Bernard Dov Cooperman

University of Maryland, History, Faculty Member

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Bernard Dov Cooperman (PhD, Harvard University) is Louis L. Kaplan Associate Professor of Jewish History at the University of Maryland in the Department of History. He focuses on the development of communal institutions and political thought among Jews in early modern Italy.

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PhD by Bernard Dov Cooperman

Bernard Dov Cooperman, “Trade and Settlement: The Establishment and Early Development of the Jewish Communities in Leghorn and Pisa (1591-1626),” (PhD Dissertation, Harvard University, 1976)

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Articles by Bernard Dov Cooperman

Organizing the Jewish Past for American Students: Salo Baron at Columbia

Salo Baron: The Future of the Jewish Past, 2022

Tracing the early life and training of the famous historian, Salo Baron, in Tarnow, Vienna, and N... more Tracing the early life and training of the famous historian, Salo Baron, in Tarnow, Vienna, and New York, the paper seeks to picture the underlying factors that shaped Jewish historical thinking in the first three decades of the 20th century and the ways these interacted with the challenges of teaching in the United States.

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Reframing Time to Save the Nation: The Jewish Historian as Cultural Trickster

Chronologics. Periodisation in a Global Context , 2022

Using the careers of Cecil Roth and Salo Baron in the 1920s, the paper explores the re-framing of... more Using the careers of Cecil Roth and Salo Baron in the 1920s, the paper explores the re-framing of Jewish history by European historians who built their early careers in New York City. The rivalry between the two men is highlighted by their early studies on the nature of the ghetto.
Open access volume ed. Barbara Mittler, Thomas Maissen and Pierre Monnet, Heidelberg University Publishing, Fall 2022. https://heiup.uni-heidelberg.de/catalog/book/607/chapter/15141

“Shylock’s Daughter-In-Law,” Telling Stories of Jewish Love and Adultery in Early Modern Rome

Making Stories in Early Modern Italay and Beyond: Essays in Honour of Elizabeth S. Cohen and Thomas V. Cohen, 2024

Using a legal brief (responsum) by Isaac de Lattes, rabbi in Rome during the middle of the sixtee... more

Cultural Pluralism from the Ghetto: What Might It Have Meant?

Non contrarii, ma diversi: The Question of the Jewish Minority in Early Modern Italy, 2020

Examining the writings and experiences of contemporaries such as Gedaliah ibn Yahya, Benjamin Neh... more Examining the writings and experiences of contemporaries such as Gedaliah ibn Yahya, Benjamin Nehemia ben Elnatan, and David de' Pomis allows us to better understand the impact of ghettoization in 16th-century Italy and what Rabbi Simha Luzzatto may have meant in arguing for the place of Jews within Venetian society.

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Bernard Dov Cooperman, “Defining Deviance, Negotiating Norms: Raphael Meldola in Livorno, Pisa, and Bayonne,” in Yosef Kaplan, ed., Religious Changes and Cultural Transformations in the Early Modern Western Sephardic Communities (Leiden: Brill, 2019), 157-194

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Bernard Dov Cooperman, “The Early Modern Ghetto: A Study in Urban Real Estate,” in Wendy Goldman and Joe Trotter, eds., The Ghetto in Global History (New York: Routledge, 2018), 57-73

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Bernard Dov Cooperman, “Legitimizing Rhetorics: Jewish ‘Heresy’ in Early Modern Italy,” Études Épistémè, vol. 31 (2017): 1-17

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Bernard Dov Cooperman, “What If The ‘Ghetto’ Had Never Been Constructed?” in Gavriel D. Rosenfeld, ed., What Ifs of Jewish History: From Abraham to Zionism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 81-102, 371-381

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Bernard Dov Cooperman, “Jewish Space in Early Modern Pisa,” in Anna Maria Pult Quaglia and Alessandra Veronese, eds., Diversi Angoli Di Visuale: Fra storia medievale e storia degli ebrei in ricordo di Michele Luzzati (Pisa: Pacini, 2016), 103–122

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Bernard Dov Cooperman, “Global History & Jewish Studies: Paradoxical Agendas, Contradictory Implications,” Giornale di Storia, vol. 19 (2015): 1-42

