Language:
Italian
Year of publication:
2003
Titel der Quelle:
Zakhor; rivista di storia degli ebrei d'Italia
Angaben zur Quelle:
6 (2003) 9-20
Keywords:
Jews
;
Judaism Relations
;
Christianity
;
Christianity and other religions Judaism
;
Jews History Middle Ages, 500-1500
Abstract:
Affirms that recent claims against Italian Jews of dual loyalty to the Western world and Israel have roots in the ancient Christian stereotype of Jewish untrustworthiness. Relates that in the 9th-13th centuries the political accusation of betrayal had theological roots. The stereotype of Jewish disloyalty included an imputation of not belonging, which in the 13th-15th centuries aroused antisemitic violence in Europe. In the modern era, the Christian anxiety about Jewish disloyalty takes on the characteristics of a feared alliance between Jews and the Islamic world: in this manner, Israel today takes on a connotation of Levantine religious infidelity. The Italian Emancipation did not recognize Jewish identity as constitutive of the nation and always considered Jews as "outsiders". The oral theological tradition of Jewish infidelity is manifested in the use of abstract images like "Diaspora", Israel", and "Western world", leading to a blurring of more complicated realities.
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