The Guide to Jewish Italy

The Jewish community in Italy has a long and storied history going back more than two millennia to the days of the Roman Empire. This remarkable guidebook-the only one of its kind-is a city by city survey of every location in Italy that contains art, artifacts, or architecture tied to the Jewish heritage of Italy. Included are scores of synagogues as well as scrolls, texts, artifacts, and Jewish cemeteries. Of particular interest are sidebars explaining fascinating peculiarities of various Italian Jewish communities. For instance, Tuscan Jews in the medieval period spoke a distinctive version of Italian dialect peppered with phrases from Hebrew and other languages, a sort of Italian Yiddish. Sure to fascinate devotees of Jewish culture and lovers of Italy, The Guide to Jewish Italy is perfect for armchair travelers and inveterate tourists alike.