Italian jews: From social integration to the construction of a new european identity

In this article I discuss the history of Italian Jews from the Emancipation to the racial laws of 1938 and their present-day attitudes to Judaism and the State of Israel. My aim is to suggest how the policy of social integration enabled Italian Jews to construct a new identity without losing their ancestral heritage. The example of Italian Jewry is relevant to understanding the growing need in todays European Union-now comprising 27 countries with different languages, cultures, and values-of revising the concept of national identity and of exploring ways of constructing a new European identity.