of course, that they were finally granted a wider space in which to maneuver. Contrary to common complaint, not all women reacted indifferently to the crisis in which Italian Judaism was embroiled, or accepted the crisis as a foregone conclusion. Those who wanted to work on behalf of their own community seemed furthermore to have attained a sufficient awareness of the need to redefine the terms and substance of their participation in community life; in other words, they were aware that a greater freedom of movement was a prerequisite for any effective activity on behalf of the community. A representative example would be the “Jewish ladies of Siena,” particularly the women who directed the Società di Misericordia (Society of Mercy). As reported in detail by Israel, during a meeting held in February (1917), these women had proposed reforming the parts of the law that prohibited women from actively participating in the cultural and administrative business of the “Jewish University” (another term for the community) in order to remedy the leadership vacuum that afflicted their community. Religion played a decisive role in this claim. Noting the inability of men to shake off the “shameful and harmful inertia” in which the religious and cultural life of the Keilah138 languished, the Jewish women of Siena showed their determination to take the initiative to save their Jewish heritage. By virtue of their role as mothers, and above all as educators responsible for teaching respect for and observance of Jewish values, these women felt it was their obligation and duty to ensure that their children who returned from the battlefields would find “a Jewish home, brothers and sisters united in securing the future of Sienese Judaism.” Given the impossibility of bringing together men willing to dedicate time and work to lift “the affairs of Jewish religion and culture” from their forlorn condition, the women saw no other solution than to present their request to reform the current statute in order to allow women 138

 Keilah is the Hebrew term to refer to “community.”

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to hold administrative positions in the community to the Comitato delle Università italiane (another term for community) in Rome. The Jewish women of Siena are ready to consecrate themselves to the Community and to defend their survival with all their strength so that their children do not forget their people, where they belong, and the ideas that are their thousand-year-old heritage. But the current statute denies women—against the traditions of our race—to watch over the affairs of Jewish thought and administration.139

Although an isolated case which apparently was not, at this point, followed by a general uprising by women who longed to give a new dimension to their work, this initiative by the Jewish women of Siena nevertheless represented an event of significant import. In this effort there were echoes of the debate that was stirring just prior to the outbreak of the war which had seen a segment of Jewish women re-evaluating the foundations of their presence in the community. With their claim, the Sienese women, albeit in different ways and for different reasons, expressed the same need for participation that roused a large segment of Italian women. This need for participation had centralized the right to vote as one of the main objectives to be achieved. Margherita Ancona (1881–1966), coreligionist of the enterprising Sienese women  and ardent women’s suffragist considered voting to be the “basis of women’s emancipation…the authorization of a natural right and the foundation for a social life for women that is richer in rights, but even more so in duties,” as she affirmed during the National Conference of women in Rome in October 1917.140 The war had emptied  “Le donne di Siena per la loro Comunità,” Israel, II, n. 10, March 8, 1917.  M. Ancona, Il Suffragio Femminile. Stato presente della questione in Italia. Relazione al Convegno Nazionale Femminile di Roma, 7–9 ottobre 1917, Milan, Stab. D’Arti Grafiche F.lli Azzimonti, 1918, p.  4. Margherita Ancona was born in Palermo and moved to Milan in 1903 to teach literature at Cesare Beccaria Senior High School. A firm supporter of female suffrage, in 1913 she was among the Italian delegates at the International Suffrage Congress in Budapest. In 1916 she became the president of the Lombardy Pro-Suffrage organization. At the Eighth Conference of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance in Geneva in 1920, Ancona served as a delegate of the National Pro-Suffrage Federation, and was the first Italian woman ever elected to the administrative council. See E. Guerra, Il dilemma della pace. Femministe e pacifiste sulla scena internazionale, 1914–1939, Rome, Viella, 2014, p. 70; E. Schiavon, Interventiste nella Grande Guerra. Assistenza, propaganda, lotta per i diritti a Milano e in Italia (1911–1919), cit., p. 315. On the issue of female suffrage in Italy from the Unification until fascism, see the studies of P. Galeotti, Storia del voto alle donne in Italia. Alle radici del difficile rapporto tra donne e politica, Rome, Biblink, 2006, particularly 139 140

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the arguments of the antisuffragists of any meaning, arguments that all centered on the moral and intellectual inadequacies of women. But, as Ancona observed, in terms of rights, the future of women was not very promising. The attitude of lawmakers was still to consider women working as merely an episode of a woman’s life which should occur solely within the walls of the home. Women…MUST all return and enfold themselves in the sanctuary of the home; therefore, they need no new social laws nor any legal and political emancipation. Indeed, the issue is not yet mature, the woman is not yet mature: they must mature, mature, and then we will talk about it. This is what they will say tomorrow, or rather, what they are already saying today.141

Is it therefore in this context that the Community’s response to the offer by the Sienese women should be read? Their proposal to revise those parts of community regulations that excluded women from community administration was commented on by Israel in rather positive terms. Though considering the solution as “radical” and completely new for “the modern structure of Jewish affairs,” the newspaper held that the Comitato delle Università should take into account the “offer” of the Sienese women because it could be a means of ensuring the survival of the smaller Jewish communities. Moreover, referring to those “traditions of our race” mentioned by their Sienese coreligionists, Israel pointed out that Miriam, Deborah, Huldah, and Esther had set the precedent, and that the Jewish tradition could be ready “to receive the efforts that, in the absence of men, Jewish mothers eagerly offer.”142 However, this cautious openness on the part of Israel could not be said to be indicative of a real change of mentality, although perhaps in some cases, the idea that women could have access to more important roles within the community was not completely rejected. The dominant opinion, however, and the one to which Israel gave more space, did not seem to go in this direction. It was true, as the pp. 19–139, and Donne alle urne. La conquista del voto. Documenti 1864–1946, edited by M.  D’Amelia, Rome, Biblink 2006, particularly pp.  69–112; see also the previously cited M.  P. Bigaran, “Progetti e dibattiti parlamentari sul suffragio femminile: da Peruzzi a Giolitti,” in Rivista di storia contemporanea, XIV, n. 1, January 1985, pp. 50–82 and Id., “Il voto alle donne in Italia dal 1912 al fascismo,” Rivista di storia contemporanea, XVI, n. 2, April 1987, pp. 240–265. 141  M. Ancona, Il Suffragio Femminile. Stato presente della questione in Italia, cit., p. 15. 142  “Le donne di Siena per la loro Comunità,” cit.

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rabbi of Florence, Samuel Margulies, complained on the occasion of the celebration of the first day of Shavu’oth in 1917143 that the responsibility for the progressive and shameful decline of Judaism was to be attributed to men. Unable to “resist the dissolute and corroding action” of the context in which they lived, Jewish men had been reduced to a life that was “empty and vacuous, dull and insipid.”144 But to revive the future of Judaism, the task of women was not to take up the reins of community administration. Rather, an unexpected and almost miraculous ray of light had appeared in the darkened condition of Italian Judaism, Margulies said, referring to the work of regeneration and renewal carried out by the “noblest part of our youth.” And women had to contribute to this work by reconsecrating “the Jewish home,” educating their children in the knowledge and love of religion and in the “sacred pride of being Jews.”145 In other words, as another contributor to Israel, Giacomo Manasse, added shortly afterwards, this work of rebirth being carried out by the youth, a precious work so rich in effects for the future, still needed the support of a “coefficient” who could inspire more than any other, who could preserve and enlarge the feeling of “Jewish nationality”: that coefficient could only be “the Jewish woman, the Jewish mother.” How then could this support be achieved? Of all the possible ways to try and reestablish involvement of the Jewish mother in the education of the new generation, Manasse urged the raising of mothers up “to the high dignity of educator,” because this would result in her sensing her obligation to fulfill “her noble mission” as well as in her feeling pride in accomplishing it.146 A conspicuous incongruity emerged between the theoretical approach to the problem and its actual practical solution, as evident in the articles by Manasse and Margulies. Which women, and how many of them, were still willing to evaluate their lives exclusively in Jewish terms, as Margulies wished? As for Manasse’s proposal, the notion of exalting the maternal and educational roles of women had been part of the discussion over the “woman question” for more than half a century, and for more than half a century that approach had largely proven to be insufficient to 143  Shavu’oth in Hebrew refers to the Feast of Weeks, or Pentecost, celebrated the 6th and 7th of Sivan (June) and which commemorates the giving of the law to the people of Israel. 144  S.H. Margulies, “La donna israelita e l’avvenire d’Israele,” Israel, II, n. 23–24, June 11, 1917. 145  Ibidem. 146  G.  Manasse, “Nazionalismo ebraico ed educazione materna,” Israel, II, n. 26, June 28, 1917.

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accommodating women’s lived reality. Therefore, considering the slowness, if not outright reluctance of accepting the possibility that Jewish women could contribute to the “Jewish cause” by playing important roles in the community, as the Jewish women of Siena proposed, the problem remained unresolved of providing women with reference points and ideals that could in some way motivate them to regain an awareness of the “sublime mission that suits them,” but that took into consideration the new times and the need for new models.

“Sisters” in Palestine In October 1918, Israel published an extensive and detailed account of the life of women in Palestine. This was a translation of an article that appeared during the same period in the Zionist Review. The author, Nita Lange (1884–1922), analyzed the overall condition of the woman’s world in Palestine in terms of education, political rights, agricultural work, and religion, as well as examining the various stages of the complicated evolution that had already impacted the female world before the outbreak of the war. The interest expressed by Israel was quite natural, given the attention that the newspaper devoted to all the issues concerning the life and destiny of the historical homeland of the Jews, a life and a destiny to which women had contributed and continued to contribute, as Lange herself reported. The space dedicated to this specific theme was also an attempt to provide the “Jewish women of the Italian section of Israel” with a new model of womanhood. In fact, through her commitment and devotion to the realization of a great spiritual, political, and national project, this new woman could find the pathway to her emancipation. The experience of women in Palestine, as portrayed by Lange, was however much more complex and re-evaluated the myth that involved the figure of the pioneer woman. Especially among the Jews of the Diaspora, the myth suggested a pioneer woman who shared not only the hard work of building and establishing the foundations of the future Jewish state along with the man, but also shared the same rights.147 The author emphasized the progress made in the field of women’s education, and was optimistic for more progress to come, despite the many obstacles imposed by families, particularly by the more traditional Sephardic, Eastern, and Askenazite families who were hostile to an educational system that would orient their daughters toward  N.R. Lange, “Le donne e la Palestina,” Israel, III, n. 42, October 31, 1918.

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working and economic autonomy.148 They were even more hostile to co-­ educational instruction, which they felt presupposed a “relationship between the sexes that was different from that of traditional Judaism.”149 As far as religious and political equality was concerned, Lange’s analysis became more critical. “As for the political rights of women in Palestine, it seems that theory is ahead of practice,” she stressed.150 In the colonies, women could enjoy the right to vote only if they owned some land, but generally it was the husbands and not the wives who had the status of landowners.151 In the event of her husband’s death, the woman inherited his electoral prerogative, an inheritance, the author added, which the widow preferred to pass on to her son who worked the land for her. Only rarely had women devoted themselves to agriculture, but in such cases, those “pioneers of women’s work” could exercise their right to vote. Hoping for an emancipation that was “not in name only,” Lange seemed to criticize both the women who had forfeited their rights (and agricultural work) and the organizational criteria of the colony, which, by attaching the right to vote to land ownership, were undervaluing the “very important influence” that women could exercise in government councils that dealt with local problems such as hygiene, health, education, and the maintenance and development of roads.152 According to Lange, no great progress had been made in the religious life of women in Palestine either. The issue of the religious inequality of  Consider the example of female Jews from Yemen. Among the Yemenite community, the migration to Palestine began its major initiative in 1882. The move offered women the possibility to free themselves from the oppressive limits placed on them by their families and the community. During the years that Lange made her report, the level of education for girls in Yemen, like their conditions and their lifestyle, were considerably better than those of the first-generation female Yemenite immigrants. For more on this topic see N. Druyan, “Yemenite Jewish Women Between Tradition and Change,” in Pioneers and Homemakers. Jewish Women in Pre-State Israel, edited by D.S.  Bernstein, Albany, State University of New York, 1992, pp. 75–87. 149  Although Lange recognized that co-education until the age of 18 or 19 was “something new for the East and for Judaism,” and opened new problems, she was nevertheless certain that Palestinian girls would be able “hereafter to have an equal chance to study along with male [students]. Culture is a precious birthright of the Hebrews, and slowly even the ultraOrthodox Jew will allow his daughter to study where she has the legal right to study.” N. Lange, “Le donne e la Palestina,” cit. 150  Ibidem. 151  Nita Lange is likely referring to the moshavòt colonies, agricultural settlements that were established in the first aliyà where relationships were regulated by private property. 152  See N. Lange, “Le donne e la Palestina,” cit. 148

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women was dealt with to a degree by those Jews who had stepped away from the external manifestations of Jewish life, and from whom one could not expect religious guidance and encouragement. The majority of the population, however, remained attached to the teachings of their fathers, so that women found themselves playing “the same part they would in Russia, or in Rumania or Yemen or Aleppo.” On Saturday mornings, synagogue was attended mainly by elderly women who concentrated on praying and crying, and by little girls who looked down to see “the wonderful things” happening on the ground floor. Mothers were not there to inspire feelings of respect and reverence in their daughters for what they saw, or to encourage them to follow along in the book with the reader’s words. The Rabbis had designated the home as the sphere of the spiritual function of the woman. However, Lange contended that in order to fulfill her true mission, the woman had to “be considered equal to the man in all respect before the law, and count in the minyan and for the Zimmùn.”153 The controversy was tempered by the hope placed in the “true and cordial equality of the sexes” that was becoming established, at least in the colonies, among the younger generation. Although there was not yet “a deep religious feeling,” Lange was certain of a “renaissance” that would be founded “on the basis of religious equality.”154 Despite Lange’s confident and somewhat emphatic statements, from the point of view of political and religious rights, her hopes far exceeded the certainty of a new female reality defined by principles of equality. In this sense, it was possible to detect some points in common with the condition of Italian Jewish women who, while certainly less focused on the issue of religious equality, were more sensitive to the issue of the right to participate with men on an equal basis in the management of community affairs. Agricultural work was an important arena in which the difficulty for the Jewish women of Palestine to achieve their aspirations for emancipation and equality played itself out. However, the perspective from which Nita Lange analyzed the issue was in fact rather moderate; her report on women’s participation in agricultural work in general, and specifically their role in working the land, was somewhat incomplete. The author contrasted the wives and daughters of settlers, usually little involved or little 153  Ibidem. Minian refers to a group of the ten eldest men, required to perform the public rites of the Jewish religion. Zimmùn refers to the quorum (three men) required to recite the prayer sung after a meal. 154  N. Lange, “Le donne e la Palestina,” cit.

