ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the direct and articulate encounter between Italian Jews and two of the modernizing agents for Central European Jews—Enlightened absolutism and the Berlin Haskalah. It examines the role played by Italian Jews in the cultural politics of Jewish Enlightenment in the late eighteenth century. Enlightenment literature, particularly in Italian and French, was readily available, and at least some Jews were conversant with the ideas of the Encyclopedie, Voltaire, and Beccaria, to name but a few. The Jewish community's rights of organization and public worship were legally recognized. Italian Jews served them as a model—not as initiators of new ideals but rather as justification and actualization of their own German-bred goals of the Haskalah. The support and legitimation which Italian Jews had provided for Wessely at a critical moment had helped foster among German maskilim an image of Italian Jews as acculturated, enlightened, politically adroit, and religiously flexible.