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Bernard Dov Cooperman, “Licenses, Cartels, and Kehila: Jewish Moneylending and the Struggle Against Restraint of Trade in Early Modern Rome,” in Rebecca Kobrin and Adam Teller, eds., Purchasing Power: The Economics of Modern Jewish History (Philadelphia: Penn Press, 2015), 27-45, 264-276

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Bernard Dov Cooperman, “Organizing Knowledge for the Jewish Market: An Editor-Printer in Sixteenth-Century Rome,” in Peggy K. Pearlstein, ed., Perspectives on the Hebraic Book (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 2012), 79-129

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Bernard Dov Cooperman, “Amicitia and Hermeticism: Paratext as Key to Judah Moscato’s Nefusot Yehudah,” in Giuseppe Veltri and Gianfranco Miletto, eds., Rabbi Judah Moscato and the Jewish Intellectual World of Mantua in 16th-17th Century (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 79-104

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Bernard Dov Cooperman, “Preface,” in Avital Feuer, Sharon Armon-Lotem, Bernard Dov Cooperman, eds., Issues in the Acquisition and Teaching of Hebrew (Bethesda: University Press of Maryland, 2009), ix-xi

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Bernard Dov Cooperman, “Preface: Redressing Boundaries,” in Glenn Clark, et al., eds., City Limits? Perspectives on the Historical European City (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queens University Press, 2010), 247-253

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Bernard Dov Cooperman, “Amsterdam From An International Perspective: Tolerance and Kehillah in the Portuguese Diaspora,” in Yosef Kaplan, ed., The Dutch Intersection: The Jews and the Netherlands in Modern History (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 1-18

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Bernard Dov Cooperman, “Judaism and Jewish Communities,” in David Goldfield, ed., Encyclopedia of Urban History, vol. 1 (London: SAGE, 2007), 401-402

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Bernard Dov Cooperman, “Ethnicity and Institution Building among Jews in Early Modern Rome,” AJS Review 30:1 (April 2006): 119-145

The Cinquecento was marked by the emergence of expanded and more formalized structures of self-go... more The Cinquecento was marked by the emergence of expanded and more formalized structures of self-government in Italy's Jewish communities. It is from this century that we begin to have written capitoli (constitutional agreements) and pinkasim (record books).2 By the middle of the century, as Robert Bonfil has demonstrated, the office of community-appointed rabbi had been created and regularized.3 Intense internecine struggles broke out for control over the new institutions, and contemporary rabbinic responsa attest to the slow and sometimes tortuous manner in which early modem Jews felt their way toward new working arrangements, procedures, and understandings.4

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Bernard Dov Cooperman, “Political Discourse in a Kabbalistic Register: Isaac De Lattes’ Plea for Stronger Communal Government,” in Jay M. Harris, ed., Be’erot Yitzhak: Studies in Memory of Isadore Twersky (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005), 47-68, *79–*93

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Bernard Dov Cooperman, “Trade and Settlement: The Establishment and Early Development of the Jewish Communities in Leghorn and Pisa (1591-1626),” (PhD Dissertation, Harvard University, 1976)

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Organizing the Jewish Past for American Students: Salo Baron at Columbia

Salo Baron: The Future of the Jewish Past, 2022

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Reframing Time to Save the Nation: The Jewish Historian as Cultural Trickster

Chronologics. Periodisation in a Global Context , 2022

“Shylock’s Daughter-In-Law,” Telling Stories of Jewish Love and Adultery in Early Modern Rome

Making Stories in Early Modern Italay and Beyond: Essays in Honour of Elizabeth S. Cohen and Thomas V. Cohen, 2024

Using a legal brief (responsum) by Isaac de Lattes, rabbi in Rome during the middle of the sixtee... more

Cultural Pluralism from the Ghetto: What Might It Have Meant?