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interested in agricultural work, with those “young women” who had arrived in Palestine in recent years and had found work either on Jewish national estates and on land purchased by various private companies. As for the former, Lange observed, rare were those “fortunate settlers” whose wives saw to the cultivation of the fields and while they didn’t personally work the fields, these women worked to increase their smaller farm industries such as making cheese, preserving fruit, cleaning wheat, and so on. Their daughters earned a living working as seamstresses, teachers, or secretaries but rarely by working the land. The settler’s daughter “will not take the hoe to transform the stony ground just outside the house into a vegetable garden or orchard.”155 Lange’s analysis here seemed to lack objectivity. The lack of female involvement in agricultural work was presented as the result of unwillingness on the part of the women, or the attitude among girls to consider “manual labor…humiliating.” In actuality, it would have been more comprehensive and evenhanded to determine the factors for interpreting the phenomenon. The main factor was that the wives and daughters in question belonged to the colonists’ families from the agricultural settlements that were formed in the first aliyà,156 those same settlers who resorted to Arab labor to work the land and who had never considered involving their wives and daughters in such activity, which would have meant changing the traditional family labor structure. Women and girls were therefore accustomed to considering agricultural work as something that did not concern them.157 Even more than this traditional mentality and women’s interest in other activities, it was the prejudices of men from the first and second aliyà that constituted the main obstacle to female participation in agricultural work. What Lange wrote about the young female pioneers—“These women form the poêleth (working class). They work the land and also prepare food for their working brothers. They have the same pay and live a strictly communal but generally moral life”158—did not entirely correspond to reality. The immigrants of the second aliyà who arrived in Palestine in the early twentieth century, were young people coming mostly from Russia, formed  Ibidem.  Aliyà is the Hebrew immigration to Palestine. The first aliyà took place from 1881–1903. The second from 1905–1914. 157  See M. Shilo, “The Transformation of the Role of Women in the First Aliyah (1882–1903),” Jewish Social Studies, New Series, 2, n. 2, Winter 1996, especially pp. 65–68. 158  N. Lange, “Le donne e la Palestina,” cit. 155 156

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by a socialist ideology and energized by the principle and religion of work. The women in this group lived in a condition of inferiority to men, such that it raised questions about women’s issues and status.159 Compared to other national liberation movements, pioneering Zionism was characterized by the priority that it granted to working the land, which was considered the means and essential pathway for the regeneration of the Jewish people in Palestine. For the chalutzim160 of the second aliyà, the new Jewish individual was constructed on the land that had been conquered through the work of his own hands. Working the land was “the absolute moral virtue,” the royal road for the purification of 2000 years of diaspora.161 The idealization of physical work, elevated to religious value,162 which characterized the second aliyà, was equally shared by women. Even the young female pioneers wanted to have direct contact with the earth. If this privilege were reserved for men only, then women would have had no chance to redeem themselves from galut163 and to build a new identity and a new existence. Although gender equality was not a principle that was discussed among the groups preparing to immigrate to Palestine, the women who arrived in 159  For more on this topic, see D. Izraeli, “The Zionist Women’s Movement in Palestine, 1911–1927: A Sociological Analysis,” Signs, 7, n. 1, Autumn 1981, pp.  87–114 and Id., “The Women Workers’ Movement: First Wave Feminism in Pre-State Israel,” in Pioneers and Homemakers. Jewish Women in Pre-State Israel, cit., pp.  183–209. Furthermore, see The Plough Woman. Records of the Pioneer Women of Palestine: A Critical Edition, edited by M. A. Raider and M. B. Raider-Roth, Waltham, Mass., Brandeis University Press; Hanover, NH, University Press of New England, 2002, and particularly Miriam B. Raider-Roth’s introductory essay, “Identities in the Making,” pp. LIX–LXXIII. 160  Chalutz (pl. Chalutzim) refers to the Zionist pioneer in Palestine. 161  For a reconstruction of the ideological framework of the second aliyàh, see B. Halpern and J. Reinharz, “The Cultural and Social Background of the Second Aliyah,” Middle Eastern Studies, n. 3, July 1991, pp. 487–517; J. Frankel, Prophecy and Politics: Socialism, Nationalism and the Russian Jews (1862–1917), Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1981, pp.  366–452; A.  Elon, The Israelis. Founders and Sons, New  York, Penguin, 1983, pp.  106–146; W.  Laqueur, A History of Zionism. From the French Revolution to the Establishment of the State of Israel. New  York, Schocken Books, 2003, (second edition), pp.  270–337; Z. Sternhell, The Founding Myths of Israeli Nationalism, Socialism, and the Making of the Jewish State, Princeton N.J., Princeton University Press, 1998; A.  Shapira, Israel a History, Waltham, Massachusetts, Brandeis University Press, 2012. 162  See D. Izraeli, “The Women Workers’ Movement,” cit., pp. 184–185. 163  Galut is Hebrew for “exile,” and refers to the Jewish people who live outside of the homeland, in other words, in diaspora.

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Eretz Israel soon realized that such equality was far from implicit in their passage to the Promised Land. The new life in the land of Israel had beginnings that were far more difficult for them than for their male companions. For all the new immigrants, the first obstacle in their search for employment was the general reluctance of the settlers from the first aliyà to replace the more experienced, less expensive Arab laborers with Jewish laborers. In relation to female Jewish immigrants, this reluctance that soon took on the appearance of discrimination. The settlers did not hire the new female pioneers for field work not only because they considered it unnatural that women insisted on having the same job as men, but also because they viewed with suspicion the freedom, lifestyle, and desire of these women to live alone and work alongside men.164 The reception these women received later in the kvutzòt,165 collective agricultural settlements, was not much warmer, despite the fact that these comprised the same male comrades with whom the women had shared similar ideals and aspirations in Diaspora. Considered less productive than men, women were excluded from agricultural work and assigned to domestic tasks such as preparing meals and running the laundry. The rebellion against the traditional labor structure of Jewish society had not yet come to question the traditional roles of women’s work, and women had to create for themselves the possibility of working the land.166 Contrary to what Lange affirmed, the small farm in Kinneret on Lake Tiberias was not established out of the “need for women to develop a greater love for working the land” but instead to allow those women who already felt this love to express it. In April 1911, Hanna Meisel (1883–1972), the first female agronomist in Palestine, founded an agricultural school with financial support from the Jewish National Fund and the Women’s League for Cultural Work in Palestine, the first international Jewish women’s

164  See M. Shilo, “The Women’s Farm at Kinneret, 1911–1917: A Solution to the Problem of the Working Woman in the Secon Aliyà,” in Pioneers and Homemakers, cit., p. 122. 165  To deal with unemployment and realize the ideal of constructing a new society founded on Jewish labor, beginning in 1905 the pioneers of the second aliyà created the kvuzòt. These were small, collective agricultural settlements situated in the lands of lower Galilee and purchased by the Jewish National Fund (J.N.F.) and the Palestinian Land Development Company (P.L.D.C). At the beginning of the 1920s, the kvutzà took the name kibbutz. See W. Laqueur, A History of Zionism, cit., pp. 288–295. 166  See D. Izraeli, “The Zionist Women’s Movement,” cit.,  p. 92, and “The Women Workers’ Movement,” cit., p. 185.

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association established under Zionism.167 At the school, women (who were initially only six in number) were carefully trained to carry out agricultural activities that were more compatible with their physical abilities such as cultivating fruits and vegetable gardens and so forth. An awareness was evolving around this small group of women regarding the social issue of the working woman, an issue that legitimized the creation of a separate organization. That same year, the foundation was laid in Kinneret for the future of Zionist women in Palestine whose fundamental objective was self-transformation. Women claimed to have the same potential as men but could not develop it due to historical conditioning. Through the practice of agricultural work, they would be able to liberate themselves from certain passive aspects of their personality. By transforming themselves, women could contribute on equal terms to achieving the goals and realizing the ideals that they shared with men.168 For Italian women, both Jewish and non-Jewish, as well as for the women in Eretz Israel, the path to emancipation was, and continued to be rife with snares. Despite their geographical distance and the profound difference in contexts, the emancipation movements of Italian women and of Jewish women of Palestine found a common point in their mutual battle for the right to vote. It was not happenstance that in December 1919, an article was published in Il Cimento on “Il diritto elettorale della donna in Palestina”  (The Electoral Right of Women in Palestine), in which the author, the Palestinian Schlomit Flaum,169 described the arduous battle of 167  The teaching and education of women was the main goal of this association, founded in the city of Aja in 1907 during the Eighth Zionist Congress. One of its most important achievements was establishing embroidery shops in Jaffa, Jerusalem, Tiberias, Akro, and Safed, with the purpose of employing girls, mainly from the East, who had been abandoned to idleness and to give them a way to provide for their own support. The association had also participated in the foundation of the first Jewish hospital in Haifa and gave financial contributions to the hospital in Jaffa. Teaching Hebrew also fell among the many activities the association was involved in. See M. Shilo, “The Women’s Farm at Kinneret,” cit., p. 125. Furthermore, see R. Goodman, “L’opera della donna ebrea. La Lega delle donne ebree per il lavoro di cultura in Palestina,” Israel, IV, n. 50–51, December 31, 1919. 168  On the Kinneret experience, see M. Shilo, “The Women’s Farm at Kinneret,” cit., pp. 119–141. See D. Izraeli’s aforementioned essays for the origins and the developments of women in Palestine. 169  Schlomit Flaum (1893–1963) was a native of Kaunas, Lithuania. Having finished school in 1909, she continued her studies in Frankfurt to become a kindergarten teacher. Receiving her degree in 1911, in October of the same year she moved to Palestine where she found work at a preschool in Jerusalem in the Old City (see, S. Lev, From Lithuania to Santiniketan. Schlomit Flaum & Rabindranath Tagore, New Delhi-Vilnius, Lithuanian Embassy in New

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her sisters to claim and obtain equal rights.170 On an earlier occasion, Il Cimento, a publication in the female press, had already demonstrated its interest in Jewish issues with an energetic article by Irma Poggibonsi on the dramatic actuality of the pogroms. Poggibonsi was not a believing Jew but was still “very attached to the Jewish race.”171 The journal vigorously supported and defended the right to vote as one of the greatest objectives of women in those years.172 In July 1919, Italian women obtained recognition of “legal capacity,” thanks to the Sacchi law (named for Deputy Ettore Delhi, 2018, pp. 11–14). Considered a “Valiant pioneer of the Palestine kindergartens” where she introduced the Montessori method, Schlomit Flaum went to Rome to further study that method (U.C, “Il saluto dei sionisti di Roma alla Sig.na Schlomit Flaum,” Israel, V, n. 7, February 19, 1920). In October 1919, Angelo Sereni, president of the Italian Jewish Communities, suggested Flaum’s name to the mayor of Rome as the Hebrew teacher for the courses that the Jewish community and the city were planning. In this regard Angelo Sereni wrote: “Because we have this year in Rome a lady from Palestine, Sig.na Scelomit (sic) Flaum, who was already a teacher there, and in addition to possessing all the necessary requirements, she is willing to undertake the teaching of Hebrew, therefore this committee has the honor of proposing to Your Honor the institution of two courses (1st and 2nd) in the aforementioned school, trusting that an appropriate number of students will participate in said courses. It is unnecessary to demonstrate to Your Honor the many advantages of these courses, not only from a local point of view, but more so for Italy in general, as this is undoubtedly one of the most efficient methods to facilitate that our country gains access into the East, which promises to be a source of great economic and commercial development.” Letter dated October 22, 1919 from the president to the Mayor of Rome, AUCEI, busta 21/27, fasc. 24. 170  For more information on this specific period in the history of Jewish women in Palestine, see S. Fogiel-Bijaoui, “On the Way to Equality? The Struggle for Women’s Suffrage in the Jewish Yishuv, 1917–1926,” in Pioneers and Homemakers, cit., pp. 261–282; M. Shilo and E. Carmel Hakim, “Feminism and Nationalism: The Case of Women’s Suffrage in Mandatory Palestine, 1917–1926,” in Suffrage, Gender and Citizenship. International Perspectives on Parliamentary Reform, edited by I. Sulkunen, S. L. Nevala Nurmi, P. Markkola, Newcastle upon Tyne, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009, pp. 358–373. 171  Irma Poggibonsi (whose name appears as “Poggibonzi” in Il Cimento), was a teacher from Modena and mother of the famous writer Elsa Morante (1912–1985). Irma’s son Marcello mentions in his short piece concerning the relationship of Elsa Morante and their mother, who “was obsessed with the fear (which was prophetic) of the violent return of antisemitic persecution” (M.  Morante, Maledetta benedetta: Elsa e sua madre, Milan, Garzanti, 1986, p.  34). In September of 1919, confronted by the terrible reality of the pogroms, Irma Poggibonsi felt compelled to urge all women to “loudly declare” their contempt, horror, and pain for the acts of cruelty that had severely harmed the Romanian Hebrews. The author concluded her speech with a message of love and admiration for the Jewish people, “that small but great people that never despaired, that from the depths of adversity affirmed its rebirth,” and wished them a future of peace. I. Poggibonzi, “Nuovi ‘progrom’,” (sic) Il Cimento, n. 25, September 21, 1919. 172  See A. Dobelli Zampetti, “Per il voto alle donne,” Il Cimento, I, n. 4, April 27, 1919. On the political and ideological framework of the newspaper see A. Buttafuoco, Cronache

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Sacchi [1851–1924], the law’s proponent in Parliament). This provision represented an event of no small significance for women and was welcomed with enthusiasm. Some considered the law a “reward after mobilization” granted to women by Parliament for their wartime effort.173 The law provided for the abolition of marital authority, according to which married women were considered minors and subordinated to their husband’s authority.174 The Sacchi law also admitted women to a number of private and public offices.175 However, the subsequent implementation of the Regulation of January 4, 1920 vastly multiplied the number of exceptions, including: the exclusion of women from entering the regular and administrative judiciary, prohibiting women from all managerial positions of the State, and precluding women from any official colonial role, any position in diplomatic and consular personnel, or public administration, as well as any function involving “the dignity of an important official of the State,” and some positions in independent administrations.176 The right to vote continued to be the subject of a debate, but without moving toward any foreseeable practical conclusion.177 In Eretz femminili. Temi e momenti della stampa emancipazionista in Italia dall’Unità al fascismo, Arezzo, Dipartimento di studi storico-sociali, 1988, pp. 264–272. 173  L. Casartelli, “Il dopo guerra,” Almanacco della donna italiana, 1920, p. 139. 174  It should be remembered that the 1865 law was still in effect, according to which, “the husband alone controls the dowry after marriage. He alone has the right to act regarding debts against the dowry, or holders thereof, to collect its profits and interests, and to demand the restitution of its capital (art. 1399); the wife on her own cannot gift, delegate property, submit them to mortgage, take out loans, transfer or collect capital, build up equity, transact or witness any acts related to any activity without the authorization of her husband” (art. 134). 175  Article 7 allowed women, as equals with men, to enter all professions and public offices, with the exclusion of those that involved public jurisdictional powers, or that included the exercise of rights or political powers, or that related to the military and national defense. See M. G. Manfredini, “Evoluzione della condizione giuridica della donna nel diritto pubblico,” in L’emancipazione femminile in Italia, Florence, Società Umanitaria, 1963, p. 182. On the debate regarding the institution of marital authority from the time it was introduced into the Civil Code of the Italian Kingdom until its abolition in 1919, see the references cited in Chap. 2, note 49. 176  See F. Mastroberti, “La ‘Legge Sacchi’ sulla condizione giuridica della donna: grande riforma o «modestissima leggina?” in Il mediterraneo e la Grande Guerra. Diritto, politica, istituzioni, edited by Id. and S. Vinci, Quaderni del Dipartimento Jonico, n. 4, 2016, pp. 46–58 (http://www.annalidipartimentojonico.org); M.  Severini, In favore delle italiane.  La legge sulla capacità giuridica della donna (1919), Venice, Marsilio, 2019; S.  Bartoloni, (ed.), Cittadinanze incompiute. La parabola dell’autorizzazione maritale, Rome, Viella, 2021. 177  On this topic see: M. P. Bigaran, “Il voto alle donne in Italia dal 1912 al fascismo,” cit., in addition to the previously cited works by G. Galeotti, Storia del voto alle donne in Italia and M. D’Amelia, Donne alle urne. La conquista del voto. Documenti 1864–1946.

