The study of Italian Jews has significantly progressed since the mid-1980s when the subject began to attract more serious attention. In the United States, interest in the Italian Jews received an important stimulus by the publication in the mid-1980s of the works of Primo Levi, starting with the Periodic Table (1984) and If Not Now, When? (1985). At the time, the initial response was enthusiastic but somewhat naïve, typified by the remark made by one of the characters in Levi's novel If Not Now, When? who, on meeting Italian Jews for the first time, expresses surprise and disbelief, “Italian Jews? How can that be?” he said, thinking that all Italians were Catholic. At early conferences dedicated to the Italian Jews, one often heard remarks like that and the fact that they continued to get a laugh was an indication of the paucity of general knowledge as well as historical work done on the subject.

At the time, there were a few good books on the Italian Jews, but many of them were already quite dated. On the subject of the Jews during Fascism, there were the works of Renzo De Felice and Meir Michaelis, which were mostly concerned with documenting the relations between Mussolini's Fascist regime and the leadership of Italy's Jewish community. Vast areas of Italian Jewish life and thousands of important individual stories remained undocumented.