Essential Papers on Jewish Culture in Renaissance and Baroque Italy (Essential papers on Jewish studies)

Traditionally, Italian Jewish culture in early modern Europe has been considered, at worst, irrelevant and, at best, has been marginally represented by the image of the token Shylockian moneylender or mysterious Jewish astrologer. In recent years, however, this inaccurate portrait has been convincingly dispelled by a plethora of scholars and studies that recognize Italian Jewish culture as an historically valuable and intrinsically interesting subject. The papers collected in this volume, intended for students of Jewish history - as well as for students of Renaissance and early modern European culture constitute an authoritative sampling of this scholarship, addressing such topics as Italian Jewish preaching, the Kabbalah in the Renaissance; Jewish historiography in the 16th century, messianic expectations during the Renaissance and Jewish cultural trends in the ghetto.