Bernard Dov Cooperman, “Review of ‘Mediterranean Enlightenment: Livornese Jews, Tuscan Culture, and Eighteenth-Century Reform’, by Francesca Bregoli,” AJS Review 39:2 (November 2015): 452-454 (original) (raw)
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Quest. Issues in Contemporary Judaism, 2011
The port of Livorno in Tuscany was a successful example of mercantilist policy at work, from which its Jewish community reaped great benefits in the early modern period: Jews were granted special prerogatives on the grounds of their economic usefulness, gaining liberties precluded to most Jewish communities elsewhere. However, these economic privileges had conservative implications as well. In this essay, I argue that, at the onset of “modernity,” the exceptional nature and economic system of Livorno, together with the long-standing conception of Livornese Jews as commercially useful, contributed to the preservation of traditional structures and norms and prevented the full application of enlightened equalizing policies championed by the Tuscan government. Instead of furthering political integration, the deeply engrained “discourse of Jewish utility” encouraged the permanence of a widespread view of the Jews as an autonomous corporate collectivity protected by the continued benevolence of the sovereign. The article includes a comparison of the Tuscan situation with the better-known French and Prussian cases.
ProQuest UMI, 2013
Catholic regimes in post-Tridentine Italy were expected to enforce religious orthodoxy domestically while supporting ideological and military Crusade abroad. However, the demands of spiritual stewardship often conflicted with the mercantilist interests of the state. Combining methodologies from social, cultural and urban history, this dissertation explores the strategies employed by the Medici Duchy of Tuscany to accommodate Jews, Protestants and Muslims within the Italian port of Livorno. In a desperate attempt to attract Levantine trade to the insalubrious Tuscan coast, in 1591 Grand Duke Ferdinando I issued a decree that offered economic, social and religious protections to immigrants from, “any nation, Eastern Levantines and Westerners, Spanish, Portuguese, Greeks, Germans, Italians, Jews, Turks, and Moors, Armenians, Persians, and others.” Thus, while regimes throughout Europe expelled religious minorities and enclosed Jews into ghettos, the Grand Duchy of Tuscany transformed Livorno into a haven for religious toleration. As a city built and populated nearly ex novo, Livorno became a laboratory for architects, engineers and administrative officials to experiment with the recruitment and management of a religiously and ethnically diverse populace. From the lavish synagogue south of the main Cathedral to the humble mosques tucked into the galley slave quarters, the Medici regime’s protections influenced but did not nullify the defensive strategies employed by Livorno’s minority groups. Although the Livornine privileges ameliorated many barriers to cross-cultural trade, the city housed a microcosm in which international, religious and political tensions were rehearsed daily. While the social lives of Livorno’s mercantile elite were largely unregulated, their religious activities were heavily restricted, particularly for Protestants forced to stage religious ceremonies on boats and bury their dead in unsanctified private land. An even greater amount of compromise was necessary to manage the Muslim galley slaves crowded into Livorno’s prison. Ultimately, the Medici’s experiment in Livorno epitomized the potential benefits and risks of pursuing policies of enlightened self-interest. By the late seventeenth century, the port’s political neutrality and pragmatic liberality became a reference point for discussions of religious toleration throughout Europe.
IN his introduction to Early Modern Jewry, david ruderman reveals something of his intellectual autobiography by relating to three seventeenth-century figures who inspired him in his scholarly path and had a significant impact on how he conceives of the early Modern as a distinct era in Jewish history. each figure is connected in some way to the italian port of venice. Though they differ considerably from one another, in their distinctive hybridity leon Modena, simone luzzatto, and Joseph shlomo delmedigo were each paradigmatic of the age.
IN his introduction to Early Modern Jewry, David Ruderman reveals something of his intellectual autobiography by relating to three seventeenth-century figures who inspired him in his scholarly path and had a significant impact on how he conceives of the Early Modern as a distinct era in Jewish history. Each figure is connected in some way to the Italian port of Venice. Though they differ considerably from one another, in their distinctive hybridity Leon Modena, Simone Luzzatto, and Joseph Shlomo Delmedigo were each paradigmatic of the age. Modena, the enigmatic rabbinic figure, was full of internal contradictions. A man of great learning-restless and creative with no bounds, critical and sharp like a knife, courageous and questioning-he delved into the new and traditional worlds of knowledge that engaged Jewish culture in his day. Modena, as a man of many worlds and interests, a dabbler and an intellectual, holds in his person the vicissitudes and internal conflicts of the early modern intellectual experience. The second, Simone Luzzatto, while also a Venetian rabbi like Modena, was dramatically different from Modena. Standing in between the Jewish community and the Italian surrounding, Luzzatto sought to lower the walls of the ghetto. His 1638 Discorso circa il stato de gl'hebrei et in particolar dimoranti nell'inclita città di Venetia (A discourse on the state of the Jews, particularly those dwelling in the illustrious city of Venice) fused notions of Italian civic thought with emerging concepts of raison xii Adam Shear, Richard I. Cohen, Elchanan Reiner, and Natalie B. Dohrmann d'état. This stirring apologetic for the Jews of Venice forcefully argued that their petty trading, their overall usefulness and, especially, their loyalty to the Republic combined to make a significant contribution to the welfare of the city. In a work that is cited repeatedly in modern discussions on the emancipation of the Jews, Luzzatto enunciated a new political vision for the Jews, one in which they would be integrated more fully, even if not seamlessly, into seventeenth-century society. The third figure, Delmedigo, charted a course for Jews toward the new sciences of the early modern period. Born in Crete, and of very distant Ashkenazic origin, Delmedigo's identity was no less imbued with Sephardic and Mediterranean roots. He studied medicine in Padua, where he learned astronomy with Galileo, and spent a year in Venice where he encountered both Modena and Luzzatto. Delmedigo was clearly not the sedentary type. He traveled to the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and later to Central Europe, taking with him his conflicting identities and interests, inter alia, science and Kabbalah, rabbinism and Karaism, East and West, new books and old manuscripts. Even more than the other two, Delmedigo reflects in his person the cultural image of the period to which this book is dedicated. Despite the fact that these three were individuals on the margins (or perhaps because of it), their restlessness, curiosity, and lust to travel were symptomatic of an age of changing boundaries and kaleidescopic new vistas. The Talmud tells of a stone in Jerusalem, the so-called stone of claims (even to'im). From atop this stone, in this highest city at the navel of the world, a person would announce what they had found, ask one's great questions, and stake one's claims. Ruderman's stone of claims-his intellectual touchstone-has always been Venice. Venice was not just the incidental meeting place of these enigmatic men; it is the metropolis that best emblemizes the Italian world that sparked the intellect and curiosity of David Ruderman. Writing in the late 1980s, he described this Italian Jewish world in the following words: In absorbing diverse Jewish and non-Jewish cultural forms and creatively molding them into constantly novel configurations, in patiently tolerating diversity and discord, in channeling ideas and values from one place to another as an entrepôt and clearing house of merchandise, and in allowing individuality to blossom within a framework of communal consensus, Italian Jewry was expressing its own vitality, its own creativity. Perhaps the function of mediating and correlating, of translating one universe of discourse into another, is not so passive, not so unspectacular an achievement… From the perspective of the postmodern world in which we live, one of diverse cultural lifestyles and values where no single ideology reigns supreme but where bitter acrimony and extremism hold sway, the image of Italian Jewry seems refreshingly appealing. Perhaps in its quiet sanity and dignified restraint, in its mutual respect and tolerance for competing and dissenting parties, and in its harmonizing and integrative capacities, can be located not only the essential legacy of Italian Jewish civilization but also its enduring significance for contemporary culture. 1