Sul significato del termine “italiano” nelle fonti ebraiche dell’età moderna

Over the centuries, Jewish communities in the Italian peninsula have been identified by a variety of names, in Hebrew as well as in other languages. These designations offer valuable insights into Jewish self-perception and into the ways in which Jews classified their own cultural and religious distinctions. This article examines the use of the terms Italki, Italiano, and Loez in Hebrew texts produced during the so-called “age of the ghettos”—that is, from the late sixteenth to the late eighteenth century, a period marked by significant shifts in the meanings attributed to these terms. Presented here are the preliminary results of an investigation conducted on legal, liturgical, and literary sources produced by Jews in Italy during the early modern period.