Description

Marriage Rituals Italian Style: A Historical Anthropological Perspective on Early Modern Italian Jews is the first comprehensive attempt to present the wealth of primary documents relating to marriage rituals in Jewish Italian communities - responsa, private letters, court protocols, defamating books, love stories, material objects - and place them in historical context. The book traces the chronological course of different phases of marriage (matchmaking, betrothal, the wedding day), and also adopts a thematic perspective. Marriage rituals mirror key issues in local Jewish culture: family life, gender, the youth sub-culture, sexuality, the uses of property, and the honor ethos. Jewish marriage rituals in Italy are revealed as surprisingly similar to those of their Catholic neighbors, and undergo similar change process.