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Donato Manduzio was an illiterate Southern Italian peasant who only learned how to read and write at the age of thirty-two, while convalescing from a wound during the First World War. His subsequent reading of Scripture and the visions he experienced led him to turn to Judaism and to seek an official conversion for himself and seventy-odd followers. For twelve of the sixteen-year-long process, Manduzio wrote about his experiences. Although some excerpts from the Diary have been translated, the manuscript has remained unpublished either in Italian or in any other language up to this day. This book translates the full text of Manduzio's Diary from the original Italian into English, making it available at last to a wider public. After providing a social and historical framework for the trajectory of this remarkable man, it retraces Manduzio's mystical visions and spiritual development, as well as his struggle to create and maintain a Jewish community in a remote corner of Apulia at a time when Fascism was taking hold of Italy. It also shows how the text fits in the context of religious conversion narratives and of literary studies, thus shedding a fresh and fascinating light on the subject. This book will be of interest to specialists of autobiography, Jewish studies, Italian studies, and cultural studies. The Diary's literary qualities and riveting story-telling will also make it a must-read for general audiences.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

"L'un était le grand rabbin de Rome, l'autre un paysan illettré des Pouilles. Après la Seconde Guerre mondiale, le premier Israël Zolli, se convertira au catholicisme, le second Donato Mandozio, avec sa communauté, voudra épouser le judaïsme. Pourquoi ces deux conversions à sens contraire dans une période de l'histoire si trouble ? Quels chemins, quelles inquiétudes et quelles illuminations ont conduit ces deux hommes si différents à remettre fondamentalement en question leur foi pour en embrasser une autre ? Quel courage leur fallut-il manifester pour résister aux pressions et à l'indignation de leurs proches ?"--P. [4] of cover.

Not many people know of the utterly extraordinary events that took place in a humble southern Italian town in the first half of the twentieth century - and those who do have struggled to explain them. In the late 1920s, a crippled shoemaker had a vision where God called upon him to bring the Jewish faith to this 'dark corner' in the Catholic heartlands, despite him having had no prior contact with Judaism itself. By 1938, about a dozen families had converted at one of the most troubled times for Italy's Jews. The peasant community came under the watchful eyes of Mussolini's regime and the Catholic Church, but persisted in their new belief, eventually securing approval of their conversion from the rabbinical authorities, and emigrating to the newly founded State of Israel, where a community still exists today. In this first fully documented examination of the San Nicandro story, John Davis explains how and why these incredible events unfolded as they did. Using the converts' own accounts and a wide range of hitherto unknown sources, Davis uncovers the everyday trials and tribulations within this community, and shows how they intersected with many key contemporary issues, including national identity and popular devotional cults, Fascist and Catholic persecution, Zionist networks and postwar Jewish refugees, and the mass exodus that would bring the Mediterranean peasant world to an end. Vivid and poignant, this book draws fresh and intriguing links between the astonishing San Nicandro affair and the wider transformation of twentieth-century Europe.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Introduction--
• Part 1 The Papal Challenge: The burning of the Talmud in 1553, in the light of 16th century Catholic attitudes toward the Talmud-- The consciousness of closure: Roman Jewry and its ghet-- Expulsion Italian style: the case of Lucio Ferraris-- The good of the Church, the good of the state: the Popes and Jewish money.
• Part 2 In Search of Conversion: Church, conversion and tradition: the problem of Jewish conversion in 16th century Italy-- A tale of uncertainties: converts in the Roman ghetto-- Neofiti and their families, or perhaps, the good of the state-- Delitto e castigo nello stato della chiesa: gli ebrei nelle carceri romane dal 1572 al
• 1659.
• Part 3 The Jews of Rome: Prossimita o distanza: etnicita, sefarditi e assenza di conflitti etnici nella Roma del sedicesimo secolo-- Ethnic rivalry or melting pot: the 'edot' in the Roman ghetto-- Ethnic amalgamation, like it or not: inheritance in early modern Jewish Rome-- Abramo ben Aaron Scazzocchio, another kind of Rabbi-- The knotty problem of Shem Tov Soporto: male honor, marital intentions, and disciplinary structures in mid-16th-century Jewish Rome-- The new fashioned from the old: parallels in public and learned memory and practice in 16th century Jewish Rome-- Corporate double talk: Kehillat Kodesh and Universitas in the Roman Jewish 16th century environment-- Marriages are made in heaven: marriage and the individual in the Roman Jewish ghetto-- Writing in Hebrew, thinking in Italian-- Jewish pre-emancipation: ius commune, the Roman communita, and marriage in the early modern Papal State-- Index.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

