The surnames of Italian Jews
The certainty that an exclusively Jewish anthropominic heritage existed inspired the law of July 1939, which exposed Italian Jews to a despicable pillory, creating a sort of onomastic ghetto. Michael the Great's Notepad
A touching scene from Luigi Comencini's film “Tutti a casa” (1960), set after September 8, 1943, shows a German soldier suspiciously examining the documents of the Jew Silvia Modena, with the girl's companions trying to protect her by pretending to ignore the existence of a city with that name. There is obviously some truth in the stereotype. Since the thirteenth century, Jews have managed retail lending, thus establishing themselves in population centers, large and small. Given the narrowness of the Jewish heritage of personal names, when over the centuries it became necessary to have surnames, it was natural to assume those of the places of residence.
In 1925 the Jew Samuele Schaerf published a booklet in Florence entitled "The surnames of the Jews of Italy", accompanied by an appendix on the "Noble Jewish families of Italy". According to the historian Roberto Bizzocchi, the list of Jewish surnames cataloged by the author has no historical basis ("The surnames of Italians . A 1000 year long history", Laterza, 2014). The distinction between Jewish surnames and Christian surnames, in fact, is problematic to say the least. Only some surnames can truly be considered peculiar to members of the Italian Jewish communities: for example, Coen (priest), Levi (also the name of the Tribe that obtained the priestly primogeniture from the Lord), Toaff (street vendor or night watchman), Gabbai (official of the community). On the other hand, the surname Rossi also curiously appears in Schaerf's list, about which there can be no doubt that it was and still is also that of non-Jews.
The fact remains that Schaerf's intent was clearly patriotic, that is, to vindicate the contribution offered by the Jews – from the Risorgimento to the First World War – to the construction of the unitary state. In the midst of the anti-Semitic campaign launched by fascism, his work was instead used to better organize discrimination and persecution. Schaerf's text was reprinted with this new purpose, and, when the racial laws were enacted in 1938, his list was cross-referenced with the publicists' register to hunt down Jewish journalists and writers.
The certainty that an exclusively Jewish anthropominic heritage existed inspired the law of July 1939, which exposed Italian Jews to a despicable pillory, creating a sort of onomastic ghetto. In addition to a restrictive clause in testamentary matters, the law ordered "Italian citizens belonging to the Jewish race […] who had changed their surname to something that does not reveal their Jewish origin, to resume their original Jewish surname". The name thus became a defamatory brand, a sort of substitute for the yellow Star of David reintroduced by Nazism (stigma of deicide and lust, as the Lateran Council of 1215 had solemnly reiterated). A cruel and fatal heterogeneity of ends, which unfortunately human history is littered with.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/i-cognomi-degli-ebrei-italiani/ on Sat, 12 Oct 2024 06:00:41 +0000.