A Separate Republic

A Separate Republic explores the social and political life of Jews in Venice in the seventeenth century. Based on the Libro Grande, the only existing record book of the community from that time period, this study gives an in depth view of the ethnic diversity and complex relationships within Jewish Venice and between the Jewish community and the Republic of Venice at large. In addition, Dr. Malkiel explores the political structure of the community with special attention to the "balance of power between the wealthy elite and communal authority and the rabbinic and lay leadership."

The book contains an appendix, the full annotated text of the Libro Grande, as well as an extensive list of sources and an index of names, index of places, and index of subjects.

Dr. David Malkiel is a professor in the Department of Jewish History at Bar Ilan University. In 2007-2008, he was a visiting professor in the Taube School of Jewish Studies at Stanford University, where he taught a class in medieval and early modern Jewish history. In addition to A Separate Republic, which was his doctoral thesis, he is the author of The Jewish Christian Debate on the Eve of Modernity (Jerusalem 2004)and Reconstructing Ashkenaz : the human face of Franco-German Jewry, 1000-1250 (Stanford University Press, 2009).

"A historical irony has opened the doors to study of Venetian Jewish self- government. An Italian translation of the community's record book for the years 1607- 1624, called the Libro Grande, has survived in the Venetian state archive. This translation was composed in 1632 at the order of the Venetian government, when a squabble within the community drew its attention, and brought the community under suspicion of lèse majesté. Thus, though the translation threatened the community's existence when it was composed, it now enables us to resurrect the community's political fabric.

The following discussion outlines forces and tensions that molded the structure and function of Venetian Jewish self- government, and how these are treated in the study. These kinds of tensions influenced and characterized Jewish self- government for centuries, in different lands, and the Venetian Jewish community serves as a paradigm for the ways in which these forces generally informed communal structure. "

Chapter One: Introduction, Page 12