| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 110.4

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 110.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Europe: Early Modern and Modern

David B. Ruderman and Giuseppe Veltri, editors. Cultural Intermediaries: Jewish Intellectuals in Early Modern Italy. (Jewish Culture and Contexts.) Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 2004. Pp. 293. $55.00.
This cohesive and useful collection of eleven essays is devoted to Jewish cultural and intellectual history during the Renaissance and Baroque eras. Except for the introduction by the editor, David B. Ruderman, and the concluding essay by Moshe Idel, each essay focuses on an individual figure whose life and works illustrate a certain dimension of Judeo-Italian culture. Although the essays do not break new conceptual grounds, they offer more nuanced and detailed portrayals of select Jewish luminaries who excelled not in Jewish legal scholarship but in rhetoric, historiography, philosophy, kabbalah, music, magic, medicine, and the sciences. These portraits illuminate the relationship between Jews and Christians in Italy and the distinctiveness of Judeo-Italian culture.	1
The introduction delineates the various factors that shaped Jewish intellectual life in Italy: the new technology of printing, the enrollment of Jews in the medical faculties of Italian universities, the return of conversos to the Jewish fold, and the rise of Christian Hebraism and Christian kabbalah. Ruderman highlights the new social contacts between Jews and Christians that blurred previous cultural and religious boundaries and provided new social opportunities for the exchange of ideas. In Renaissance Italy, Jews not only translated philosophical and scientific texts from Hebrew or Arabic into Latin (as they had done in medieval Spain) but also absorbed from their Christian neighbors the literary forms and cultural ideals of humanism. Conversely, several Christian humanists not only mastered Hebrew and rabbinic lore under the tutelage of Jewish teachers but also appropriated kabbalah to Christianity.	2
Judeo-Italian culture is difficult to interpret because of its seemingly contradictory features. Cultural cross-fertilization went hand in hand with affirmation of Jewish spiritual superiority; close social contacts between individuals coexisted with forced ghettoization, economic restrictions, and local expulsions of Jews; admission of select Jews to universities took place while Jewish culture faced repression by the papacy and the Inquisition. Emphasizing the positive or the negative aspects of this multifaceted story thus results in diverse and even conflicting interpretations. If the introduction highlights the possibilities and novelty in Jewish-Christian relations, the essays offer a more sober picture of this complex past. For example, Jews in the employ of Christian patrons not only had to resist conversionary pressures, but they were also limited in what they could say about religious matters, hence resorting to intentional dissimulation. Thus Harvey Hames notes that Elijah del Medigo (1440–ca. 1490), the teacher of Pico della Mirandola and a much sought-after translator of Averroes's works into Latin, composed his theological treatise only after he returned to his native Crete where he could more freely critique the rise of Christian kabbalah and the blending of Neoplatonism, Christianity, and magic he encountered in Florence.	3
Familiarity with the literary genres, conventions, and sensibilities of Renaissance humanism characterized these Jewish intellectuals, giving rise to a distinctive Jewish version of humanism. Yet the appropriation of prevailing literary sensibilities did not diminish the emphasis on Jewish spiritual superiority and the salvific efficacy of Jewish law. Thus, Giuseppe Veltri notes that Leone Ebreo (ca. 1460–ca. 1535), the author of the best seller Dialoghi di amore and a well-respected physician, was not only proud of his Judaism, "his consciousness of Jewish identity is the essence of the philosophy" (p. 55). Veltri argues, not entirely convincingly, that Leone's success was due primarily to his eloquence capturing the discourse on love in the genre of courtly literature most successfully. Since Leone's Judaism was "too pale to be noticed by contemporary Christian audience," the book became a bestseller despite its author's religious identity.	. . .

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