Renata Segre - mberengo@unive.it

Ph.D. in Political Science

Ph.D. in Political Science at the University of Pavia in 1960 and at the Ecole d'interpretes of the Geneva University the following year.

After a few years (1961-1964) as assistant teacher in Modern History at the Faculty of Humanities of Milan University, I led for over 25 years (1964-1990) the research team of the Diaspora Research Institute of Tel Aviv University (promoted by the Israeli Government, under the Israeli-Italian cultural agreement), charged with selecting and reproducing all the documents, manuscripts and publications on the history of the Jews in Italy to be found in the Italian and Vatican Archives and Libraries.

During this quarter of a century, we did research in Piedmont, Lombardy, Sicily and the Papal States; the collected papers were edited by prof. Shlomo Simonsohn (director of the Diaspora Research Institute of Tel Aviv University) and myself in two series of publications: "The Apostolic See and the Jews. Documents", 6 volumes (Toronto-Tel Aviv, 1988-90), and "Documentary History of the Jews of Italy", more specifically "The Jews of Piedmont", 3 volumes (Tel Aviv, 1986-90). In the spring of 2003 I spent two months at the University of Wisconsin at Madison thanks to a fellowship of the Friends of its Libraries (prof. John Tedeschi), and toured the USA lecturing at Princeton University (History Department, prof. Theodore Rabb) and Brandeis (Jewish History Department, prof. Benjamin Ravid).

Other among my more recent publications: "La tipografia ebraica a Ferrara e la stampa della Biblia hebrea" (Padova 1992, Madrid 1994), "Ginevra e il Vaud nella politica ebraica di Casa Savoia, sec. XIV-XV" (Tel Aviv, 1993), "La Controriforma: espulsioni, conversioni, isolamento" and "La formazione di una comunita marrana: i portoghesi a Ferrara" (Einaudi, Annali, 1996), "Sephardic Refugees in Ferrara" (Columbia University Press, 1997), "Gli ebrei a Pesaro sotto la signoria dei Della Rovere" (Pesaro, 1998), "Una mancata edizione pesarese del Talmud tra Bomberg e Plantin" (Italia Judaica, 1998), "Gli ebrei nelle carte dell'Inquisizione di Pesaro" (Rome, Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, 2002), "Eastward: going or looking?" (Bar Ilan, 2001, UCLA, 2003, Studi Veneziani 2004), "Cristiani novelli e medici ebrei a Venezia: storia di Inquisizione tra Quattro e Cinquecento" (Accademia Nazionale Virgiliana di Scienze Lettere e Arti. Miscellanea. 14, 2004, pp. 381-400), "Ebrei a Montagnana e Castelfranco negli anni di Giorgione" (Padova, 2004, pp. 91- 107); soon to appear: "Ebrei a Venezia tra Due e Trecento: medici, neofiti e prestatori" (Reti medievali, 2005). Renata Segre

In 1995, to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Liberation of Italy and the end of the racist policy of its fascist government, I mounted an exhibition of official documents, newspapers, private papers, photos and images, to show the impact of the antiJewish legislation on the life of the Jews in Venice. Besides the exhibition, that has since been on display throughout Italy and even in Berlin, I have edited its catalogue "Gli ebrei a Venezia. 1938-1945. Una comunita tra persecuzione e rinascita", recently reprinted.

Lectures

Tuesday June 17: The Jews in Venice Before the Ghetto
Professor Renate Segre presented a fascinating look at how medieval historians piece together evidence to try to answer questions, penetrate mysteries, or enter into existing debates. In this case Professor Segre was entering into the debate on when there were Jews in Venice before the establishment of the ghetto. Because of the disastrous war with the League of Cambrai where the Venetians lost their hold on their land empire in the Veneto, Venice allowed Jews from the mainland, primarily Mestre, to move into the lagoon after 1509. However, the question of whether there were instances of Jew communities living in Venice as opposed to small numbers of Jews living there and moneylenders just coming for fifteen days and then leaving for a set amount of time before being allowed back, has been the subject of much speculation but little evidence.

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