Non contrarii, ma diversi: The Question of the Jewish Minority in Early Modern Italy, 2020

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Bernard Dov Cooperman, “The Early Modern Ghetto: A Study in Urban Real Estate,” in Wendy Goldman and Joe Trotter, eds., The Ghetto in Global History (New York: Routledge, 2018), 57-73

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Bernard Dov Cooperman, “Legitimizing Rhetorics: Jewish ‘Heresy’ in Early Modern Italy,” Études Épistémè, vol. 31 (2017): 1-17

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Bernard Dov Cooperman, “Global History & Jewish Studies: Paradoxical Agendas, Contradictory Implications,” Giornale di Storia, vol. 19 (2015): 1-42

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Bernard Dov Cooperman, “Judaism and Jewish Communities,” in David Goldfield, ed., Encyclopedia of Urban History, vol. 1 (London: SAGE, 2007), 401-402

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Bernard Dov Cooperman, “Ethnicity and Institution Building among Jews in Early Modern Rome,” AJS Review 30:1 (April 2006): 119-145

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Bernard Dov Cooperman, “Jewish Studies Professors and the Community: A Response,” Shofar 24:3 (Spring 2006): 136-140

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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

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Bernard Dov Cooperman, “Review of ‘The Scandal of Kabbalah: Leon Modena, Jewish Mysticism, Early Modern Venice’, by Yaacob Dweck,” Religion & Literature 47:3 (Autumn 2015): 148-151

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Bernard Dov Cooperman, “Review of ‘The Medici State and the Ghetto of Florence: The Construction of an Early Modern Jewish Community’, by Stefanie B. Siegmund,” Renaissance Quarterly 60:4 (Winter 2007): 1327-1328

Stefanie B. Siegmund. The Medici State and the Ghetto of Florence: The Construction of an Early M... more

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Bernard Dov Cooperman, “Review of ‘Alle origini di una comunità: Ebree ed ebrei a Livorno nel Seicento’, by Cristina Galasso,” Renaissance Quarterly 58:4 (Winter 2005): 1325-1326

Storia dell'Ebraismo in Italia: Studi e Testi 23. Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 2002. 171 pp. index. ... more Storia dell'Ebraismo in Italia: Studi e Testi 23. Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 2002. 171 pp. index. append. illus. bibl. €18. ISBN: 88-222-5155-5. Cristina Galasso has boldly entered where a more experienced scholar might have hesitated to go. Without access to Hebrew sources or training in the complexities of halakha (Jewish law), she has plunged into local archives in order to give us a picture of the social organization and underlying social values of Livorno's Jewish community in the seventeenth century. For her understanding of "traditional" or rabbinic Jewish values she relies on secondary sources, primarily sociohistorical studies. Though there are, perhaps inevitably, occasional slips in her understanding, these are not crucial. We must applaud Galasso's pioneering effort and know that the book will serve as a valuable guide for much future research.

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Bernard Dov Cooperman, “Review of ‘The Mediterranean and the Jews, vol. 2: Society, Culture, and Economy in Early Modern Times’, eds. Elliott Horowitz and Moises Orfali,” Renaissance Quarterly 57:1 (Spring 2004): 275-277

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Bernard Dov Cooperman, “Review of ‘The Jews of Europe after the Black Death by Anna Foa’, by Andrea Grover,” AJS Review 27:2 (November 2003): 334-335

Writing a survey history is not easy. Every basic decision-periodization, geographic limits, them... more Writing a survey history is not easy. Every basic decision-periodization, geographic limits, thematic focus-is fraught with the linked dangers of overgeneralization and oversimplification. There are always experts looking over the author's shoulder, ready to cry foul if their areas or contributions are not accorded sufficient attention. And if the author is a good historian, she will realize how much she has had to omit, how tendentious she has had to be. Anna Foa is a good historian, and she is therefore especially to be congratulated for having taken on the ar-

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Bernard Dov Cooperman, “Review of ‘Crisis and Creativity in the Sephardic World 1391-1648’, by Benjamin R. Gampel,” Sixteenth Century Journal 30:4 (Winter 1999): 1069-1071

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Bernard Dov Cooperman, “Review of ‘Between Worlds: The Life and Thought of Rabbi David ben Judah Messer Leon’, by Hava Tirosh-Rothschild,” American Historical Review 98:2 (April 1993): 485

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Bernard Dov Cooperman, “Review of ‘Shylock Reconsidered: Jews, Moneylending, and Medieval Society’, by Joseph Shatzmiller,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 23:1 (Summer 1992): 148-150

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Bernard Dov Cooperman, “Review of ‘The Last Jews on Iberian Soil: Navarrese Jewry, 1479/1498’, by Benjamin R. Gampel,” American Historical Review 96:4 (October 1991): 1210-1211

Labor historians increasingly recognize that proletarianization was more than a process of separa... more Labor historians increasingly recognize that proletarianization was more than a process of separating workers from skill and property. It was a diverse process involving the transformation of family life and political expectations. This study of three towns of miners and metalworkers near St. Etienne between 1840 and 1880 is a sophisticated explanation of the process.

