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ABSTRACT
This article explores the activity of foreign-born Jewish women in Liberal Italy and their role in shaping the secular civil society through their pioneering work in education, the professions, philanthropy and politics. As baronesses, radicals, and revolutionaries, they did not belong to a single organization nor were active in Jewish causes, but they functioned as vectors for different “internationals” of feminism, pacifism, socialism. Their marginality – as Jews, foreigners and women – made it possible for them to transcend barriers. Their trajectories force us to look beyond the national and Mediterranean area, and to include Russia and America within a continuous process of exchange. By showing how gender shaped the role of these women as vectors of internationalism – in a way that did not apply to men – this article engages in gendering Jewish internationalism.
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Notes
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Luisa Levi D’Ancona Modena
Dr Luisa Levi D’Ancona Modena (PhD, Cambridge University 2004) is an Italian historian, living in Jerusalem. She has taught and researched in Italy, Israel and England and is currently a Visiting Fellow at the European Forum of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a research collaborator in the Jewish Country Houses project based in Oxford University and with Intellettuali in fuga project based in the University of Florence. She has published in Nashim, Jewish History, Art Judaica and Quaderni Storici, and has written on Jewish philanthropy, women and civil society, art donations, Jews in Italy and Southern Europe, Jewish secularism and ego writing. Her most recent publications include an article on Italian-Jewish Patrons of Modern Art and the critical edition of La Nostra Vita con Ezio e Ricordi di guerra (Florence University Press, 2021).