This volume contains the proceedings of the Italia Judaica Jubilee Conference, held at Tel Aviv University 3-5 January, 2010, on the occasion of the jubilee celebration of outstanding scholarship on the history of Italian Jewry. Established in 1960 by Professor Shlomo Simonsohn and scholars from Israel and other countries, the Italia Judaica Project has sponsored documentation and research and organized international conferences, including some as part of the Israeli-Italian cultural agreement.

The conference records the success of the project, exploring a broad range of topics related to the culture and history of the Jews in Italy in the Middle Ages and early modern times, such as: Jewish community, economy, literature, medicine and science, and the Arts. This volume contains nineteen of the twenty-seven lectures presented at the conference, including such topics as “International Trade and Italian Jews at the Turn of the Middle Ages,” “The Angevins of Naples and the Jews,” and “Dante and the Literary Identity of Jews in Italy.”

The conference was organized by the Goldstein-Goren Diaspora Research Centre at Tel Aviv University, in cooperation with the Fred W. Lessing Institute for European History and Civilization, the Cymbalista Jewish Heritage Centre, the Faculty of Jewish Studies and the Golda and Israel Koschitzky Department of Jewish History at Bar-Ilan University, and the Istituto Italiano di Cultura.