Italian Jews: A Surprising and Understudied Influence in the Enlightenment

The experience of Italian Jews during the Enlightenment is deserving of much more attention. Not only did Italian Jews such as Moshe Ḥayyim Luzzatto, a man born in a ghetto, later embrace a form of secularism, but his works and others written by his peers made an impact on the Italian Enlightenment and seemingly contributed to the practice of toleration that appeared in sporadic installments throughout Europe. While the Jewish experience in Europe hails from a long tradition of persecution, with sporadic and incomplete periods of toleration at various points in its history, it is clear that through a promotion of a new version of toleration and the incomplete but definite shift towards secularization and assimilation, Italian Jews directly contributed to one of the most important movements in European history.