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Israel, as in Italy, one of the issues that the war had highlighted was the redefinition of the position and role of women in society. The nascent Jewish state, as Flaum peremptorily affirmed, required an immediate resolution of the “woman question,” a resolution that did not take the form of some “Idealists’ fantasy,” nor some fictitious problem suggested by “modern feminist agitations” (which saw Jewish women playing important roles), but required dealing with exigent and already pressing facts. The reconstruction of the Jewish community in Israel, the autonomous formation and the democratic nature of the community itself, which called for the collaboration of all Jews—men and women—these new circumstances posed an important question about the role of women in the establishment of Jewish life: “What duties, and above all, what rights [do women have]? And, as was to be expected, a bitter struggle arose around the latter question. What rights must we grant to Jewish women?” As for the duties of women, Flaum reminded readers, it was easy to come to an understanding; however, things became complicated over the issue of rights, “because rights are not so easily shared in favor of others.”178 Whereas rabbis, in order to reaffirm the domestic and familial mission of women, bolstered their arguments with the examples of courage, intelligence, and devotion of the female figures in the Bible, Flaum used the same traditional sources to claim instead women’s right to a public role. In ancient Israel, the Jewish woman is appreciated and honored…In the long night of exile…she never grows weary, she never despairs…Just as in the ghetto she fought for the preservation of Judaism, so today she fights for the rebirth of the Jewish people. And so how is it that today, now that our brethren share in the citizen’s essential rights, they would exclude the Jewish woman from those rights?179

Twenty centuries of history held the reasons that legitimized women’s demands, Flaum observed: “In this long period of time we have not only participated in every development but we were always the initiators.” The history of the nineteenth century had shown that in every battle for justice and freedom, Jews were always first in the ranks of the fighters. “And 178  S. Flaum, “Il diritto elettorale della donna in Palestina,” Il Cimento, I, n. 35, December 14, 1919. 179  Ibidem.

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today? Now that it is a question of giving the same rights to millions of Jewish women, today will our brothers brandish excuses and prejudices?”180 Israel had arisen out of the idea of justice, and men and women must have the same rights and the same duties. Flaum continued: The Jewish woman has learned a great deal in Europe…The Jewish woman of today is by no means the Eastern woman who lifts her eyes towards the man like his slave.…She has remained Semitic, and that is what distinguishes her from other European women. With her Semitic passion, she will fight for equal rights, and either sooner or later, she will win…Today it is necessary to support her in that struggle. Give the Jewish woman her rights! For those rights, the Jewish woman in Palestine is now fighting against the rabbis.181

Her pride in her Jewish origins did not prevent Flaum from openly taking sides against her more conservative coreligionists, especially against the ultra-orthodox who considered granting voting rights to women to be “immoral and anti-religious.”182 Flaum addressed her Italian female coreligionists in a very different tone in one succinct contribution to Israel. At the end of an article by Romana Goodmann on the important contribution of the Jewish Women’s League for Cultural Work in Palestine in creating the psychological and material conditions that promoted the development “of a Jewish female model which had not been created, for lack of [supporting] historical conditions”183 Shulamit Flaum, after having drawn up an accurate list of the activities carried out by the Association, wondered aloud: “What does the Jewish woman of Italy do for her people in Palestine?”184

 Ibidem.  Ibidem. In 1919 the Women’s Association for Equal Rights was created in Palestine. See Fogiel-Bijaoui, “On the Way to Equality?,” cit. 182  Ivi, p. 265. 183  R. Goodman, “L’opera della donna ebrea,” cit. Staunch feminist and fervent Zionist, Romana Goodmann (1885–1955), of Polish origin and resident of London, was one of the founders of the Jewish Women’s League for Cultural Work in Palestine in 1907. Goodmann was also one of the founders and served on the first administrative board of the Women’s International Zionist Organization, WIZO, established in London in 1920. (“Romana Goodmann” by Esther Carmel-Hakim, Jewish Women’s Archive, jwa.org.) 184  R. Goodmann, “L’opera della donna ebrea,” cit. 180 181

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Flaum’s question took a polemical tone, and shocked the sensibilities of Lina Ajò who was “painfully struck” by the question which “reproached and goaded” Jewish women. In a letter addressed to the director of Israel,185 Ajò felt the need to justify the “apparent apathy” of her female coreligionists. Without sparing strong language about the Italian context, Ajò pointed out the difficulty of living in a “foreign if not adversarial environment that makes us forget our very being.” The assimilation was a reality, an obstacle, even for those who maintained strong ties to their religious tradition. We do not live a life of our own here, a life in conformity with our laws, our traditions … in a word, in conformity with the character of the Jewish people. Even those of us who are most attached to the Torah…have still, in spite of ourselves, to some degree assimilated.186

Consequently, Lina Ajò responded to Flaum’s “challenging question” by defending her female coreligionists who, like Ajò herself, carried in their hearts “the flame of Judaism,” women who upheld the name of Judaism “in their words and deeds,” despite the limited possibilities offered by their environment which were more inclined to make it “easier and often more opportune and favorable to forget or renounce our Jewish identity.”187 In addition to the difficulties she described in somewhat harsh terms, Lina Ajò expressed her willingness to contribute to the achievement of the great ideal her brothers in Israel were fighting for, but she asked those who had left their native lands for new horizons and a new life, when they designated paths for others to follow, to bear in mind, and suggest proposals that were realistic within the context of isolation where she and other Jewish women had to carry out their activities.188 While Shlomit Flaum’s words had perhaps been received “by some of her Italian sisters closest to the heart of Israel,” Israel immediately responded, there were many Italian Jewish women who had  “forgotten and gone far away.” The newspaper extended an invitation to these women 185  The newspaper actually had two directors: Alfonso Pacifici and Dante Lattes. See A. Milano, “Un secolo di stampa ebraica in Italia,” R.M.I., XII, n. 7–9, April–June 1938, p. 121. 186  L. Ajò, “Alle donne ebree d’Italia,” Israel, V, n. 2–3–4, January 28, 1920. 187  Ibidem. 188  Ibidem.

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to “come back to us or gather around any of the places where the reawakening of our people is manifested.” Jewish women had often lamented their marginal position in public Jewish activities of the community, a marginality for which women themselves were partly responsible, Israel emphasized. Didn’t Jewish communities offer abundant room for women’s participation? “The problem of education, the difficulty of uplifting the Jewish people who make up the crowd,” constituted a vast area of work, even more so since the number of men with time to fulfill their Jewish duties was continually shrinking. Therefore, Israel exhorted, let the communities avail themselves of the participation of women to carry out “all those tasks for which the Jewish woman’s soul and habit are prepared: the time can be neither more propitious nor more urgent.”189 Despite the lack of explicit references to a possible change in the framework within which women would have to express their so-called innate maternal instinct, there was something in the exhortation printed in Israel that seemed to tend in that direction.

The Debate Continues The invitation published in Israel began a discussion between Lina Ajò and the newspaper in which focus of the debate shifted from the limits assimilation imposed on the work of women to the limits assimilation imposed not just on women but also on men by Jewish communities which were entangled in the lines of bureaucracy and incapable of reforming themselves. Do you really believe that our sphere of action would find its proper field, as a starting point, in the communities as they are constituted today, with all the … old wig-wearers and their fears of acting, [and] while those willing few are seen as audacious and fanatical, unable to act and paralyzed by numerous hostilities? I believe, first of all, that the communities would not welcome us; and, secondly, the women who entered that environment regardless of many men, would encounter a thousand obstacles and conflicts there.190

So said Lina Ajò, who also addressed the issue of education in equally critical tones. In particular, she observed that as much as one could be 189 190

 Ibidem.  “Risposta dell’Israel,” Israel, V, n. 2–3–4, January 28, 1920.

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motivated by ideals and the steadfast desire to uplift the average segment of the Jewish community “to the height of dignity and conscience” (Ajò was referring above all to the community in Rome), this effort would still have lacked the support of the teachings as to how to live Jewish life, as provided by a Jewish school. Who would provide  a Jewish school? “The council meetings in the Communities which always end in empty and bitter debates [so disappointing] for those who really have faith and the will to act”? And so the people continued to be neglected and to give little evidence of moral education, the children from the old neighborhood in the ghetto were dispersed across various elementary schools of the city, their teachers were uninterested in their specific needs, and when these children attended the Jewish afterschool programs, those were always overcrowded and without the necessary staff and educational resources. Considering all these problems, Ajò wondered at the end of her article, whether there were people able to take constructive action “without preparatory work that was overly complicated?”191 Ajò’s critical stance, which was accompanied by an attitude of, if not renunciation, at least of waiting for evidence of others’ initiative, led Israel to accuse the writer of “little courage and scanty revolutionary spirit” because, instead of “trying to [urge] her sisters near and far with a little passion and information… to achieve a seat on the Council” or to play an active role in the community’s organizations, she limited herself to enumerating all the difficulties and aiming her barbs against those in power. Certainly there were problems. But did only men have the duty to find a solution? “Do women not feel capable of bringing… a more serious contribution to  the  community’s meetings?” Then let women begin to play their part, the newspaper asserted, otherwise they would leave to the men “the privilege of debate” and the right to “sterile criticism.”192 Ajò responded by asserting the legitimacy of her right to criticize, especially when this identified problems so that someone could take an interest and initiative in solving them. With an ironic and polemical tone, this occasional contributor to Israel declared herself completely in agreement on the opportunity to leave “the privilege of empty debates” to the men, and let women escape from their “sterile and bitter disputes.” Once men’s work in the community had achieved a qualitative turning point, women’s 191 192

 Ibidem.  “Risposta dell’Israel,” Israel, V, n. 6, February 12, 1920.

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cooperation would not be far behind, for only then could there be a “healthy and serious integration” of men’s and women’s efforts. After affirming her offer to collaborate and expressing her desire to “put [her offer] to good use with serious, worthy, and possibly even rapid results,” Ajò concluded her article with the hope that her female coreligionists would make their voices heard, express their opinions, and above all create the conditions for a mutual exchange of knowledge and trust, which were indispensable for the success of any practical initiatives.193 The give-and-take between the periodical and Ajò came to an end with a terse response from Israel who reminded Ajò that by offering her the possibility of acting—“since we can offer her neither a seat on the council, nor a position, nor any other Jewish institution”—they had actually allowed her a greater right than criticism. If a woman criticizes and stops there, that means very little; she does what men do…If she waits to cooperate with the opposite sex until men have become perfect administrators of Jewish ideals and institutions, she shows that she has no spirit of sacrifice or aptitude for reform. Women have the same duties as men, if they want the same rights. Let them begin by asking, not for the right to criticize, but for the right to work by demonstrating to those commanding men what they know how to do.194

With a paternalistic attitude, Israel urged women to initiate projects independently, to claim more spaces in the community. But the debate was not enriched by the addition of other female voices, nor did it result in any proposals regarding possible projects from women who were perhaps too few, too disinterested, or still too uncertain. The attitude of Israel toward its female coreligionists was not without a degree of ambiguity. In fact, the periodical seemed to invite women to come forward and enter the public sphere, a sphere that would be limited to the Jewish context, but at the same time it seemed to subscribe to the more conservative opinions of those who continued to elevate the model of the woman-mother above all else. More than a year after the lively exchange of opinions between the journal and Lina Ajò, Israel published an article by Martin Buber (1878–1965), philosopher and prominent leader of Zionism, who expressed his opinion about women in rather 193  L.  Ajò, “La critica della donna per il dovere della donna,” Israel, V, n. 10, March 11, 1920. 194  “Risposta dell’Israel,” Israel, V, n. 10, March 11, 1920.

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severe terms, insisting they take more traditional roles.195 Buber maintained that only after all Jews—men and women—had demonstrated their Zionism not only with words but with their “soul,” would the other Zion, the Palestinian Zion, come forth. By the “Zion of the Jewish woman,” Buber meant the process of “metamorphosis” of the Jewish female soul, which was indispensable in order for Zion to become a reality. But unfortunately, he observed, everything related to the woman was in degeneration, the degeneration of nationality, home, personality. But greater than the Jewish woman’s guilt in the degeneration of her people will be her part in our Renaissance. National rebirth can spring, in its most intimate core, only from the Jewish woman.196

The woman therefore had the duty to re-educate herself, to nurture and develop her own Judaism, to return to being a true mother who teaches her children personal courage and spontaneous good actions, “so necessary to the Jew.” In a word, Buber called women to fulfill their mission of love: love for their people and their families. New fields of the soul of the people…must be seized from death and given back to life… But this culture of life can only be fertilized…with the love of the woman… For the Zion of the Jewish woman is called love.197

Aside from periodic backsteps, and the more or less explicit adherence to opinions that reflected the most fundamentalist tradition, opinions which Israel had already published in the past, the status of the Jewish woman, despite contradictions, hesitations, and an extremely slow pace, seemed to be heading toward an evolution. In October 1922, the periodical announced the admission of women to the council of the Trieste community. “By unanimous vote and without debate,” the assembly had approved a proposal granting women the right to be elected. While this innovation was an isolated case and not followed in other communities, it nevertheless represented an event of considerable

195  On the ideological and political journey of Martin Buber see Encyclopaedia Judaica, Jerusalem, Keter Publishing Houses, 1971, vol. 5, pp. 1429–1432. 196  M. Buber, “La Sionne della donna ebrea,” Israel, VI, n. 35, September 8, 1921. 197  Ibidem.