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Bernard Dov Cooperman, “Review of ‘Kabbalah, Magic, and Science: The Cultural Universe of a Sixteenth-Century Jewish Physician’, by David B. Ruderman,” American Historical Review 96:2 (April 1991): 546-547

Modern Europe 547 the enterprise in favor of intellectual pursuits: Yehiel Nissim da Pisa polemic... more Modern Europe 547 the enterprise in favor of intellectual pursuits: Yehiel Nissim da Pisa polemicized elegantly against preoccupation with secular philosophy and against abuses in the internal Jewish credit market; Leone Modena turned to the rabbinate; and Yagel turned to medicine. This generation retreated intellectually as well as economically: with the obvious exceptions of such areas as Hebrew and kabbalah, Jews became the consumers of secular culture rather than its providers, the students of the gentiles rather than their teachers. Translation was into Hebrew rather than from it. Small-town doctors like Yagel could do little more than try to stay abreast and defend their own tradition by appeals to authority, by awkward compromises, and, when all else failed, by simply ignoring the latest discoveries. Rather than an active participant in a continuing cultural dialogue, Yagel seems one in a long line of medieval Jewish scholars bent on defending the Jewish intellectual tradition against the appeal of an apparently superior culture. But the intellectual tide has passed him by. Yagel's major scientific works-two massive encyclopedias, an epistolary-cum-diary-cum-medicalcase-book, and an autobiography-went unpublished and virtually unread to our own day. Jews who needed to know science studied it not in Hebrew but in the original, and the debate with secular culture was carried on by men such as Joseph Solomon Delmedigo, far more acute and far more critical than Yagel.

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Bernard Dov Cooperman, “Review of ‘Edizioni ebraiche del XVI secolo nelle bibliotheche dell’ Emilia Romagna’, by Giulio Busi,” Medievalia Et Humanistica 17 (1990): 173

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Bernard Dov Cooperman, “Review of ‘The World of a Renaissance Jew: The Life and Thought of Abraham ben Mordecai Farissol’, by David B. Ruderman,” Jewish Social Studies 44:3-4 (Summer-Autumn 1982): 327-330

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Bernard Dov Cooperman, “Review of ‘Jewish Bankers and the Holy See from the Thirteenth to the Seventeenth Century’, by Léon Poliakov,” Journal of Economic History 40:1 (March 1980): 189-190

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Bernard Dov Cooperman, “Review of ‘Altopascio: A Study in Tuscan Rural Society, 1587-1784’, by Frank McArdle,” Journal of Economic History 38:4 (December 1978): 1027-1028

increased efficacy of hunting with European weapons. He states that such an interpretation assume... more increased efficacy of hunting with European weapons. He states that such an interpretation assumes Indians were already "in the proper frame of mind to exterminate the hapless furbearers when the Europeans arrived on the scene" (p. 13). But this is a critical misinterpretation of the traditional world view of the tribes he studies. These peoples believed that each type of animal was a separate race,

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*Jews and Muslims in the Islamic World*, eds. Bernard Dov Cooperman and Zvi Zohar (Bethesda: University Press of Maryland, 2013)

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*Issues in the Acquisition and Teaching of Hebrew*, eds. Avital Feuer, Sharon Armon-Lotem, Bernard Dov Cooperman (Bethesda: University Press of Maryland, 2009)

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Pauline Wengeroff, *Rememberings: The World of a Russian-Jewish Woman in the Nineteenth Century*, trans. Henny Wenkart, ed. Bernard Dov Cooperman (Bethesda: University Press of Maryland, 2000)

