The message issued by the Rabbis of Italy in September 1937

In this article, a reconstruction of the context in which the message entitled The Rabbis of Italy to their Brothers was conceived, written and then published in 12000 copies, in September 1937, is presented. Distributed to a portion of the Italian Jewry, the message was part of a more general effort to strengthen the Jewish national and cultural identity vis-à-vis the attacks from the Comitato degli Italiani di Religione Ebraica (Committee for Italians of Jewish Religion) and from the fascist propaganda, during a phase in which internal clashes seemed almost irremediable. The printed pamphlet, which was targeted and flagged by the Political Police, ignited significant disputes within the Jewish entourage. It was also targeted by Italian newspapers, as in the case of Informazione diplomatica which published, in its issue no. 18 on August 15, 1938, an article mentioning the pamphlet, and which was edited by Benito Mussolini himself. The unpublished materi-al presented in this article, kept in the archives of the Centro di Documentazione Ebraica in Milan, together with the correspondence between the Chief Rabbi of Rome, David Prato, promoter of the message, and the other members of the Rabbinical Council, allow the author to shed light on the internal debate within the Italian rabbinical circles a few months before the promulgation of the Racial Laws. The article includes, as an appendix, the integral text of the message which Prato presented to his colleagues on July 25, 1937, which is then compared to the text of the published pamphlet

Keywords: Jews in Italy, Italian Rabbis, Fascism, Unione delle Comunità Israelitiche Italiane, Centro di Documentazione Ebraica Contemporanea, David Prato, Comitato degli Italiani di Religione Ebraica

Angelo M. Piattelli, Il messaggio dei rabbini d’Italia del settembre 1937 in "MONDO CONTEMPORANEO" 1/2018, pp 53-72, DOI: 10.3280/MON2018-001003