Book Notes: Itinerari Ebraico-Cristiani, Marina Cafiero, Anna Foa and Anna Morisi Guerra (eds.)

<plain_text><page sequence="1">Itinerari Ebraico-Cristiani ed. Marina Cafiero, Anna Foa and Anna Morisi Guerra (Schena Editore, Viale Stazione 177, 72015 Fasano, Italy) 366 pp. lire 42,000. During the academic year 1983-4 an international symposium on Hebrew Christian studies was held in the Medieval and Modern History Department of La Sapienza University of Rome. There were three areas of study: the history of the Jewish community and its economic and social development in the context of Christian society; the cultural interchange between Jewish and Christian societies; and the Jewish contribution to the development of psychoanalysis. The book contains twelve of the more important contributions to the symposium. The most interesting are undoubtedly the three monographs on Jewish history. Marcello M. D'Amato deals with the problems experienced by Jewish bankers in the face of Papal legislation, in an article entitled I banchieri ebrei nella 283</page><page sequence="2">Book Notes legislazione statuaria del Monte de Piet? di Roma. In Dal ghetto alia citta: gli ebrei romani dal 1870 al XX secolo, Stefano Caviglia studies the stresses imposed by emancipation on the Roman Jewish community after attaining full civic equality. In Monographie dune communaute juive medievale du Sahara septentrional (XIVe et XVe siecles), the only article written in French, Simone Backchine Dumont gives a history of the Jewish community of Tuat, an oasis in the Algerian Sahara, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Located astride the caravan routes from Black Africa to Morocco, Algeria and Tunis, this was a busy commercial centre. There is evidence that the main town of Tamentit harboured a long-established and wealthy Jewish community, until its destruction in 1492 by a mob led by al-Maghili, who had been forced to flee the Sultan's court in Fez because of his fanatical anti-Jewish preaching. The author's sources are the few old histories of the area and subject (mainly Leo Africanus and Ibn Khaldun), and the numerous writings that appeared in France at the beginning of this century, as well as Rabbinic responsa, and fetwa?the decisions of Muslim judges. The author digresses to consider the ancient origins of the Jewish communities of northwest Africa, and particularly of Morocco, which are shrouded in mystery and will not be properly understood until a study is made relating it to the strong Phoenician influence in the area. Half the studies discuss the interaction between Jewish and Christian thought. Anna Morisi Guerra studies the influence of rabbinic thought on Christian exegesis after the Reformation, in relation to the polyglot psalter of St Pagninus. Renata Martano and Fiamma Satta, in separate articles, deal with the policy of converting Jews in Rome in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Anna Foa studies the myth of the ten lost tribes in the context of Jewish Messianic and Christian Apocalyptic movements of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Marina Caffiero examines the ideas current at the time of the French Revolution concerning the relationship between the final conversion of the Jews and the coming of the Millennium. Niccol? Zapponi explores the relation between good and evil, in the context of a study on the personality of the devil and the fallacy of the virtuous man. The third part is represented by three studies: Rosario Merendino on The Influence of Hebrew Ideas on Freudian Thinking, underlines the similarities between the textual exegesis of the word of God and Freudian analysis; David Meghnagi has an article on Jewish Humour and Psychoanalysis, which is illustrated by four anecdotes; and Francesco Saverio Trincia writes on Religion, Hebrew Thought, and History in Freud: A Philosophical Contribution to Historical Research. T.M. Benady 284</page></plain_text>