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This chapter draws comparative conclusions about the significance of the Livornese example. While the specificity of Enlightenment Tuscany and the system of the port of Livorno account for its distinctiveness, this case study has larger implications for Sephardi and Italian Jewish history. First, the chapter recapitulates the ways in which the Livornese model of intellectual engagement with eighteenth-century culture offers an alternative to the Anglo-Jewish Enlightenment and to the Haskalah in its early and later phases, comparing Livornese scholars to further Italian and Sephardi examples. It then offers final remarks on the ways in which the confrontation with the reforming absolutism that defined eighteenth-century Tuscan policies provided another crucial venue for Livornese Jewry's encounter with Enlightenment ideas. In particular, the continued importance of the corporate nazione ebrea is significant when comparing Livorno with contemporary Italian examples, as well as with the cases of Bordeaux, Amsterdam, and London.

This chapter introduces the implications of the Livornese case for three broad fields of Jewish historiographical inquiry: the nature of Jewish acculturation; the history of the Jewish Enlightenment; and processes of Jewish emancipation. Livornese Jewry complicates the supposedly linear connection between acculturation and modernization. While privileged Jews consumed and participated in outside culture, they did so without rejecting Judaism and the corporate community. The chapter additionally introduces the notion that the Livornese Jewish encounter with the Enlightenment provides an alternative to both the Haskalah and the Anglo-Jewish model, because of its focus and its development in Tuscan cultural sites and through European languages. Finally, an examination of the relationship between the Tuscan state and Livornese Jewry shows that the process toward emancipation in merchant enclaves was neither linear nor simple as previously believed.

This chapter takes a comparative look at processes of Jewish integration in the 1780s, suggesting that the Livornese case provides an alternative to Prussian, French, and Russian examples and a corrective to the "port Jew" model. The first part claims that the diffused perception of the nazione ebrea's utility prevented the emergence of a discussion over the Jewish status in the port and that the "regenerationist" attitude informing the bulk of the debates in western and central Europe did not strike roots in Tuscany. The second part addresses the concrete obstacles that the Jewish elite, despite its socioeconomic integration, encountered along the path of inclusion. While both Jewish and non-Jewish observers did not consider the nazione ebrea in need of improvement or further integration into society, the notion of commercial utility justifying its existence bolstered its corporatist understanding and hindered the political emancipation of its individual members.

This chapter offers an introduction to Jewish life in Livorno while investigating the close bonds connecting Livornese Jews with the Tuscan state and culture. It first discusses the Livornina charter (1593), which lay the ground for Jewish life in the Tuscan port, and the exceptional status of Livorno. It then moves to analyzing the interconnection between the governance structures of the nazione ebrea and the Tuscan administration, an arrangement that distinguishes Livorno from other contemporary Sephardi centers. Finally, it emphasizes the importance of the Tuscan Enlightenment in the study of Livornese Jewish history. Under the rule of Francis Stephen of Lorraine and Peter Leopold of Habsburg-Lorraine Tuscan culture and policies were defined by attention to economic, social, and cultural reform. This reforming vocation provides a vantage point to study the Livornese Jewish encounter with outside culture as well as the ways in which Livornese Jews engaged with Enlightenment policies.

This chapter focuses on three Livornese Jews educated at the University of Pisa between 1754 and 1785--Angelo de Soria, Joseph Vita Castelli, and Graziadio Bondì. It shows that their studies and relationships with their mentors shaped their interest in the brand of Enlightenment reforms that characterized eighteenth-century Tuscan culture, expressed as an aspiration to progress, human happiness, and the public good. University attendance, moreover, strengthened these Jewish physicians' ties to the Tuscan state. The chapter argues that, unlike later maskilic physicians, these Livornese doctors were not concerned with the Jewish body, be it individual or social, and did not prescribe modern medical remedies to heal Jewish society of its perceived ills. Rather, they believed that medical university training would allow Jews to heal and reform the broader society, beyond the boundaries of the Jewish community and without explicit connection to Judaism.

This chapter bridges the study of individual interactions with outside culture with that of communal responses to Tuscan reform, by investigating the continued importance of piety for educated Jews immersed in the outside world. The first part concentrates on Jewish assistance to the sick and the poor through an exploration of the Livornese Bikur Holim society, showing that changes in Tuscan public health did not diminish the spiritual concerns of benevolent confraternities. The second part evaluates the ways in which traditionally learned physicians, members of the Bikur Holim society, introduced secular themes into devotional settings through a study of the works of Abraham de Bargas and Angelo de Soria. It explores how de Bargas and de Soria negotiated the balance between Jewish culture and "sciences of the gentiles" while working within devotional forms, and which literary and rhetorical strategies allowed them to combine religious and secular forms of knowledge.

This chapter investigates eighteenth-century Jewish and Tuscan governmental attempts to regulate social behavior by focusing on Jewish coffeehouses and the laws on gambling within those premises. Through a consideration of Jewish policies relative to coffee shops, it continues exploring the ways in which the Livornese Jewish community adapted to reforms promoted by the Tuscan state. It shows that in the sphere of leisure time, developments in the Livornese Jewish community paralleled and mirrored reformist endeavors championed by the Tuscan authorities. The chapter additionally assesses the tension between the normative expectations of separation between Jews and gentiles in spaces of recreation such as coffeehouses and the more fluid reality of the port, and it tests engrained scholarly assumptions about the coffeehouse as a public venue of association.

This chapter continues the exploration of the impact of reformist state policies over the Livornese Jewish community, by focusing on the development of the Hebrew printing business in Livorno from government control to a free market. It probes the issue of governmental control over Hebrew publishing and the effects of state policies - especially economic reforms - on the production of Jewish culture, while also discussing the responses of Jewish printers to the transformation of the Hebrew press from a monopolistic to a competitive business, pursued by Grand Duke Peter Leopold. Additionally, it investigates the question of the control over the Hebrew press on the part of both Jewish and Christian authorities.