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importance.198 In fact in Florence in December 1919, the referendum on the eligibility of women to participate in the community council had been defeated. Although the votes in favor had shown a slight advantage over those against (79 to 62), the referendum was cancelled due to the high number of blank ballots and abstentions. On that occasion, Israel remarked that deciding the issue was premature and a longer and more detailed discussion was required.199 Also in Florence, there was a proposed regularization of the election process in 1922 that did not deny women eligibility to run for office.200 Indeed, in January 1923, Ermelinda Sereni would become a member of the administrative board for the Deputazione Israelitica di Carità (Jewish Charitable Council) in Rome.201 After nearly two years of silence, Israel returned to the “woman question” by including another important exchange of opinions on its pages, prompted by a report by Alfonso Pacifici (1889–1991), co-director of the journal, made at the Convegno di studi ebraici (Conference of Jewish Studies) in Florence. In the prelude to his study, Trilogia di Israel. La donna, il sabato, il colloquio con Dio (The Trilogy of Israel: Woman, Sabbath, Conversation with God), Pacifici, echoing the thought of Martin Buber, expressed an extremely traditional opinion on the role of the 198  See “Dalle città d’Italia. A Trieste. Le donne ammesse nel Consiglio della Comunità,” Israel, VII, n. 41, October 19, 1922. Even before the outbreak of World War I, the women of Trieste (both Jewish and non-Jewish) enjoyed more rights compared to the rest of the Italian female population. Albeit by proxy, they were allowed an administrative vote. In a certain sense, the Jewish female contingent of Trieste was avant-garde. Women from Trieste represented Italy in the Worldwide Congress of Jewish Women in May 1923 in Vienna. As the journal Israel reported, Irma Stock (1883–1972) had spoken on behalf of the Comitato italiano di assistenza agli emigrati ebrei (Italian Committee of Assistance to Jewish Emigrants). During the convention, Stock presented a report on the work done by the Comitato femminile di Trieste (Female Committee of Trieste) on behalf “of the hundreds of our transient brothers” who passed through that port on their way to Palestine. See “Il congresso mondiale delle donne ebree. La partecipazione dell’Italia,” Israel, VIII, n. 20, May 17, 1923. On the worldwide conference, see “Proceedings of the World Conference of Jewish Women in 1923,” The Jewish Woman, a quarterly published by the National Council of Jewish Women, v. VI, n. 2, April 1926, pp. 19–20. 199  See “Le elezioni a Firenze,” Israel, IV, n. 50–51, December 31, 1919. 200  The regularization of the electoral process from 1915–1916, article 6 provided for the eligibility of “all those on the electoral list, including women.” In the 1922 electoral regularization, the phrase “including women” disappeared, but women were not listed among those excluded from eligibility. See Progetto di regolamento elettorale (March 1922), ACEF. Gestione Comunitaria. Elezioni. (Community Management. Elections.) E.23.4. 201  Curiosando… Nei verbali della Deputazione dal 1866 al 1953, cit., p. 15 and p. 118.

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woman, whose “false understanding of history removed her ancient significance in order to entrust her with failed imitations,” according to the journal’s reporter.202 For Pacifici, an ideologist of integral Judaism, “the work of true regeneration must still start with the woman,”203 a woman dedicated to the moral and spiritual enrichment of her family. This mystical vision of a woman’s life and responsibilities inhibited Pacifici from recognizing the objective and inevitable obstacles which were tied to the difficulties and demands of the new times and which prevented his ideal from being attained in practice. This was the source of criticism from a female reader of Israel who had had the opportunity of attending the conference. She reproached Pacifici for not addressing men first of all and for living “in his own ideal world” without taking into account that “the woman who waits at home is now considered as a separate being, and is disappearing from our bourgeois Jewish environment. [That figure] is now a characteristic of the working class environment… in our Jewish world, it was the man who first desired the woman to be different.”204 Times were hard and the possibility that young women not from wealthy families could contribute to the support of their own new families once they started them was a choice that was hardly confined to the minority. In fact, it was the man who destroyed the family when he created it, the anonymous reader pointed out. Men today, because of the worldwide cataclysm that has overwhelmed us in the last decade, are very different from the men of yesterday; today men are weak, they come to women for strength; today men are tired, they ask women to work; today they are listless, they ask woman for drive. It is no longer the mother who fashions the well-being of the home, who lights the lamp, and waits, now the man wants her to go out, to work, fortunately not always for him, but at least with him.205

In addition, those mothers of “yesterday,” had made their daughters “the women of today,” and so they had also prepared their daughters to work.  See “Alfonso Pacifici al convegno di Firenze,” Israel, IX, n. 6, February 7, 1924.  A few days after his presentation, Alfonso Pacifici presented a speech in Israel that Martin Buber had given 20 years earlier in Germany. It repeated the same concepts presented in “La Sionne della donna ebrea” and further sustained the positions expressed at the Conference of Hebrew Studies. See “Israele e la donna,” Israel, IX, n. 7, February 14, 1924. 204  “Una voce di donna,” Israel, IX, n. 7, February 14, 1924. 205  Ibidem. 202 203

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Therefore women, affirmed the unnamed reader, especially Jewish women, “however renewed, skeptical, or distant…from Judaism,” felt “atavistically” that their mission was very different from the one they were fulfilling and that family and motherhood were “their one and only reason for existence.” However, among the young people who had attended the conference, very few would have been willing “to choose his life’s companion in order to protect [her], rather than to be protected [by her].” The contributor concluded her opinion with another polemical observation on the behavior of men. Although she did not deny the powerful influence that women exerted over men, for better or for worse, she argued that in most cases it was men who wanted to relinquish the emotional  satisfactions of religion and family, either “for money or for the desire to ascend socially.”206 In February 1924, a second female voice entered into the debate on the responsibilities of women of Israel during this critical phase of cultural renewal, attempting to resolve the conflict between Alfonso Pacifici and his anonymous interlocutor. While substantially sharing the truth of the assertions of both, the newest writer proposed a third approach, inspired by the “concept of unity…the basis of the Jewish belief” which involved the “inseparable concept of a unified, general harmony,” and invited men and women to work side by side in a harmonious and ideal unity of their efforts.207 Only in this way could women and men become the protagonists of “a powerful work,” overturning “today’s conceptions of life.” But to bring about this peaceful and “platonic” revolution, men and women must uproot from their souls that unrestrained individualism that made them hostile and drove them to act separately. It is necessary to unite, in order to change and improve… The things of this world will not truly improve until individuals are convinced that each of them is not only an individual, but part of an individual-family; and that this is only a piece of the individual-nation; the nation is only a part of the individual-race; and the race a part of the individual-humanity… Considering the boundless horizons of this idea, all the men and women must unite who truly feel that they belong to Israel, to rekindle our lamp, to create that family, that nation and that humanity which are the ideal goal of Judaism.208  Ibidem.  M.S.A., “Israele e la donna. Un’altra voce femminile,” Israel, IX, n. 9, February 28. 208  Ibidem. 206 207

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With this invitation to unity and harmony between men and women in the name of a common and equal effort to achieve the great work of renewal, a significant phase in the debate on the “woman question” was concluded. The year 1924 marked an important date for all of Italian Judaism. The youth conference, held in Livorno in November, saw the participation not only of the leaders of Italian Zionism, but also those Jews who had previously stayed away from officially participating in Jewish life. The encounter-­ clash between the two different groups and their respective positions toward Zionism contributed to the event in Livorno being clearly characterized as liberal and antifascist.209 The conference became a watershed between two moments, “between two distinct periods” of the Italian Jewish experience: on the one hand, the conference signaled the end of that phase of awakening and rebirth that had taken shape in the second decade of 1900, while on the other it gave rise “to the main Jewish currents, Zionist and anti-Fascist, destined to characterize the history of Italian Jews in the following decades.”210 The integral Judaism of Alfonso Pacifici, the antifascist Judaism of Nello Rosselli (1900–1937), the socialist Zionism of Enzo Sereni (1905–1944), the right to protect one’s own culture in the diaspora, affirmed by Yoseph Colombo (1897–1975), constituted the ideological options, ideal reference points for all Jews who were aware of the need to make more intentional choices regarding their own Jewishness as well as the changing national and international context. Due to the lack of documents and official statements, it is impossible to analyze in what terms the turning point in Livorno was understood and received by the female world, or to delineate what were women’s attitudes toward a political scenario that was tragically evolving in an authoritarian direction. It is significant, however, that in the aftermath of the extended debate in the press, women also began to feel the need to define their responsibilities, to solidify their desire to be involved in some way in the great events that encompassed Italian and international Judaism. Despite difficulties and uncertainties due largely to their small numbers but also to the fear of attracting anti-Semitism, given that support for 209  See R.  De Felice, Storia degli ebrei italiani sotto il fascismo, Turin, Einaudi, 1988, (fourth edition), p. 88. 210  M. Toscano, “Fermenti culturali ed esperienze organizzative della gioventù ebraica italiana. (1911–1925),” Storia contemporanea, XIII, n. 6, December 1982, pp. 915–961, now in M. Toscano, Ebraismo e antisemitismo in Italia. Dal 1848 alla guerra dei sei giorni, Milan, Franco Angeli, 2003, p. 102.

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Zionism could be interpreted as a lack of loyalty to Italy, the idea of forming an independent association that would connect its activities to their coreligionists of Eretz Israel began to make its way among Italian Jews. A first attempt was made in 1925 by Nanny Margulies (1889–?) who had solid experience working in welfare assistance for Jewish women and children in Palestine. After moving to Israel, she made a heartfelt appeal in June of 1925 to her Italian sisters that they would work on behalf of their coreligionists who were engaged in the arduous construction of the future Jewish state.211 Berta Bernstein Cammeo (1866–1928) deserves the credit for her preparatory work in Milan in 1925 that laid the foundations for a broad enterprise of social work that would cement the pact of love and solidarity between Jewish women in Italy and women in Israel. Berta Bernstein Cammeo, a member of the Milanese Jewish bourgeoisie, had extensive experience in the field of social work. She had been a counselor at the Asilo Mariuccia, an institution founded in 1902 by Ersilia Maino and to which Cammeo was also connected by family ties. The idea of bringing together all the energies of Jewish women on behalf of the women and children in Palestine grew out of Cammeo’s experience. According to the ideas of the founder, the work of supporting the women and children of Eretz Israel should trigger the process of recovering and redefining their identity as Jews as well as women, just as their participation in the many emancipationist activities had allowed their sisters of other faiths to acquire a greater awareness of themselves and their rights.212 In 1926 the budding association, which still lacked a name, took its first steps. One of these was the decision to remain independent from WIZO (Women’s International Zionist Organization), the organization of Zionist women founded in London in 1920.213 This choice can be interpreted as the fear of appearing 211  See N. Auerbach Margulies, “Il dovere della donna ebrea. Appello alle donne ebree d’Italia,” Israel, X, n. 23, June 5, 1925. 212  See “‘Non dimenticare’. Il ruolo formativo e culturale dell’Adei (Associazione donne ebree d’Italia) dal dopoguerra ad oggi,” cit. and “‘Donne ebree impegnate’: il ruolo formativo e culturale dell’ADEI (Associazione donne ebree d’Italia) dal dopoguerra ad oggi,” cit. 213  See Adei-Wizo, Associazione donne ebree d’Italia. Dalla nascita ai giorni nostri, p. 71. ADEI only became affiliated with the Women’s International Zionist Organization in 1931. See ivi, p. 24. For the history of the ADEI from its foundation through the years the Nazi and fascist persecution, see the detailed study of S. Follacchio, “Associazionismo femminile

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too cosmopolitan in a distinctly nationalist Italian political context. On May 23, 1927, in Milan, the association that took the name of Association of Jewish Women of Italy (ADEI, Associazione delle donne ebree d’Italia) debuted publically. Announced in March of the same year in the halls of the “Lyceum” in Milan, in a presentation by Gabriella Falco Ravenna (1897–1983), who together with Vittoria Cantoni Pisa was one of the leading figures in the history of the ADEI before the World War II, this first assembly was devoted to the drafting of the association’s statutes. The first articles, reserved for the presentation of the purposes and means, affirmed the plurality of options and languages as an essential principle and indispensable characteristic of the young association. As part of the association’s program, the development of Palestinian institutions that provided maternity and childcare, collaboration with Italian institutions that worked for the same purpose, and the work of preparing Jewish women for Palestine, was accompanied by the commitment to spread the Jewish culture and spirit “among the Jewish women and children of Italy, thereby participating in the movement of Jewish spiritual rebirth.”214 Both the program’s two-fold front and its absence of openly Zionist overtones were determined by political motives. A clear Zionist stance would have given rise to suspicions and raised accusations of an anti-­ national project. But these aspects were also reactions to “strategy” and demands within the association. Given the high level of integration of the Jewish community, the interchange between the different ideological positions of the women and their different reactions regarding the fascist regime, was an essential element in their group cohesion.215 e nation building. Il contributo dell’Associazione donne ebree d’Italia,” Chronica Mundi, 12, Issue I, 2017, pp. 99–125. 214  Associazione delle donne ebree d’Italia, Statuto, Archivo Centrale dello Stato, Direzione Generale Pubblica Sicurezza. G.I. Associazioni (1912–1943), busta n. 4, fasc. 37.1. Jewish education for children was one of the association’s main objectives from its creation. Due the Gentile reform of 1923, the secular school became a stronghold of Catholic teachings which strongly contributed to the decision to establish the Association and correlate the work of the schools and childcare centers of the Jewish community. This guaranteed instruction where such institutions were absent, as was often in the case of smaller towns. Gradually, the responsibility of children’s Jewish education was largely taken over by ADEI. See M. Miniati, “‘Donne ebree impegnate’: il ruolo formativo e culturale dell’ADEI,” cit, p. 110. 215  See Adei-Wizo, Associazione donne ebree d’Italia. Dalla nascita ai nostri giorni, cit,. pp. 22–23.

