Italian Jews
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| (40,000-50,000) | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
 Israel
|
10,000 |
 Italy
|
24,930 |
 USA
|
10,000 |
| Languages | |
| Italian, Hebrew, Judeo-Italian languages and dialects (historically) | |
| Religion | |
| Judaism | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Jews, Sephardi, Ashkenazi | |
Italian Jews (Italian: Ebrei italiani, Hebrew: יהודים איטלקים Yehudim Italkim) can be used in a broad sense to mean all Jews living or with roots in Italy or in a narrower sense to mean the Italkim, an ancient community who use the Italian rite, as distinct from the communities dating from medieval or modern times who use the Sephardi or Ashkenazi rite.
Italian Jews historically fell into four categories.
Historically these communities remained separate: in a given city there was often an "Italian synagogue" and a "Spanish synagogue", and occasionally a "German synagogue" as well. In many cases these have since amalgamated, but a given synagogue may have services of more than one rite.
Today there are further categories:
Italian Jews can be traced back as far as the 2nd century BCE: tombstones and dedicatory inscriptions survive from this period. At that time they mostly lived in the far South of Italy, with a branch community in Rome, and were generally Greek-speaking. It is thought that some families (for example the Adolescenti) are descendants of Jews deported from Judaea by the emperor Titus in 70 CE. In early medieval times there were major communities in southern Italian cities such as Bari and Otranto. Medieval Italian Jews also produced important halachic works such as Shibbole ha-Leket. Following the expulsion of the Jews from the Kingdom of Naples in 1533, the centre of gravity shifted to Rome and the north.
One of the most famous of Italy's Jews was Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto (1707–1746) whose written religious and ethical works are still widely studied.
The Italian Jewish community as a whole has numbered no more than 50,000 since it was fully emancipated in 1870. During the Second Aliyah (between 1904 and 1914) many Italian Jews moved to Israel, and there is an Italian synagogue and cultural centre in Jerusalem. Some 7,000 Italian Jews were deported and murdered during the Holocaust.
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Wikipedia