How Should a Rabbi Be Dressed? The Question of Rabbinical Attire in Italy from Renaissance to Emancipation (Sixteenth–Nineteenth Centuries)

The promulgation of sumptuary laws, regulating specific items of dress that might be worn by various individuals on certain occasions, is a well-known chapter of European social history from the late Middle Ages to the eighteenth century.¹ Within the Jewish communities these decrees were often issued by the rabbis or by the communal authorities and have been used by scholars in order to study different aspects of the material culture of the Jews in early modern Europe. From these sources two general conclusions have been drawn, as far as Italy is concerned. First, that the Jews in Italy imitated in