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The vast and multiple program,…allows for an appeal to all Jewish women without exception, since it offers the opportunity of employment to those who want the return of a whole Jewish life in the diaspora, as well as to those who believe in the complete realization of the Palestinian dream, and finally to those who accept Judaism only as a faith.216

These same attitudes and strains of thought that characterized the Jewish community in this period were also evident within the ADEI. In addition to their headquarters in Milan, the period following the association’s foundation also saw centers established in other cities, such as Turin, Genoa, and Ferrara. In the first decade of its life, welfare work was the association’s main sphere of activity, which in addition to serving the population in Italy and Palestine, also focused on the Jews of Tripoli, an Italian colony, as well as on refugees from Germany and Eastern European countries. While maintaining its autonomy and separateness, the ADEI did not refuse to contribute to the welfare activities supported by communities or other entities. Not infrequently it happened that an assistance committee, even though it worked under another name, was almost exclusively composed of members of the ADEI organization.217 Alongside its welfare activities, ADEI also developed cultural activities, which took the form of conferences, readings, courses in Jewish education, and concerts. After years of “debates,” uncertainties, and repeated appeals to be industrious, these Jewish women, eager to affirm their religious and cultural identity, and for some, political identity as well within the group they belonged to, but also on a wider national and international scale, had finally achieved unity and autonomy. Despite difficulties and conflicts, influenced by the more or less explicit adherence to Zionism and the authoritarian implications of fascism, the ADEI continued to expand into various Italian cities and continue its work until the Nazi and fascist persecutions forced the suspension of all activities.

216  “L’Associazione delle donne ebree d’Italia si riunisce a Milano,” Israel, XII, n. 31, April 14, 1927. 217  See Adei-Wizo, Associazione donne ebree d’Italia, cit., pp. 26–28 and pp. 44–45.

CHAPTER 6

Conclusions

In the aftermath of emancipation, the history of Jewish men and women in Italy is essentially the history of the central role that the rising middle class played in the process of modernization. Indeed, that very process of modernization accompanied the entry of the Jewish sector into the wider national context. The integration of the Jews in Italy is manifest through their continual interaction with the Italian bourgeoisie: the history of Italian Jewish women is also part of the history of Italian middle-class women, their existential choices, and their social models. But the history of Jewish women after emancipation is also the history of the conflictual relationship between the expectations of the Jewish community and Jewish women’s active interaction with their Italian sisters of a different faith. In other words, their history is the story of the difficulty of a dual identity, of the tension between integration and tradition. Before and after the emancipation of 1848, the “woman question” came to occupy an ever-increasing space in the broader reflections of the Jewish intellectual and religious elite on issues related to maintaining their Jewish specificity in the face of integrating into surrounding society. Emancipation strengthened the role of the family as the gravitational center of Jewish life, making the family the main protagonist in the process of educating the younger generations, with the mother at the heart of the process. The role of the mother as teacher, a cornerstone of a long-held religious tradition, saw its social importance grow. In an emancipated © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 M. Miniati, Italian Jewish Women in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Italian and Italian American Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74053-5_6

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society, women had to assume a double responsibility, and accept a two-­ fold mission: to be Jewish mothers and Italian mothers. The duty of being Italian mothers required the ability to achieve a fragile balance between their Jewish religious and cultural heritage, and the values of the surrounding society. The Jewish community was completely aware that emancipation accentuated the importance of the maternal role and the effect mothers had on the future of Judaism as well as on the image of the Jews as a whole. For this reason, the community promoted multiple initiatives to give women the necessary tools and reference points in order to carry out their difficult task of mediation. While priority was given to improving religious education, the Jewish community was also committed to giving new momentum to secular education. These initiatives had clear connotations regarding class, for they aimed above all to raise the educational level of disadvantaged girls and young women. For disadvantaged women, these community programs, supported by the involvement and contributions of generous female philanthropists and attentive teachers, were directed at the professional training of women. These initiatives responded to a more general objective of constructing an economic, moral, and cultural model for the poorer segment of the Jewish community that was in harmony with the demands of the new status enjoyed by Jews as free citizens. However, those same initiatives remained peripheral to the traditional notion that the vocation of women should nevertheless be confined to the family unit. For all those intellectuals and rabbis who, since the 1840s, felt the need to celebrate the glory of Jewish women from the distant past as well as to exalt the moral and cultural mission of women of the present in the press—first in the Jewish Review and then in The Jewish Educator—and in other writings of the time, the dominant model remained that of the woman as mother. Therefore, as the process of emancipation gradually spread across the national territory, the highly rhetorical discourse that developed with increasing insistence on the roles and duties of Jewish women, clashed with a feminine world that, with its different social components, took a path that was not exactly the one outlined by the Jewish community, for many Jewish women built an independent path under the banner of their dual identity. At the end of the nineteenth century, when all Italian Jews finally reached the goal of civil and legal equality, Jewish women, as women, found themselves not only at the center of the profound transformation affecting the Jewish community, but also inevitably involved in the wider process of emancipation along with their “Gentile” sisters. If the

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cultural contiguity between Jewish society and the rest of Italian society could be measured through the development of the same model of womanhood as evidence of how Jews identified with the values of the Italian bourgeoisie, then for Jewish women, this contiguity was also manifest in the questions they posed as to the accuracy of this model. From its beginnings, the female press, which advocated the cause of women’s emancipation, registered a significant presence of Jewish women who came predominantly from the middle class, and which intervened in a defense of women’s rights through solid education and broader professional prospects. In addition to the small group of intellectuals whose religious and cultural specificity played an important role in supporting the emancipationist message, there was a group of Jewish women whose lifestyles were increasingly conflated with the lifestyles of their sisters of a different religious background. As Jewish women of the upper middle class adopted the habits and models of other Italian women who shared their same economic status, thus contributing to the process of acculturation and class formation, the young Jewish women of the middle- and lower-middle class, as well as those in more straightened economic conditions, attended institutions of public education in order to build a more secure professional future. The “woman question” thus became a crucial juncture in the vigorous debate over the family, the education of children, and the difficulty of maintaining the religious tradition—a debate that affected the Jewish community and the Jewish press. Even The Jewish Banner, a publication that acted as the official voice for the established and more conservative bourgeoisie weighed in on this debate which mirrored a Judaism that was searching for itself. Often, it was female contributors to The Jewish Banner, those that viewed women’s reality mainly through the lens of religious observance, who then accused their female coreligionists of being responsible for the tendency toward assimilation that they felt jeopardized the Jewish identity of the family and the cohesion of the Jewish community. Despite the strong tone of reproach and the insistent invitations addressed to women to return to a life defined by tradition, the twentieth century opened a period in which the fusion of the female Jewish population with non-Jewish women registered new successes and moved forward without obstructions. In this period, the female experience mirrored the difficulties experienced by a Jewish world in complete transformation; it mirrored the complexities of a minority seeking social affirmation, and yet

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also wanting continuity, and it reflected the tensions between Jewish identity and Italian identity. If women were called upon to defend their religious and cultural heritage, to sacrifice their desire for emancipation and autonomy in the name of ensuring the survival of Judaism, they were also the protagonists of the process of the integration of the Jewish community into the national context. The rapid integration of the Jewish sector into Italian society after the opening of the ghettos was characterized by the pronounced participation of Jewish men in important strata of the economy, as well as in the spheres of knowledge, and in State administration. This involvement corresponded to the increasing presence of Jewish women in sectors outside the family and community, as Jewish women chose paths similar to those of their sisters of other faiths. At school, the university, and in the world of work, Jewish and non-Jewish women were united by the same aim: their common aspiration to gain true citizenship in the name of intellectual and economic autonomy. The significant participation of Jewish women in the women’s emancipation movement and their intense philanthropic activity that grew out of this movement, as well as in other contexts, was the clearest expression of the cultural contiguity between the Jewish women’s world and that of women of other religions. Although this activity was often the object of harsh criticism from the Jewish community, criticism that accused women of sacrificing solidarity with their brothers and sisters in the faith on the altar of assimilation and ultimately turning their backs on Judaism, the contribution of these women to the economic, moral and cultural support of the most unfortunate and disadvantaged population was not “a diaspora within the diaspora” but rather a means that allowed them to establish a connection between their identity as Italian women and their identity as Jewish women. Their commitment to charitable work also found meaning in their search for a space and legitimacy that the community did not grant them. It is no coincidence that in the early years of the twentieth century, when the young people and some others in the community promoted a movement of religious rebirth and cultural awakening energized by the momentum of Zionist ideals, in the columns of La Settimana Israelitica, the most involved among the Jewish elite deliberated about the possibility of having women assume a greater role in the Jewish community. Women themselves also initiated an exchange of opinions, at times very dynamic, regarding the opportunity to reconsider their role in community functions. Yet, despite several initiatives for reform, on the eve of the Great

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War, the problem of new possibilities for women’s participation in community affairs was still far from being resolved. The war period was another high point in the association between Jewish and non-Jewish women. Representing an important phase of growth and leaving a lasting mark on the life of Jews and non-Jews, World War I also contributed to widening the gap between women’s lived reality and the traditional expectations of the Jewish community. After having shared the experience of mobilization for the war effort with their sisters of other faiths, and like them, having gained a clearer awareness of their abilities and the value of independence, Jewish women experienced the end of the war as a pathway to a new dimension of their lives, lives as citizens with the same rights and the same duties as men. However, it was not only the “emancipated” women—bourgeois and secular intellectuals who were not completely detached from Judaism but whose ties with the community were not necessarily the strongest—who were sensitive to the changes brought about by the war and applied themselves to redefining the role of women. Even among those women whose visibility was limited to the community framework and who aspired to actively work for the defense of Jewish religious and cultural heritage, there was a similar need to reconsider the terms of their participation in the community. While some women explicitly asked to be elected to community councils, others could not overcome their misgivings and did not generate any concrete initiatives that promoted Judaism, though they were nevertheless aware of the limits and difficulties of confining their actions within the domestic walls. On the other hand, the men of the community, the eminent figures of post-war Judaism who discussed the participation of women and directly debated with them in the columns of Israel, were not particularly in favor of an enlarged role for women and their published opinions were not without a fair dose of uncertainty. The invitations by men to act and propose initiatives was consistently accompanied by a reaffirmation of those traditional female roles that even at the end of the nineteenth century decreasingly corresponded to the reality of Jewish society and Italian society. Despite the fervent calls for unity and agreement between women and men which were published in Israel in 1924 by the occasional, anonymous journalist, many years would pass before women would be allowed to hold positions in the community and participate directly in administrative councils. The establishment of the ADEI (Associazione donne ebree d’Italia [Jewish Women’s Association of

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Italy]) in 1927 represents an important step for women on the path toward autonomy in terms of decision-making and organizational power. This study has dedicated significant space to the debate on the evolution of the “woman question” in the press. The intent has been to demonstrate that, from the second half of the nineteenth century, the interest of the Jewish press in the problems related to religious indifference in the family and women’s progressively diminishing awareness of the importance of their role and mission was also the result of the efforts from various levels of Judaism to ensure that the life of the community would continue to conform to Jewish principles. In this way, there was an attempt to avert the risk of Jews being overwhelmed by the enthusiasm of having finally become part of the national community. This enthusiasm affected the daily life of many Jews, and gave rise to fears that it would cause some to distance themselves from their cultural and religious heritage. What occurred was that a segment of the Jewish world, that segment most concerned with finding adequate solutions for the issues that risked compromising the future of Judaism, was unanimous in recognizing the scanty influence that tradition had on the behavior and habits of women and families. However, this did not negate the fact that there were a variety of positions regarding the methods and strategies best suited to bringing women closer to Jewish religion and culture. The analysis of the debate that impacted Jewish society, a debate reflecting a wide divergence of views, has made it possible to reconstruct the different phases in the transformation of the role of women and the family, but also the points of regression and recovery experienced by Italian Judaism over the past two centuries. The different reactions regarding religious absence in the family, the different views of the role of women in the family and in religious practice, the tendency to condemn new needs and social conditions or, on the contrary, to believe them unlikely to compromise the integrity of the Jewish world, were indicative of the will and ability of Judaism to renew itself. Above all, these differences reflected the image that Judaism had of itself, its role, its future, and its integration into the wider Italian context.

Bibliography

Archives Consulted Archivio dell’Alliance Israélite Universelle (Paris), Dossier Italie Archivio Centrale dello Stato (Rome), Ministero dell’Interno, Direzione Generale Pubblica Sicurezza, G.I., Dossier Associazioni (1912–1943) Archivio Contemporaneo del Gabinetto Viesseux (Florence), Fondo Orvieto and Fondo Emma Boghen Conigliani Archivio Luzzatti (Venice) Archivio della Comunità Ebraica di Firenze, Dossier Asili infantili, Scuola, Gestione Comunità, Opere Pie Archivio della Comunità Ebraica di Venezia, Dossier Scuola per fanciulle Archivio dell’Unione delle Comunità Ebraiche Italiane (Rome), Dossier Attività del Consorzio delle Comunità Israelitiche Italiane fino al 1923 Archivio Fondazione Guido Ludovico Luzzatto (Milan) Archivio Privato della Famiglia Treves-Levi-Vidale (Florence, Silvia Treves, Diari The Central Zionist Archives (Jerusalem), Dossier Jewish National Fund (Keren Kayemet Leisrael)

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© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 M. Miniati, Italian Jewish Women in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Italian and Italian American Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74053-5

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La Riforma sociale (1897, 1899) La Rivista israelitica (1845–1848) Rivista Veneta (1856) La Settimana israelitica (1910–1915) Unione femminile (1901–1905) L’Univers israélite (various years from 1854 to 1918) XXIX Marzo (1898) Il Vessillo israelitico (1874–1922) Vita femminile (1895–1897) Vita femminile italiana (1907–1913) La Voce della donna (1903–1904) Westminster Review (1910, 1913)

Government Documents Statistica del Regno d’Italia, Ministero di Agricoltura, Industria e Commercio, Censimento generale della popolazione (31 dicembre 1861) Ministero di Agricoltura, Industria e Commercio, Direzione Generale della Sotatistica, Censimento della popolazione del Regno d’Italia al 10 febbraio 1901. “Censimento degli israeliti esistenti nel Regno alla fine del 1881,” Annali di Statistica, s. III, 9 (1884), pp. 143–207 “Appendice al censimento degli israeliti. Cenni storici e statistici sulle comunità israelitiche di alcune provincie d’Italia,” Annali di Statistica, s. III, 9 (1884)

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Dizionario biografico delle donne lombarde, Milan, Baldini e Castoldi, 1995. Dizionario Illustrato di Pedagogia, edited by A. Martinazzoli and L. Credaro, 3 vol., Milano, Vallardi, (no date) [May 1897]. Enciclopedia Judaica, 16 voll., Jerusalem, Keter Publishing House, 1971. Greco, O., Bibliografia femminile italiana, Venice, Presso i Principali librai d’Italia, 1875. Greco, O., Bibliografia femminile italiana, Venice-Mondovì, Tipografia Gio Issoglio, 1875b. “Jewish Women in Europe, 1750–1932: A Bibliographic Guide,” edited by D.  Hertz, J.  Arnold, J.H.  Rubin, Jewish History, 7, n. 2, Autumn 1993, pp. 127–153. La cultura ebraica nell’editoria italiana, 1955–1990: repertorio bibliografico, Roma, Ministero per i beni culturali e ambientali, 1992. Levi-Elwell, S., The Jewish Women’s Studies Guide, New York-London, Biblio Press, 1987. Nuovo Liruti. Dizionario biografico dei friulani, 3, L’età contemporanea, edited by C. Scalon, C. Griggio, G. Bergamini, Udine, Forum, 2011. Rovito, T., Letterati e giornalisti italiani contemporanei, Naples, Tipografia Melfi e Joele, 1907. Ruud, I.M., Women and Judaism. A Select Annotated Bibliography, New YorkLondon, Garland Publishing, 1988. The Jewish Woman: 1980–1985. A Bibliography, edited by A.  Cantor and O. Hamelsdorf, New York, Biblio Press, 1987. Villani, C., Stelle femminili, Naples, Rome, Milan, Albrighi & Segati, 1915.