Rememberings : the world of a Russian-Jewish woman in the nineteenth century/ Pauline Wengeroff �... more Rememberings : the world of a Russian-Jewish woman in the nineteenth century/ Pauline Wengeroff � translated by Henny Wenk.art ; edited with an afterword by Bernard D. Cooperman. p. cm. -(Studies and texts in Iewish history and culture ; 9) An abridged translation of the German, 2nd ed. of: Memoiren einer Grossmutter. ISBN 1-883053-58-7 -ISBN 1-883053-61-7 (pbk.) I. Wengeroff, Pauline, 1833-1916. 2. Tews-Russia-Biography. 3. Jews-Russia-Social life and customs. 4. Russia-Biography. I. Cooper man, Bernard Dov, 1946-. II. Wengeroff, Pauline, 1833-1916. Memoi ren einer Grossmutter. Ill. Title. IV. Series. DS135.R95 W328 2000 947' .004924'0092--<lc2 l Paper cuts© 2000 by Tsirl Waletzky Cover photograph of Pauline Wengeroff ca. 1908 Cover design by Duy-IOnlOng Van ISBN: 1883053-58-7 (hardcover) 1883053-61-7 (sofi:cover)

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*The Jews of Italy: Memory and Identity*, eds. Bernard Dov Cooperman and Barbara Garvin (Bethesda: University Press of Maryland, 2000)

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*In Iberia and Beyond: Hispanic Jews Between Cultures*, ed. Bernard Dov Cooperman (Newark, Del.: University of Delaware Press, 1998)

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Jacob Katz, *Tradition and Crisis: Jewish Society at the End of the Middle Ages*, trans. Bernard Dov Cooperman (New York: NYU Press, 1993)

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Roberta Curiel and Bernard Dov Cooperman, *The Venetian Ghetto* (New York: Rizzoli, 1990)

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Bernard Dov Cooperman, *Realities and Dreams: Images of the World in Israeli Children’s Literature* (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Library, 1983)

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*Jewish Thought in the Sixteenth Century*, ed. Bernard Dov Cooperman (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983)

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David B. Ruderman. Kabbalah, Magic, and Science: The Cultural Universe of a Sixteenth-Century Jewish Physician. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1988. vii, 232 pp

AJS Review, 1991

Amsterdam from an international perspective: tolerance and Kehillah in the portuguese diaspora

BRILL eBooks, 2008

In the Jewish historical narrative, early modern Amsterdam is known for two things: first, the gr... more In the Jewish historical narrative, early modern Amsterdam is known for two things: first, the great measure of religious tolerance the city fathers displayed towards Portuguese converso refugees, allowing them to settle, revert to Judaism, and prosper; and second, the authoritarian Jewish community that those refugees subsequently created, a community that famously had the power to excommunicate and expel the philosopher Baruch Spinoza in July of 1656. The nexus between these two phenomena-tolerance and autonomy-is neither obvious nor necessary. The complexity of Dutch policy has been presented in static and polarized terms of good and evil, thus obscuring the slow, decades-long process by which the Portuguese gradually transformed themselves into a Jewish community. The unevenness of toleration policy may be ascribed in part to the fact that the authority to legislate was highly decentralized in the Low Countries. Keywords: Dutch policy; early modern Amsterdam; Jewish community; Portuguese

Defining Deviance, Negotiating Norms: Raphael Meldola in Livorno, Pisa, and Bayonne

This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the prevailing CC-BY-NC License at ... more

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Chapter 1 Licenses, Cartels, and Kehila: Jewish Moneylending and the Strug gle Against Restraint of Trade in Early Modern Rome

Chapter Two Organizing the Jewish Past for American Students: Salo Baron at Columbia

Columbia University Press eBooks, Dec 31, 2022

The early modern ghetto

The Venetian ghetto

Воспоминания : мир еврейской женщины в России XIX века

Академический проект eBooks, 2005

Linguistic and Formal Aspects of Jewish Record Keeping in Italy—A Comparative Investigation

