Examining the question of Italian Jewish identity from the Risorgimento to Fascism entails a number of steps. We must identify and document dates, crucial junctures, transitions, and solutions offered by Italian Jews to the problems created by emancipation. We must identify and clearly describe the various external and internal components that influenced Italian Jewry in its process of modernization. We must also attempt to address the question of whether it is proper to speak of the experience of emancipated Judaism in Italy as unique in Europe, one accompanied by a specific cultural and political program that in turn engendered a particular identity possessing distinct characteristics that set it apart from other Western European experiences of the Diaspora. We must further establish links and relationships between this collective historical identity and the manifold individual accounts and identities that characterized the historical experience of so small a minority, small at least in strictly numerical terms. The Jewish population in Italy is estimated at 34,000 in 1800, out of a total Italian population of more than 18 million, and about 48,000 in 1938, out of more than 43 million Italians. Yet Italian Jewry constitutes a minority with a rich and multifaceted history extending back into antiquity.

In this chapter I attempt to provide some answers to the questions posed above by offering hypotheses and interpretations of recent historiographic debates, by summarizing the results of research I have previously conducted, and by drawing attention to topics still awaiting investigation.