Books and Articles Adei-Wizo, L’Adei dalla nascita ai giorni nostri, Venice, Stamperia di Venezia, 1971. Airoldi, S., “Alfonso Pacifici and the Jewish Renaissance in Italy (1910–1916),” Quest. Issues in Contemporary Jewish History. Journal of Fondazione CDEC, issue 8, November 2015. (http://www.quest-cdecjournal.it/about. php?issue=8). Airoldi, S., “Liberalism, Zionism, and Fascism: Alfonso Pacifici’s “Ebraismo integrale’,” in The New Italy and the Jews. From Massimo D’Azeglio to Primo Levi, edited by J. Drucker and L. S. Lerner, Annali di italianistica, vol. 36, 2018, pp. 29–48. Albisetti, J. C., “Portia ante Portas: Women and the Legal Profession in Europe,” Jourmal of Social History, vol. 33, n. 4, Summer 2000, pp. 825–857. Allara Levi, B., “La donna israelita nella società civile,” in Il Cinquantesimo anniversario del Vessillo Israelitico, Turin, Stab. Doyen di Luigi Simonetti, 1903, pp. 23–29.

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Alle origini dell’Umanitaria. Un moderno concetto di assistenza nella bufera sociale di fine ‘800 (1893–1903), edited by M.L.  Ghezzi and A.  Canavero, Milan, Società Umanitaria e Cooperativa Raccolto, 2013. Allegra, L., “La comunità ebraica di Torino attraverso gli archivi di famiglia,” in Ebrei a Torino. Ricerche per il centenario della Sinagoga, Turin, Allemandi, 1985, pp. 31–36. Allegra, L., Identità in bilico. Il ghetto ebraico di Torino nel Settecento, Turin, Zamorani, 1996. Allegra. L., “La famiglia ebraica torinese nell’Ottocento: le spie di un’integrazione sociale,” in Il matrimonio ebraico. Le Ketubbot dell’Archivio Terracini, edited by M. Vitale, Turin, Zamorani, 1997, pp. 67–112. Anchel, R., Napoléon et les Juifs, Paris, Les presses Universitaires de France, 1928. Ancona M., Il suffragio femminile. Stato presente della questione in Italia. Relazione al convegno nazionale femminile di Roma 7–9 ottobre 1917, Rome, Stabilimento d’Arti grafiche Azzimonti, 1918. Ara, A., “Gli ebrei a Trieste, 1850–1918,” Rivista storica italiana, CII, fasc. I, 1990, pp. 53–86. Ara, A., “Gli ebrei di Trieste tra emancipazione e problema nazionale,” in Stato nazionale ed emancipazione ebraica, edited by M. Toscano and F. Sofia, Rome, Bonacci, 1992, pp. 41–55. Ara, A., “Il problema ebraico nella Restaurazione: Carlo Cattaneo e le ‘Interdizioni Israelitiche’,” Rivista storica italiana, CXIV, 2002, pp. 431–457. Archer, L.J., “The Virgin and the Harlot in the Writings of Formative Judaism,” History Workshop Journal, n. 24, Autumn 1987, pp. 1–16. Arian Levi, G., “Gli ebrei in Piemonte nell’ultimo decennio del secolo XVIII,” R.M.I., IX, n. 10-11-12, February-March-April 1935, pp. 511–534. Arian Levi, G., “Sulle premesse social-economiche dell’emancipazione degli ebrei nel Regno di Sardegna,” R.M.I., XVIII, n. 10, October 1952, pp. 412–437. Arian Levi, G., “Vita quotidiana nel ghetto di Torino sulla fine dell’800,” R.M.I., XLV, n. 6–7, June-July 1979, pp. 225–265. Arian Levi, G. and Disegni, G., Fuori dal ghetto. Il 1848 degli ebrei, Rome, Editori Riuniti, 1998. Armani B., Il confine invisibile. L’élite ebraica di Firenze, 1840–1914, Milan, Franco Angeli, 2006. Arslan, A., “Scrittrici e giornaliste lombarde tra Ottocento e Novecento,” in Donna lombarda. 1860–1945, edited by A. Gigli Marchetti and N. Torcellan, Milan, Franco Angeli, 1992, pp. 249–264. Artom, E., Diari, edited by E. Ravenna and P. De Benedetti, Milan, Centro di documentazione ebraica contemporanea, 1966. Artom, E., Diari di un partigiano ebreo. Gennaio-Febbraio 1944, edited by G. Schwarz, Turin, Bollati Boringhieri, 2008. Artom, E., Un compagno di Menotti e di Mazzini. Angelo Usiglio, Modena, Società Tipografica Modenese Editrice, 1949.

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Name Index1

A Airoldi, Sara, 237n43 Ajò, Lina, 289–292 Albertoni Tagliavini, Silvia, 248n76 Aliberti, Vincenzo, 51n48 Allegra, Luciano, 26n62 Almagià, Eleonora, 261 Ambron, Luisa, 259n103 American, Sadi, 210, 213n179 Anau, Salvatore, 58n70 Anchel, Robert, 9n19, 10n23 Ancona, Emilia, 254n94, 261 Ancona, Margherita, 275, 275n140, 276 Ancona, S., 136 Angelini, Giovanna, 170n83 Aporti, Ferrante, 50n47, 55n60 Ara, Angelo, 16n34 Arbib, Bianca, 171, 171n86

1

Archivolti Cavalieri, Clara, 245n68 Archivolti Cavalieri, Luigia, 145n27, 174–175n92 Arian Levi, Giorgina, 11n24, 16n36 Arnold, Jane, 25n61 Arslan, Antonia, 269n125 Artom, Elena, 252n87 Artom, Elia Samuele, 212, 228n22 Artom, Emanuele, 153n47 Artom, Emanuele Salvador, 153n48 Artom, Emilio, 153n47, 205n163 Artom, Ennio, 153n47 Artom, Eugenio, 62n82 Artom, Giulietta, 144n27 Artom Fubini, Elvira, 252n87 Ascoli, Raffaello, 81 Auerbach Margulies, Nanny, 298n211 Avierino, Alexandra, 171n86

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 M. Miniati, Italian Jewish Women in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Italian and Italian American Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74053-5

353

354 

NAME INDEX

B Bachi, Donato, 234n36 Bachi, Guido, 200n152 Bachi, Roberto, 37n10 Bakunin, Marussia, 159n60 Barbagli, Marzio, 27n67 Barbarulli, Maria Clotilde, 69n110 Barbieri, Lodovico, 257n102 Bartoli, Mariella, 202n157, 210n176 Bartoloni, Stefania, 164n68, 170n84, 238n48, 239n52, 245n67, 247n72, 258n103 Barzilai Gentilli, Enrica, 269, 270, 270n128 Barzilay, Isaac, 3n5, 5n9, 6n10, 8n18 Baskin, Judith, 25n61 Bassani, G., 267n122 Bassani, Ines, 250n80 Bassani Levi, Anita, 250n80 Baum, Charlotte, 26n61 Baumeister, Martin, 270n128 Baumgarten, Jean, 18n40 Beccari, Gualberta Alaide, 98, 103, 106, 131n1 Bedarida, Guido, 62n82, 66n97 Beerman, Adelheid, 18n40 Benaim, Elisa, 208 Benamozegh, Elia, 66n97 Benzimra, Elena, 208, 209, 273n137 Berkovitz, Jay, 4n8 Berman, Saul, 29n70, 30n74 Bernardini, Paolo, 6n11, 9n19, 10n23, 24n58 Bernstein Cammeo, Berta, 298 Bertolotti, Costanza, 62n84 Bertoni Jovine, Dina, 162n64 Besso Goldman, Amalia, 253 Biale, Rachel, 29n70, 30n75, 62n85 Bianconcini Cavazza, Lina, 248, 248n76 Bidussa, David, 36n5, 181n104, 185n115, 236n43

Bigaran, Maria Pia, 173n89, 276n140, 286n177 Bloch, Julienne, 93, 94 Blumenkranz, Bernhard, 10n23 Bocchi, Andrea, 139n17 Boghen Cavalieri, Isa, 171, 171–172n87 Boghen Conigliani, Emma, 131, 131n1, 132, 156–163, 156n54, 157n55, 171, 171–172n87, 176, 180, 188 Bolaffio, Antonietta, 250 Bonfil, Roberto, 3n5, 34n2, 36n5 Bonghi, Ruggero, 95 Boralevi, Alberto, 206n167, 259n104 Bracco, Barbara, 261n109 Brunschvicg, Cécile, 241n58 Buber, Martin, 292–294, 293n195, 295n203 Bucci, Sante, 151n43 Butler, Josephine, 139n17 Buttafuoco, Annarita, 162n64, 163n66, 164n68, 165n70, 165n71, 165–166n72, 166n73, 167n75, 167n77, 167n78, 168n79, 169n81, 169n83, 170n84, 171n86, 174n91, 177n96, 202n157, 285n172 C Caffiero, Marina, 9n19 Cagli Della Pergola, Ada (Fiducia), 267, 267n121 Calabi, Carolina, 190n127 Calabresi, Enrica, 160n60 Calabresi, Ettore, 254n94 Calabresi, Olga, 254n94 Calloni, Marina, 206n166, 272n134 Camerini, Donato, 187, 187n121 Cammeo, Bice, 167, 169–170, 169n83, 173, 204, 205,

  NAME INDEX 

205n164, 207, 209, 252, 260n105 Cammeo, Giuseppe, 122, 185–188, 185n116, 187n121, 189n125, 190n127, 191, 194 Campagnano, Adele, 136n9 Campagnano, Angiolo, 136n9, 173n90 Campagnano, Zoe, 173, 174n91 Canavero, Alfredo, 135n8 Candeloro, Giorgio, 13n26 Canepa, Andrew, 15n32, 16n34, 17n37, 20n46, 21n47, 23n54, 40n15, 46n30 Cannistraro, Philip V., 239n52, 240n54 Cantoni, Lelio, 40, 50n48, 66n97 Cantoni, Rosina, 52n54 Cantoni Pisa, Vittoria, 253, 253–254n93, 299 Cantor, Aviva, 25n61 Capuzzo, Ester, 182n104 Carlo Alberto di Savoia, re di Sardegna, 223 Carmel Hakim, Esther, 285n170, 288n183 Carpi, Daniele, 236n43 Carpi Norsa, Cesira, 250 Casalena, Maria Pia, 25n60 Casalini, Maria, 159n60 Casartelli Cabrini, Laura, 139n16 Cases, Gina, 253 Cassuto Artom, Giulia, 212–214, 213n179, 216, 217 Castelbolognesi, Gustavo, 17n39 Castelfranco, Adele, 136n9 Castelfranco, Annie, 209 Castelli, David, 45n29 Castelnuovo, Enrico, 186, 186n118 Catalan, Tullia, 9n19, 14n30, 20n45, 20n46, 24n58, 26n62, 191–192n131, 270n128

355

Cattaneo, Carlo, 15, 16n34 Cavaglion, Alberto, 33n1, 38n12, 152n46, 153n47, 182n104, 186n118, 236n41, 249n79, 258n103, 259n104 Cavalieri, Giuseppe, 174n92 Cavour, Camillo Benso, conte di, 137n11, 223 Cedroni, Lorella, 206n166, 272n134 Cervani, Giulio, 6n12, 6n13 Chajes, Hirsch-Perez, 194, 194n137, 196, 197 Chiappini, Alessandra, 174n92 Chiari Allegretti, Gilda, 70n112 Chiosso, Giorgio, 54n58, 55n63 Chipkin, Israel, 177n95 Ciampi, Paolo, 160n60 Coen, Emma, 214–217, 216n183 Cohen, Abraham, 29n71, 176n94 Cohen, Shaye J.D., 31n80 Cohen, Yolande, 179n98, 241n58 Colbi, Paolo, 42n22 Colombo, Anselmo, 227–230, 237, 263, 263n116, 264 Colombo, Samuele, 223, 232, 233 Colombo, Yoseph, 297 Colonna, E.D., 50, 51, 229 Conigliani, Carlo A., 182n105, 254n94 Contini, Ciro, 254n94 Contini, Lidia, 254n94 Costa, Laura, 268n124 Cremieux, Adolphe, 241n58 Cruppi, Louise, 241n58 Curci, Roberto, 270n128 Curli, Barbara, 268n123 D Dalla Casa, Brunella, 171n87 D’Ancona, Luisa, 135n8 D’Ancona Orvieto, Alice, 261

356 

NAME INDEX

Daniel, Ute, 239n51 D’Annunzio, Paola, 150n42, 151n43, 152n46 Dash Moore, Deborah, 18n40 Davidson, Saul, 136n9 Dazzi, Pietro, 149n40 De Benedetti, Carolina, 250n80 De Benedetti, Giacomo, 142 De Benedetti, Salvatore, 40n16, 66n97, 131n1 De Bruin, Elisabeth, 211n176 De Felice, Renzo, 23 De Franceschi, Loretta, 174n92 De Giorgio, Michela, 155n51 De Gramont, Corisande, 240n58 De Gramont, Elisabeth, 240n58 De Longis, Rosanna, 162n64, 174n91 De Napoli, Antonio, 258n103 De Paoli, Paola, 173n89 Decleva, Enrico, 135n8 Del Bianco Cotrozzi, Maddalena, 5n9, 6n14, 17n39, 19n43, 40n16, 47n35, 59n72, 66n97, 195n137 Del Canuto, Francesco, 180n100, 181n104, 222n2 Della Pergola, Sergio, 22n49, 27n65, 31n81, 37n10 Della Peruta, Franco, 13n28, 14n30, 15n33, 16n34 Della Seta, Simonetta, 236n43 Della Torre, Lelio, 40, 58, 59, 63–65, 65n93, 66n97, 68, 68n104 Della Torre, Luigi, 135n8 Della Torre Momigliano, Gina, 131n1 Della Vida Levi, Adele, 149n40 Dessau, Fanny, 177n95 Di Bello, Giulia, 144n26 Di Cori, Paola, 155n51 Di Porto, Bruno, 9n19, 14n29, 14n30, 39n14, 66n95, 66n97, 182n105, 195n140 Di Segni, Riccardo, 31n80, 181n104