The very excellent gentlemen, Parnasim, [meeting] in the usual place [etc.] Considering that it i... more The very excellent gentlemen, Parnasim, [meeting] in the usual place [etc.] Considering that it is necessary that Ketubot, which are public instruments, must be registered in a public book so that they might always be viewed and constitute the truth and validity of the act, therefore by the present decree they order and command that all Ketuba contracts which are issued in this Holy Community must be registered by the sofer of our chancery in the usual book. We require the parties that they not perform this registration with the opportune mechanism of the government. The said Ketuba instrument shall not be valid so long as it is not signed by the sofer [administrative secretary] of the Holy Community and by one of the three gentlemen [i.e., the massari] elected at the time. The registration requires a [fee of] ¼% of the dowry principle paid into the hand of that official and ¾ p.a 2 for each Ketuba for the Chancery, all for the good government of this Holy Community, which may God augment. Item. We order that all those who have a son or daughter have to inform the Chancery in writing and they are obligated to have a synagogue honor [shura], having a note from the Chancellor that they have made the required notification, and paying the Chancery six sueldos and an ocho. Similarly they order that the Chancellor must register all who pass from this to a better life in the usual book under pain of censure from the Gentlemen of the Mahamad [i.e., the communal government], all for the good governance….

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Francesca Bregoli. Mediterranean Enlightenment: Livornese Jews, Tuscan Culture, and Eighteenth-Century Reform. Stanford: Stanford University Press. 2014. 339 pp

Ajs Review-the Journal of The Association for Jewish Studies, Nov 1, 2015

Cristina Galasso. Alle origini di una comunità: Ebree ed ebrei a Livorno nel Seicento. Storia dellEbraismo in Italia: Studi e Testi 23. Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 2002. 171 pp. index. append. illus. bibl. €18. ISBN: 88-222-5155-5

Renaissance Quarterly, 2005

ABSTRACT Cristina Galasso has boldly entered where a more experienced scholar might have hesitate... more ABSTRACT Cristina Galasso has boldly entered where a more experienced scholar might have hesitated to go. Without access to Hebrew sources or training in the complexities of halakha (Jewish law), she has plunged into local archives in order to give us a picture of the social organization and underlying social values of Livorno&#39;s Jewish community in the seventeenth century. For her understanding of &quot;traditional&quot; or rabbinic Jewish values she relies on secondary sources, primarily sociohistorical studies. Though there are, perhaps inevitably, occasional slips in her understanding, these are not crucial. We must applaud Galasso&#39;s pioneering effort and know that the book will serve as a valuable guide for much future research. The book is divided into four parts: a brief summary of the Medici charters that, in the 1590s, gave birth and extraordinary autonomy to the Livornese Jewish community; a lengthy chapter on aspects of family and gender relations; a sketch of the Jews&#39; position between multiple legal and religious systems of authority; and a short treatment of the institutions by which Jews encouraged communal solidarity. Galasso effectively mines her main source, records of judicial appeals, for fascinating details about sexual (mis)behavior, domestic disagreement and even violence, theft, and fraud — in short, a broad range of human confrontations and controversies. Wills and census data provide her with less-sensational, but equally important, information on the size and layout of Jews&#39; dwellings, their domestic furniture and private libraries, the place of servants and slaves in the household, and many other fundamental aspects of daily life. Fifteen graphs summarize data on topics ranging from the size of dowries and patterns of inheritance to the ethnicity of converts to Christianity and the gender of those on the communal dole. Above all, Galasso emphasizes the legal, economic, and social independence of action enjoyed by Livornese Jewish women, contrasting this with the much more limited role she believes was available to Christian women of the time. Galasso&#39;s documentary sources nicely concretize for the Livornese context the picture of Jewish women&#39;s agency outlined by Giacomo Todeschini and described in detail for Rome by Kenneth Stow, for Venice by Carla Boccato, and for Turin by Luciano Allegra. We see Livornese women&#39;s dowries invested as the financial basis for family firms, women named as heirs and administrators of businesses, women as testators, and (even if widowed and remarried) women as guardians of their minor children. Galasso is so convinced of Jewish women&#39;s rights — which she attributes largely to the contractual, and therefore reversible, character of Jewish marriage — that she sometimes ignores counterarguments. For example, though she thanks Ruth Lamdan for personal help and cites her work on more than one occasion, Galasso ignores that scholar&#39;s emphasis on the patriarchally oppressive attitude of traditional Judaism towards women and cites her out of context as support for the exact opposite position. In reconstructing family and gender relations in Livorno, Galasso faced formidable challenges. The city&#39;s archive was badly damaged by Allied bombing during World War II, and she had as a result to rely on sources that are fragmentary at best. Her conclusions must be seen, therefore, as still provisional. Thus, her argument that women were more concerned than men with religious rituals preparing for the afterlife, her understanding of a gender-defined difference between men and women conversos in how they remembered the Iberian peninsula, and her conclusion that gender solidarity among women overcame entrenched ethnic divisions are all generalizations that will require further investigation in the light of other contemporary sources. Galasso wants to use her archival sources as a counterweight to rabbinic material in order to demonstrate that &quot;observance of halakha was less rigid and uniform than might have been thought&quot; (8). This is a potentially fruitful and urgently needed scholarly approach, but Galasso, it seems to me, too often falls into the trap she is trying to avoid, relying on an essentialized and static view of traditional Jewish marriage law and ignoring the give-and-take of rabbinic debate through the ages, the variations in local practice, and the always significant gap between halakhic theory and judicial practice. Occasionally, as noted, she seems to misunderstand the point of...