The theme uniting the essays reprinted here is the attitude of the medieval Church, and in particular the papacy, toward the Jewish population of Western Europe. Papal consistency, sometimes sorely tried, in observing the canons and the principles announced by St Paul - that Jews were to be a permanent, if disturbing, part of Christian life - helped balance the anxiety felt by members of the Church. Clerics especially feared what they called Jewish pollution. These themes are the focus of the studies in the first part of this volume. Those in the second part explore aspects of Jewish society and family life, as both were shaped by medieval realities.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Communal pride and feminine virtue: suspecting "sivlonot" in the Jewish communities of the Ottoman empire in the early sixteenth century / Hannah Davidson
• Mothers and children as seen by sixteenth-century rabbis in the Ottoman empire / Ruth Lamdan
• Religious space, gender, and power in the Sephardi diaspora: the return to Judaism of new Christian men and women in Livorno and Pisa / Cristina Galasso
• Childhood and family among the western Sephardim in the seventeenth century / Julia R. Lieberman
• Sephardi women in Holland's golden age / Tirtsah Levie Bernfeld
• Researching the childhood of "new Jews" of the Western Sephardi diaspora in light of recent historiography / David Graizbord.

This collection of essays examines an important and under-studied topic in early modern Jewish social history"-the family life of Sephardi Jewish families in the Ottoman Empire as well as in communities in Western Europe. At the height of its power in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Ottoman Empire spanned three continents, controlling much of southeastern Europe, western Asia, and North Africa. Thousands of Jewish families that had been expelled from Spain and Portugal at the end of the fifteenth century created communities in these far-flung locations. Later emigrants from Iberia, who converted to Christianity at the time of the expulsion or before, created communities in Western European cities such as Amsterdam, Hamburg, and Livorno. Sephardi communities were very different from those of Ashkenazi Jews in the same period. The authors of these essays use the lens of domestic life to illuminate the diversity of the post-Inquisition Sephardi Jewish experience, enabling readers to enter into little-known and little-studied Jewish historical episodes. Contributors include: Tirtsah Levie Bernfeld, Hannah Davidson, Cristina Galasso, David Graizbord, Ruth Lamdan, and Julia Lieberman.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Communal pride and feminine virtue: suspecting "sivlonot" in the Jewish communities of the Ottoman empire in the early sixteenth century / Hannah Davidson
• Mothers and children as seen by sixteenth-century rabbis in the Ottoman empire / Ruth Lamdan
• Religious space, gender, and power in the Sephardi diaspora: the return to Judaism of new Christian men and women in Livorno and Pisa / Cristina Galasso
• Childhood and family among the western Sephardim in the seventeenth century / Julia R. Lieberman
• Sephardi women in Holland's golden age / Tirtsah Levie Bernfeld
• Researching the childhood of new Jews of the Western Sephardi diaspora in light of recent historiography / David Graizbord.

This collection of essays examines an important and under-studied topic in early modern Jewish social history"-the family life of Sephardi Jewish families in the Ottoman Empire as well as in communities in Western Europe. At the height of its power in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Ottoman Empire spanned three continents, controlling much of southeastern Europe, western Asia, and North Africa. Thousands of Jewish families that had been expelled from Spain and Portugal at the end of the fifteenth century created communities in these far-flung locations. Later emigrants from Iberia, who converted to Christianity at the time of the expulsion or before, created communities in Western European cities such as Amsterdam, Hamburg, and Livorno. Sephardi communities were very different from those of Ashkenazi Jews in the same period. The authors of these essays use the lens of domestic life to illuminate the diversity of the post-Inquisition Sephardi Jewish experience, enabling readers to enter into little-known and little-studied Jewish historical episodes. Contributors include: Tirtsah Levie Bernfeld, Hannah Davidson, Cristina Galasso, David Graizbord, Ruth Lamdan, and Julia Lieberman.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)