Diena, Erminia, 98, 99, 101 Disegni, Giulio, 11n24, 16n36, 190n127 Dobelli Zampetti, Anita, 285n172 Dolza, Delfina, 143n26, 144n27, 175n92, 272n134 Donati, Amedeo, 182n105 Donna Paola (Baronchelli Grosson), 238n49, 239n52, 244n65, 245n67, 247, 248, 252n87, 252n89, 255n95, 260n106, 260n107 Druker, Jonathan, 24n58 Druyan, Nitza, 279n148 Dubin, Lois, 6n10, 6n12, 6n14, 7n15, 7n16, 8n17 E Eckert, Tamar, 194n137 Eisenberg, Josy, 25n59 Erioli, Elisa, 249n77 Errera, Anna, 244n65 Errera, Emilia, 148 Errera, Rosa, 171, 207 F Falco Ravenna, Gabriella, 299 Fanciulli, Giuseppe, 248n75, 248n77 Fano, Laudadio, 125 Fantoni, Berta, 204 Fasano Guarini, Elena, 69n110, 160n60 Fava, Sabrina, 149n39 Feiner, Shmuel, 5n9, 8n17 Feldman, David, 62n85 Ferrara degli Uberti, Carlotta, 20n46, 77n134, 194n137 Ferrario, Rachele, 239n52 Ferry, Jules, 241n58 Festorazzi, Roberto, 239n52

  NAME INDEX 

Fiano, Cesare, 128, 129 Filippini, Nadia Maria, 49n43 Finzi, Ettore, 254n94 Finzi, Lia, 49n43 Finzi, Mario, 254n94 Finzi, Moisé, 195n141 Finzi Ottolenghi, Fanny, 260, 261 Fiore, Massimo, 174n92 Fischmann di Vestea, Maria, 159n60 Flaum, Schlomit, 284, 284–285n169, 287–289 Foà, Anna, 3n5, 24n58, 159n60 Foa, Cesare, 185n116 Foà, Chiara, 77n134, 230n27 Foa, Giuseppe, 140n19, 190n128 Foà, Salvatore, 14n30 Fogiel-Bijaoui, Sylvie, 285n170, 288n181 Forti Orvieto, Matilde, 261 Forti, Ernestina, 253 Fossati, Roberta, 155n51 Franceschi Ferrucci, Caterina, 68–70, 69n110 Franchetti, Alberto, 138n14 Franchetti, Alice, 151n43 Franchetti, Elisa, 137n11, 138n14 Franchetti, Leopoldo, 151n43 Franchetti, Raimondo, 138n14 Franchini, Silvia, 173n90, 205n162 Frattolillo, Angela, 239n52 Frau, Ombretta, 157n55 French Cini, Elena, 204 Fubini, Guido, 9n20 Funaro, Liana Elda, 50n47, 52n54, 54n59 G Gaballo, Graziella, 164n68, 167n78, 243n62, 245n66 Gabelli, Aristide, 68n105 Galasso, Cristina, 59n72

357

Galeotti, Giulia, 286n177 Galoppini, Anna Maria, 69n110, 160n60 Gambaro, Angiolo, 55n60 Garibaldi, Giuseppe, 223 Gatrell, Peter, 239n51 Gaudenzi, Lucia, 249n77 Gazzetta, Liviana, 62n84 Gentili, Alberto, 269n128 Ghezzi, Morris L., 135n8 Ghiron, Samuele, 51, 75, 76, 93 Ghisalberti, Carlo, 16n34 Gigli Marchetti, Ada, 155n51, 166n74, 238n48, 269n125 Gioja, Melchiorre, 58 Giribaldi-Sardi, Maria Luisa, 48n39 Goetschel, Roland, 18n43 Goglia, Luigi, 258n103 Goodman, Romana, 288, 288n183 Gordon Kuzmack, Linda, 26n61, 156n52, 210n176 Govoni, Paola, 159n60 Graetz, Michael, 10n23 Gragnani, Cristina, 157n55 Graziani Secchieri, Laura, 156n54 Green, Nancy, 30n78 Grego, Abram, 47n35 Greive, Herman, 29n69 Guarnieri, Patrizia, 170n83 Guerra, Elda, 275n140 Guetta, Silvia, 50n47, 53n57, 136n9, 194n137 Guggenheim, Ernest, 30n74 Gunzberg, Lynn, 186n118 H Halpern, Ben, 282n161 Hamelsdorf, Ora, 25n61 Harris, Monford, 19n43 Hertz, Deborah, 25n61, 26n61 Hertzberg, Arthur, 4n8

358 

NAME INDEX

Heschel, Abraham J., 27n64 Hirsch, Berta, 254n94 Hirsch, Giulio, 254n94 Hirsch, Rinda, 254n94 Hyman, Paula, 26n61, 29n70, 30n74 I Incontri, Gabriella, 204 Isastia, A. M., 139n16, 140n18 Izraeli, Dafna N., 282n159, 282n162, 283n166, 284n168 J Jalfon Attias, Regina, 190n127 Jallà, Clara, 205n162 Janz, Oliver, 239n51 Jarach, Clotilde, 75 Jeraci, Annunziata Paola, 159n60 Jona, Raffaello, 136 Jones, Heather, 239n51 Josz, Aurelia, 149–152, 150n42, 151n43, 152n45, 152n46, 256, 257, 260, 260n107 K Kaplan, Marion A., 18n40, 26n61, 28n68, 156n52, 210n176 Katz, Jacob, 3n6, 6n10 Keene, Jennifer, 239n51 Kohut, Rebekah, 213n179 Kramer, Alan, 239n51 Kuliscioff, Anna, 159n60 L Lacoue Labarthe, Isabelle, 210n176 Lambruschini, Raffaello, 55, 56 Lange, Nita, 278–281, 279n148, 279n149, 279n151, 283

Laras, Giuseppe, 10n23, 181n104, 182n105 Las, Nelly, 210n176, 213n179 Lattes, Abram, 47n35 Lattes, Dante, 181n104, 236, 236n43, 289n185 Lattes, Guglielmo, 176n93, 187n121 Lenhard, Philip, 270n128 Leone, Massimo, 23n55 Leonino Alatri, Nina, 253 Lerner, L. Scott, 24n58 Lesueur, Daniel, see Loiseau, Jeanne Lev, Shimon, 284n169 Levi, Adelaide, 216 Levi, Adele, 75, 75n129, 149 Levi, Adolfo Scander, 106, 136n9 Levi, Alessandro, 104, 139n17, 178n97, 183, 183n108 Levi, Bettino, 152n45 Levi, Carlo, 86, 87 Levi, Costantina, 144n27 Levi, Enrichetta, 136n9 Levi, Ettore, 261 Levi, Gabriella, 144n27 Levi, Giuseppe, 40n16, 66n97, 70–74, 89, 153n48 Levi, Isaia, 124 Levi, Joseph, 222n2 Levi, Margherita, 138n14 Levi, Marietta, 146 Levi, Nina, 252 Levi, Xenia, 189n125 Levi Allara, Bettina, 131, 131n1, 145, 146, 146n32, 160, 188–190, 192–194 Levi Artom, Giuseppina, 131–134, 131n1, 141, 141n20, 142, 145, 146, 152–154, 153n47, 156, 157, 157n55, 160, 188, 203, 204, 208–210, 212 Levi D’Ancona, Luisa, 24n58, 135n8

  NAME INDEX 

Levi Della Vida Nathan, Sarina, 178n97 Levi Elwell, Sue, 25n61 Levi Levi, Bice, 253 Levi Nathan, Sarina, 138, 138n15, 139n16, 139n17 Levi Rignano, Elisa, 252 Levis Sullam, Simon, 182n104 Lévy, Emile, 178n98, 179 Liedtke, Rainer, 156n52 Limone, Giuseppe, 206n166 Livi Bacci, Massimo, 63n85 Loiseau, Jeanne, 241n58 Lombroso, Cesare, 174n92, 207 Lombroso, Gina, 149n40, 241, 241n59, 242, 242n61, 271, 272n134 Lombroso, Luigia, 144n27 Lombroso Carrara, Paola, 174–175n92, 207, 251, 252, 252n87 Lopez, Sabatino, 135n8 Loria, Prospero Moisè, 135, 135n8 Luzzati, Michele, 59n72 Luzzatti, Luigi, 257n102 Luzzatto, Carolina, 101 Luzzatto, Fabio, 135n8 Luzzatto, Fanny, 258n103 Luzzatto, Guido Ludovico, 135n8, 136n8, 249n79, 258n103 Luzzatto, Samuel David, 17–20, 18n43, 20n45, 40, 66n97 Luzzatto Voghera, Gadi, 4n8, 15n32, 18n42, 21n47, 36n5, 44n27, 46n30, 49n43, 181n104, 236n43 Luzzatto Weill-Schott, Bona, 253 M Madigan, Edward, 222n2 Maestro, Ida, 252 Maifreda, Germano, 10n21 Majno Bronzini, Ersilia, 163

359

Maller, Julius, 176n94 Malnati, Linda, 269n125 Manacorda, Mario Alighiero, 62n84 Manasse, Giacomo, 277 Manfredini, Maria Giuseppina, 286n175 Mannucci, Andrea, 144n26 Mantovani, Davide, 173n89 Maranini, Paolo, 173n89 Marchi, Valerio, 258n103 Margulies, Recha, 208, 273n137 Margulies, Shemuel Zevì, 194, 194n137, 195 Markkola, Pirjo, 285n170 Martina, Giacomo, 11n24, 16n35 Marzorati, Sergio, 239n52 Mastroberti, Francesco, 286n176 Maternini Zotta, Maria Fausta, 10n20 Mayer, Enrico, 44n26, 50n47, 54n59 Mazzini, Giuseppe, 61, 61n82, 62, 62n84, 98, 138, 138n15, 139, 139n16, 140n18, 223 Meghnagi, Saul, 27n64, 30n77 Meisel, Hanna, 283 Melli, Rina, 172, 173n89 Melli Artom, Enrichetta, 250n80 Menozzi, Daniele, 240n55 Meriggi, Marco, 13n26 Meyer, Michael A., 18n40 Michaelis, Meir, 22n48, 23n52 Michel, Sonya, 26n61 Milano, Attilio, 2n3, 4n8, 10n22, 11n24, 14n31, 22, 22n50, 35n3, 37n11, 39n13, 40n16, 41n20, 55n61, 66n96, 66n98, 135, 135n8, 144n26, 150, 151n43, 153n47, 162n65, 171n86, 177n95, 181n103, 182n107, 195n138, 195n139, 195n140, 195n142, 196n143, 236n40, 237n44, 245n67, 248n76, 249n79, 254n93, 275n140, 289n185

360 

NAME INDEX

Milano, Spizzichino Elda, 266n119 Minerbi, Emma, 254n94 Miniati, Monica, 46n31, 49n45, 156n54, 157n55, 178n97, 190n128, 254n93, 299n214 Modena, Emma, 156n54, 159n60 Modigliani, Sofia, 136n9 Mola di Nomaglio, Gustavo, 205n163 Molinari, Maurizio, 236n43 Momigliano, Arnaldo, 14n31, 17n38, 20n45 Momigliano, Felice, 236 Momigliano, Marco, 123, 129 Moncalvo, Gabrio, 186 Moncalvo, Mariannina, 186 Moncalvo, Rachele, 188 Mondolfo, Ugo Guido, 135n8 Morante, Elsa, 285n171 Moravia, Alberto, 206n166 Moretti, Mauro, 144n26 Mori, Maria Teresa, 239n52 Moro, Renato, 258n103 Morpurgo, Edgardo, 160n60 Morpurgo, Lisetta, 253 Mortara, Marco, 40, 72 Mosse, Gorge L., 231n30 Mozzoni, Anna Maria, 170n84 Musatti, Giuseppe, 233, 234 Musso, Stefano, 268n123 Mussolini, Benito, 192n131, 239n52 Myerhoff, Barbara, 30n78 N Napoleone I Bonaparte, imperatore, 8 Nasson, Bill, 239n51 Nathan, Ernesto, 140n18, 200 Nathan, Giuseppe, 139n17 Nathan, Sara, 138, 138n15, 139, 139n16, 139n17 Nathan Mieli, Virginia, 139, 140n18, 178n97, 248n76

Nathan Rosselli, Janet, 138n15 Nathan-Puritz, Mary, 200, 202n157, 204 Nattermann, Ruth, 270n128 Neppi Modona, Ada, 209 Nevala Nurmi, Seija Leena, 285n170 Nissim, Aristide, 199, 200 Nitti Persico, Antonia, 251 Norsa, Achille, 149n39 Norsa, Elisa, 159n60 Nuti, Leopoldo, 258n103 O Olivetti, Elena, 205 Olivetti, Nino, 224n8 Olivetti Modona, Nina, 100, 101 Orsina, Giovanni, 222n2 Orvieto, Angiolo, 208n171, 249n80 Orvieto, Laura, 206–208, 206n166, 207n170, 258–259, 260n105, 260n106, 270, 271 Osimo, Augusto, 135n8 Osimo Muggia, Augusta, 136n8 Ottolenghi, Adolfo, 205n163 Ottolenghi, D., 48n40, 67n99 Ottolenghi, Emilio, 205n163 Ottolenghi, Lazzaro, 77 Ottolenghi, Leonetto, 137, 137–138n13 Ottolenghi, Umberto, 135n8 Ottolenghi di Vallepiana, contessa Lidia, 205, 205n163, 258n103 Ottolenghi Vitali, Elvira, 253 P Pacifici, Alfonso, 196n144, 224n8, 236, 236–237n43, 294–297, 295n203 Pacini, Monica, 205n162 Padoa Errera, Alba, 253