Kabbalah, Magic, and Science: The Cultural Universe of a Sixteenth-Century Jewish Physician

The American Historical Review, Apr 1, 1991

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Javier Castaño, Talya Fishman, and Ephraim Kanarfogel, eds., Regional Identities and Cultures of Medieval Jews. London: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization in association with Liverpool University Press, 2018. Pp. x, 352; 1 table. £39.50. ISBN: 978-1-9067-6467-8. Table of contents available on...

Speculum, Oct 1, 2020

Stefanie B. Siegmund. The Medici State and the Ghetto of Florence: The Construction of an Early Modern Jewish Community. Stanford Studies in Jewish History and Culture. Stanford : Stanford University Press, 2006. xxvi + 624 pp. index. illus. tbls. map. chron. bibl. $70. ISBN: 0-8047-5078-5

Renaissance Quarterly, 2007

ABSTRACT Between 1567 and 1571 Medici policy towards Jews appeared to undergo a crucial shift. Du... more ABSTRACT Between 1567 and 1571 Medici policy towards Jews appeared to undergo a crucial shift. Duke (and then Grand Duke) Cosimo I reversed traditional Medici tolerance, imposed the demeaning Jew-badge, and then restricted Tuscan Jewry to a single settlement in Florence, that settlement encircled by the high walls of a ghetto he ordered established next to the Mercato Vecchio. This apparently retrograde abandonment of Renaissance tolerance has been understood as a Medici concession to a reactionary papacy, an imposition of Roman-style restrictions in return for the papal grant of the new, more illustrious title to the ambitious dynasty. Stefanie Siegmund has challenged that approach. For her, the new Jewry policy and the ghetto in particular were neither reactionary nor inspired by Rome; rather they were intrinsic to Medici state-building, part of the overall ordering and structuring that characterized the early modern bureaucratic state. This urbanization, spatial segregation, and formal legal definition of the Jews by the state for the first time constituted Tuscany&#39;s Jews into a kehila, or organized corporate community, characterized by new status structures and elites and eliminating women from leadership roles. Siegmund&#39;s focus on the ghetto as a spatial expression of control and uniformity draws heavily on Foucauldian categories and the current rhetoric of urban studies, but it is also based on traditional methods of historical analysis and extensive research. Grounding herself in the sources, she questions both the chronology and evidence for this ghetto-for-title approach. Florentine ghettoization was formerly seen as a sad endnote to a glorious Renaissance community. Siegmund has used her extensive familiarity with the Florentine archives to transform it into a policy shift that reveals how considerations of urban planning, demography, economics, and gender can be integrated into Florentine Jewish history. Anyone who has struggled with the immensity of the Florentine Archivio di Stato will appreciate the amount of work Siegmund has invested in some of her finest insights, as when she demonstrates the sort of hard-headed cost-benefit analysis that motivated the Medici to build the ghetto. Moreover, she does not hesitate to move from her documents to discussions of broad social process, offering suggestive links between disparate realms (convents and ghettos; the ghetto as parish; night-time regulation of Jews and bearing of arms) while demanding that we reconsider other associations whose significance has been taken for granted (treatment of prostitutes and Jews). Siegmund stakes out positions with unusual enthusiasm, creating theoretical black-and-white distinctions where, at least for this reviewer, a more subtle functional gray might have been preferable. Siegmund is correct, for example, that ghettoization preceded the forming of Jewish communal institutions in Florence and that state authorization was necessary to approve communal ordinances. But this is not to say that the Jews&#39; idea of kehila stemmed from the state&#39;s agenda or that there was some unique relation between Medici political policy and Jewish life in the ghetto of Florence. Gradual institutionalization is a typical feature of Jewish communal life all over central and northern Italy during the sixteenth century, a response to the decline of the old system of moneylenders&#39; condotte, to the formation of new larger population centers, and to a developing rhetorical-conceptual vocabulary that drew freely upon Jewish halakhic sources as well as secular models. Siegmund herself highlights that in 1571 the Medici allowed (and indeed encouraged) hundreds of Jews to settle in Florence for the first time. This paradoxical ghettoization/opening up of the capital to relatively large-scale Jewish settlement was the real policy revolution. The rest of the developments she describes in Florence — both in government policy and in the community — seem to me to parallel, mutatis mutandis, what was happening elsewhere. Siegmund regularly presents us with bold new interpretations of well-known documents. For example, a communal ordinance of 1572 forbade men to follow their crafts (&quot;far arte o esercitio alcuno, ne occupare con cosa alcuna&quot;) in the new ghetto&#39;s three common rooms. Women and girls, however, were specifically allowed to work (&quot;starvi a lavorare&quot;) in those spaces. I read this edict as protecting a common space from permanent encroachment by individuals (hence it also fines anyone who leaves trash in...

