This book depicts the cultural imagination of the Italian-Jewish minority from the unification
of the country to the end of the First World War. The creation of an Italian nation-state
introduced new problems and new opportunities for its citizens. What did it mean for the Jewish
minority? How could members of the minority combine and redefine Jewishness and Italianness in
a radically new political and legal framework? Key concepts such as family religion nation
assimilation and ¿ later ¿ Zionism are observed as they shift and change over time. The
interaction between the public and private spheres plays a pivotal role in the analysis and
the self-fashioning of Italian Jewish élites is read alongside the evolution of the cultural
stereotypes typical of the time. Reinterpreting the Italian national patriotic narrative
through the eyes of the Jews Carlotta Ferrara degli Uberti is able to unveil its less known
layers and articulations while at the same time offering a new perspective from which to read
the modern Jewish experience in the Western World.