  NAME INDEX 

Padoa Padoa, Elisabetta, 172n88 Paggi, Angelo, 52n54, 66n97, 66n99 Pandolfini, Beatrice, 204, 205 Papa, Catia, 171n86 Paper Puritz, Ernestina, 202, 202n157 Pappenheim, Berta, 210, 210n176, 213n179 Pardo Roques Disegni, Fortunata, 190n127 Pasini, Teresita, 244n65 Patriarca, Silvana, 14n30, 138n15 Pavan, Ilaria, 222n2 Pavia Gentilomo, Eugenia, 102 Pavoncello, Nello, 194n137 Pellegini, Paolo, 137n11 Pellegrino, Paolo, 135n8 Pera, Isabella, 155n51 Peretti, Alessandra, 69n110, 159n60, 160n60 Perissinotto, Matteo, 222n2, 223n7 Pesman, Ros, 138n15 Piccini, Vanna, 245n66 Pieroni Bortolotti, Franca, 62n84, 139n17, 170n84 Pincherle, Natalia, 250 Piperno, Angelo, 262n113, 265n118 Piperno, Rosina, 265 Piperno Beer, Giuliana, 11n24 Pisa, Beatrice, 50n47, 69n110, 160n60, 243n63, 245n67 Poët, Lidia, 96 Poggibonsi, Irma, 285, 285n171 Polenghi, Simonetta, 170n85 Pontecorvo, Dina, 265 Pontremoli, Esdra, 66n97, 74n127 Porciani, Ilaria, 52n53, 55n63, 64n91, 73n119 Prato, David, 208n171, 209, 209n174 Procacci, Giovanna, 240n55 Procaccia, Claudio, 253n92

361

R Rabbeno, Adele, 252n87 Racah, Gino, 188, 189, 190n127 Raicich, Marino, 144n27, 159n60 Raider, A. Mark, 282n159 Raider Roth, Miriam, 282n159 Raimondo, Rossella, 138n14, 170n83 Rapazzini, Francesco, 240n58 Rava, Luigi, 168 Ravà, Vittore, 144n27, 146n34, 159n60 Ravà Sorani, Eugenia, 131n1, 146, 146n34, 147, 158n57, 213n179, 263n116 Ravenna, Alfredo, 18n41 Ravenna, Felice, 182n105, 182n106 Ravenna, Leone, 48n38, 53n57, 54n59, 65, 66n94, 68–70, 68n108, 69n111, 138n13, 191–192n131 Ravizza, Alessandrina, 269n125 Reggiani, Flores, 166n74 Reggio, Leone, 53n57, 138, 138n14 Reinharz, Jehuda, 282n161 Reuveni, Gideon, 222n2 Riall, Lucy, 14n30, 138n15 Righini, Eugenio, 160n60 Rignano, Eugenio, 135n8, 167n78 Rignano, Isacco, 50n47 Rignano Sullam, Nina, 167–170, 167n78, 168n80, 245n66, 254n93 Rimini, Estella, 196n143 Roccas, Daniela, 258n103 Rocco, Andrea, 138n13 Roggero, Maria Pia, 62n84 Romanini, Leon Vita, 42n24 Romanin Jacur, Lietta, 249n80 Romano, Giorgio, 186n118 Ross, Tamar, 29n70, 30n75 Rosselli, Aldo, 140n18

362 

NAME INDEX

Rosselli, Amelia, 206, 206n166, 207, 249n80, 262, 270, 271, 272n134 Rosselli, Giuseppe Emanuele, 206n166 Rosselli, Nello, 297 Rossi Artom, Elena, 153n48, 203n158 Roth, Cecil, 14n31, 17n38 Rothschild, Luisa Sara, 137n11, 138n14 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 55 Rovighi, Cesare, 39, 58, 59, 66, 66n95 Rubin, Julie H., 25n61 Rürup, Reinhart, 13n28 Ruud, Inger Marie, 25n61 S Sabatello, Eitan, 37n11 Sacchetti, Rosetta, 252n87 Sacchi, Ettore, 285–286 Sacerdote, Bettina, 252 Sacerdote, Emanuele, 136 Sacerdote, Enrichetta, 190n127, 193 Sacerdoti, Margherita, 253 Salmon, Bice, 208 Sanguinetti Ghiron, Elena, 251, 251n84 Santoni Rugiu, Antonio, 144n26 Sarfatti, Cesare, 239n52 Sarfatti, Margherita, 173, 239, 239n52, 240, 241n58, 242, 242n60, 242n61, 244n65, 254n93 Scandaletti, Paolo, 258n103 Scardino Belzer, Allison, 245n67 Scardozzi, Mirella, 24n58, 137n11, 138n14 Scattigno, Anna, 239n52 Schechter, Ronald, 4n8 Scheer, Lilly, 29n71 Schiavon, Emma, 245n67, 249n77, 260n106, 269n125, 275n140

Schiff, Paolina, 170, 171, 173 Schorsch, Ismar, 18n40 Schwartz, Lina, 149n39 Schwarz, David, 18n42 Schwarz, Guri, 24n57, 24n58, 153n47, 194n137 Sega, Teresa, 149n40 Segre, Dan V., 11n24 Seija Lena, Nevala, 285n170 Sereni, Angelo, 230–233, 231n29, 233n32, 265, 266, 273, 285n169 Sereni, Enzo, 297 Sereni, Ermelinda, 265, 266, 266n119, 294 Servadio, Gina, 183n109, 184 Servi, Flaminio, 89, 121, 131n1 Servi De Benedetti, Adele, 131n1 Servi Muggia, Calliope, 131n1 Servi Portaleone, Gemma, 131n1 Severini, Marco, 249n77, 286n176 Sforni, Mary, 262 Sforni, Nina, 262 Sforni, Rachele, 209 Shilo, Margalit, 281n157, 283n164, 284n167, 284n168, 285n170 Sierra, Nina, 171, 171n86, 205, 205n164 Sierra, Sergio, J., 10n23 Sinigaglia, Quinto, 224n8 Slymovics, Peter, 19n43 Soboul, Albert, 10n23 Sofia, Francesca, 14n30, 15n33, 24n58, 182n104 Soldani, Simonetta, 62n84, 144n26, 173n90, 205n162, 239n52, 240n55 Sonnino Carpi, Graziella, 244n66, 245n66 Sorani, David, 153n47 Sorani, Lydia, 209 Sorani Finzi, Gioconda, 131n1 Sorkin, David, 5n9, 8n17

  NAME INDEX 

Spalletti Rasponi, Gabriella, 243n64 Staderini, Alessandra, 262n113 Sternhell, Zeev, 282n161 Stock, Irma, 239n51, 294n198 Sulkunen, Irma, 285n170 Sullivan, Brian, R., 239n52, 240n54 Supino, Camillo, 135n8 Supino, Rosanna, 258n103 Szabados, Susanna, 49n43 T Tagliacozzo, Lia Erminia, 254n93 Tananbaum, Susan, L., 210n176 Tanara, Maria Grazia, 155n51 Taricone, Fiorenza, 160n60 Tedeschi, Elisa, 135n8, 249n79, 258n103 Tedeschi, Fanny, 102 Tedeschi, Felice, 222n3 Tedeschi, Marco, 48 Tedeschi De Benedetti, Giulia, 250n80 Tedesco, David, 40 Tendler, Moshé David, 62n85 Tenenbaum, Shelly, 25n61 Terracini, Benvenuto, 49n42, 51n49, 57n69 Terracini, Ida, 144n27 Tesoro, Marina, 170n83 Thébaud, Françoise, 239n51, 241n58 Thompson, Gaston, 241n58 Thompson, Henriette, 240n58, 241n58 Thomson, Valentine, 241n58 Thulin, Mirjam, 18n40 Tolstoj, Lev Nikolaevic, 152, 152n46 Tommaseo, Niccolò, 15, 56n67 Torcellan, Nadia, 155n51, 166n74, 238n48, 269n125 Toscano, Mario, 13n27, 23, 24 Treves, Argia, 254 Treves, Benvenuta, 153n47, 153n48

363

Treves, Edoardo, 254 Treves, Emilia, 208n171, 209 Treves, Perlina, 140, 140n19 Treves, Pia, 144n27 Treves, Sara, 144n27 Treves, Silvia, 259n103 Treves de’Bonfil, Matilde, 249n80 Treves Tedeschi, Virginia, 268, 268–269n125, 269, 271 Trigano, Shmuel, 18n40 U Ugolini, Romano, 139n16, 140n18 Ungari, Andrea, 222n2 Urso, Simona, 239n52 Usiglio, Angelo, 58–62, 61–62n82 Uzielli, Samson, 50n47 V Valentin, Emma, 136n9 Valerio, Adriana, 74n124 Variola, Giuliana, 258n103 Ventura, Clara, 216, 217 Verucci, Guido, 37n9 Vicarelli, Giovanna, 160n60 Vigna, Luigi, 51n48 Vinci, Stefano, 286n176 Visciola, Simone, 206n166 Vitale, Giacomo, 141n23 Vitale, Rosetta, 131, 131n1, 141, 141n20 Vitale, Salomone, 113, 114, 116 Viterbi, Bona, 249, 249n80 Viterbi, David, Graziadio, 47n35, 49n42, 49n43 Viterbo, Lionella, 50n47, 54n59, 195n137, 208n171, 259n103 Vitta, baron Emilio, 136, 137n11, 138n14 Vitta Zelman, Rina, 252n87

364 

NAME INDEX

Volterra, Leonetto, 136n9 von der Krone, Kerstin, 18n40 W Wall, Richard, 239n51 Wessely, Naftaly Hertz, 7, 8 Wilcox, Vanda, 222n2 Winter, Jay, 239n51 Wittmayer Baron, Salo, 18n42, 177n95 Wollemborg, Alina, 249

Y Yedidya, Asaf, 18n40 Yerushalmi, Yoseph, 18n40 Z Zabban, Giorgina, 208, 209 Zammatto, Alessandro, 119 Ziani, Gabriella, 270n128 Zoller, Israel, 182n105 Zunz, Leopold, 18n40 Zweig, Stefan, 176n94

Periodicals Index1

A Almanacco delle donne italiane (1920–1927), 271 Annali di statistica (1880, 1884), 141n22 Attività femminile sociale (1913–1923), 265, 266, 268

I Israel (1916–1927), 237, 237n46, 273, 276, 277

B Bilychnis (1916), 236n42 Bollettino del Lyceum di Firenze (1912–1920), 205n161, 209n173 Bollettino ufficiale del Ministero delle Pubblica Istruzione (1902), 159n60

L La Donna (dir. Gualberta Alaide Beccari) (1870–1877, 1883–1891), 56n67 La Giovane Europa (1913–1917), 308 L’Alleanza (1906–1911), 105n56 La Missione della donna (1877–1883, 1885–1890, 1892–1899), 308 La Patria (1847), 57n68 La Rassegna degli interessi femminili (1887–1888), 308

C Cronache femminile (1904), 174n91

1

J The Jewish Woman (1926), 294n198

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 M. Miniati, Italian Jewish Women in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Italian and Italian American Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74053-5

365

366 

PERIODICALS INDEX

La Rassegna femminile (1888), 308 La Rassegna femminile, Florence, (1902), 173 La Rassegna Nazionale (1924), 39n14 La Riforma italiana (1916), 223n5 La Rivista israelitica (1845–1848), 39, 40n17 La Settimana israelitica (1910–1915), 195, 196, 199, 203, 210, 273, 304 L’Aurora (1873), 98 La Voce della donna (1903–1904), 173, 174n91 L’Educatore Israelita, 35n4, 40n16, 65, 66n97, 86n13, 89, 308 Les Archives israélites (1844–1917), 308 L’idea sionista (The Zionist Idea) (1901–1910), 182–185, 187, 195 L’Univers israélite (various years from 1854–1918), 93 M In memoria delle donne italiane devote al Risorgimento della Patria e al Progresso della Civiltà (n. unico 1892), 172n87 P Per il nostro soldato (1916–1917), 308

S Il Cimento (1919–1920), 284, 285 Il Corriere israelitico (1862–1915), 125 Il Giovane Israele (1919–1920), 308 Il Giudaismo illustrato (1848), 19 Il Marzocco (1896–1923), 206, 206n166, 259, 259n105 Il Vessillo Israelitico (The Jewish Banner) (1874–1922), 89, 131 U Unione Femminile (1901–1905), 149, 163–170, 171n86, 174n92, 239n52, 245n66, 254n93, 309 V Vita femminile (1895–1897), 158, 161, 161–162n64, 171, 172n88 Vita femminile italiana (1907–1913), 151n43, 205n164 W Westminster Review (1910, 1913), 211n176 X XXIX Marzo (1898), 309

Subject Index1

A Assimilation, 16, 23–27, 40, 78, 90, 229–231, 235, 238, 267, 289, 290, 303, 304 F Female emancipation, 25, 31, 92, 97, 100, 163–180, 199, 259n103, 269 G Giovane Israel (Young Israel), 217 Giovane Italia (Young Italy), 14 I Integration, 1, 5, 7, 11, 16, 19, 21, 23–27, 34, 37, 65, 76, 78–81,

1

86, 89n23, 90, 104, 107, 108, 119, 126, 131–219, 221, 226, 234, 235, 246, 292, 299, 301, 304, 306 J Jewish emancipation, 16, 26, 145 Jewish identity, 24, 26n62, 27, 31, 43, 72, 78, 88, 90, 91, 132, 180, 267–272, 289, 303, 304 “Jewish question,” 13–15 L Ladies’ Aid Committee (Patronato delle signore), 262–265, 262n113, 263n116

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 M. Miniati, Italian Jewish Women in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Italian and Italian American Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74053-5

367

368 

SUBJECT INDEX

M Milan, 10n21, 102n51, 119n90, 150n42, 151n43, 159n60, 160n60, 161n64, 163, 166n72, 167, 167n78, 169, 170, 170n84, 189, 191, 192n31, 198n148, 207, 239, 244n65, 244n66, 253, 254n93, 260, 261, 268n125, 275n140, 298, 299, 300 Modernization, 1, 2, 5–8, 11, 21, 33, 34, 38, 57, 65, 79–130, 137n11, 176, 191 P Palestine, 20, 216n183, 218, 225n11, 227, 228, 272, 273, 278–290, 298–300 Patronato delle signore (Ladies’ Aid Committee), 262n113 R Risorgimento, 13, 14, 18, 21, 39, 61, 69, 69n110, 84, 137, 138, 206n166, 222, 223, 238 S Sacchi Law, 285, 286 Secularization, 37, 79, 91, 126

T Talmud, 29–30n72, 63 Terre irredente, 244n65 Torah, 30, 234, 289 V Veri Italiani, 14 W “Woman question,” 33–79, 119–130, 157, 181, 184, 199n152, 203, 206n166, 277, 287, 294, 297, 301, 303, 306 Women’s suffrage, 167, 268 Women’s Union, 149n39, 211, 252, 253 World War I, 219, 221, 223 Y Young Italy (Giovane Italia), 14 Z Zionism, 152n45, 181–185, 182n104, 194, 228, 233, 234, 236, 236n43, 282, 284, 292, 293, 297, 298, 300