What if the “ghetto” had never been constructed?

Cambridge University Press eBooks, 2016

Altopascio: A Study in Tuscan Rural Society, 1587–1784. By Frank McArdle. Cambridge Studies in Early Modern History. New York and London: Cambridge University Press, 1978. Pp. x, 226. $22.50

The Journal of Economic History, Dec 1, 1978

The ghetto of Venice

The Creation of the Venetian Ghetto: An Introduction. A Tour of the Ghetto. THE GHETTO NUOVO. THE... more The Creation of the Venetian Ghetto: An Introduction. A Tour of the Ghetto. THE GHETTO NUOVO. THE SCUOLA GRANDE TEDESCA. THE SCUOLA CANTON. LIFE IN THE CAMPO DEL GHETTO NUOVO. THE SCUOLA ITALIANA. THE GHETTO VECCHIO. THE SCUOLA GRANDE SPAGNOLA. THE SCUOLA LEVANTINA. THE GHETTO NUOVISSIMO. THE CEMETERY OF S. NICOLO DEL LIDO. The Museum of Jewish Art: A Guide. Glossary. Bibliography. Map. Index.

Realities and dreams: Images of the world in Israeli children's literature

Flora Cassen. Marking the Jews in Renaissance Italy: Politics, Religion, and the Power of Symbols

The American Historical Review, Jun 1, 2019

Legitimizing Rhetorics: Jewish “Heresy” in Early Modern Italy1

Etudes Epistémè, Jun 26, 2017

Etant donne la faiblesse des institutions juives capables d’exercer un controle social, les argum... more Etant donne la faiblesse des institutions juives capables d’exercer un controle social, les arguments pour la liberte de pensee et la critique de l’autorite ont pu se deployer sans beaucoup de difficultes dans les communautes. Celles-ci ont utilise des decrets d’excommunication pour expulser les individus coupables d’un certain nombre d’actes –surtout la fraude sur les taxes et la concurrence economique, l’infraction des regles de la Halakha sur le mariage, ou d’autres actes reprouves de la sorte. Mais en ce qui concerne les croyances et la doctrine, les demandes d’« excommunication » de deviants semblent etre restees largement rhetoriques, au moins jusqu’au XVIIe siecle. Ce qui est remarquable ce n’est pas seulement le rejet de toute autorite universelle, mais la justification de la liberte de pensee, l’importance de l’ethique rationnelle de la perfection de soi, le refus de la credulite aveugle et l’usage de methodes critiques sur lesquelles etablir la tradition authentique juive.

Bernard Dov Cooperman

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