From ghetto to emancipation: the role of Moisè Formiggini

The move toward emancipation of the Jewish ghetto society of late eighteenth-century Modena can be traced by studying its leader, the merchant Moisè Formiggini, and his advocacy of full political rights following the Napoleonic conquest of October 1796. Though not unprepared to deal with the novel freedom Napoleon brought, Modenese Jewry’s path toward emancipation was not straightforward. Officially, in Modena, there had been no Jewish question, no public debate. Yet though the Este Dukes granted the Jewish elite extensive liberties, they refused to give them civil rights. In a speech delivered in front of the new Modenese government, Formiggini drew from earlier Jewish apologetic works by Simone Luzzatto, Isaac de Pinto, Jacob Saraval, Benedetto Frizzi, and Isaac Valabrègue extolling Jewish commercial utility. But Formiggini did not discuss Jewish regeneration and never distinguished between Ashkenazim and Sephardim. He asked that Jews be recognized as “active citizens,” which included the responsibility of voting, the ability to hold public office, and access to university education and the liberal professions, and demonstrated awareness of legal rights obtained by Jews in 1791. Yet Formiggini and other leading Jews acted from within the community and held fast to their Jewish identity. By negotiating between gradual civil modernization and maintaining traditional communal networks and institutions, Modenese Jews moved gradually toward a new civil world.     

Introduction to the special issue “embodied cognition and education”

Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences - This special issue focuses on the theoretical, empirical and practical integrations between embodied cognition theory (EC) and educational science. The...     

“This passage can also be read differently …?:” How Jews and Christians censored Hebrew texts in early modern Modena

This article focuses on the impact exerted by the promulgation of the Index of Prohibited Books by Clement VIII in 1596 on the Jews in early modern Modena. In order to explore diverse cultural perspectives among Jews and Christians, it considers how they read, interpreted, and censored controversial passages in the commentary of Rashi (Solomon ben Isaac of Troyes, 1040–1105) on the Pentateuch. It shows parallels between censorship and the expurgation of Hebrew books, as well as the physical ghettoization and expulsion of Jews from Italian cities enacted by Church authorities, on the one hand, and political and cultural negotiations conducted by the Jews themselves, on the other. Just as the city could be protected from Jewish pollution only through the segregation and expulsion of Jews, so too could the Catholic community be effectively shielded from the contamination of Jewish blasphemies only through banning the Talmud and expurgating other Jewish texts. At the same time, Jews developed means of self-vindication, including a straightforward defense of the principal tenets of Judaism and a stratagem of avoiding discussions that referred to the superiority of Jews over Christians in some interpretations of Rashi. These methods enabled Jews to engage in social and political negotiations with Church and ducal institutions.