![](https://www.geni.com/images/external/x_com_black_16.png?1721673225)
![](https://www.geni.com/images/facebook_white_small_short.gif?1721673225)
In recent years, a growing number of Italian Marranos as well as others of Jewish descent throughout southern Italy and Sicily have begun to return to their roots. Source
Geni Projects
Geni Italian Jewish Community Projects
Italian Jewish Communities Links: Click Topic Header button for each Region, and a drop-down action menu with links to find the individual communities.
Apulia - Bologna - Calabria - Ferrara - Firenze - Genoa - Livorno (Leghorn) - Lombardi - Lucca - Merano - Messina - Milano -Modena - Napoli - Padua - Pessaro - Pompei - Ravenna - Rome - San Marino - Sardinia - Senigallia - Sicily - Siena - Siracusa - Urbino - Venice (Venezia) - Verona - Trieste - Turin(Torino) - . . .
PIEDMONT, TUSCANY, LOMBARDIA, LAZIO, VENETO, CAMPANIA-APULIA-SICILY, LIGURIA, FRIULI VENEZIA GIULIA, EMILIA ROMAGNA, MARCHE ------------------------------------
Notable Italian Jewish Families
Benvenida Abravanel was one of the most influential and wealthiest Jewish women of early modern Italy. She was the daughter of Jacob Abravanel (d. 1528), who was one of the two brothers of Isaac Abravanel (1437–1508), the Spanish Jewish exegete, philosopher and statesman. Isaac had three sons, the youngest of whom, Samuel (1473–1547), married Benvenida. Thus, she married her first cousin and was both the niece and the daughter-in-law of Isaac Abravanel. She brought into her marriage a very large dowry.
By 1492, Benvenida and much of the family, perhaps after a stop in Portugal, had settled in Naples, where first her father and then her husband, referred to as the king of the Jews, became the leaders of the Jewish community. . . . Continued. - Geni Profilei
The Katzenellenbogen Family: Meir ben Isaac Katzenellenbogen (c. 1482 – 12 January 1565) Meir of Padua, or Maharam Padua, מאיר בן יצחק קצנלנבויגן was an Italian rabbi born in Katzenelnbogen.
Meïr ben Isaac, who was generally called after his native town, was the founder of the Katzenellenbogen family. Some notable descendants include, Martin Buber, Karl Marx, Mosen Mendelssohn, Baron Guy de Rothschild, Helena Rubinstein, Otto Warburg and more. . . . Continued. - Geni Profile
Leon Modena or Yehudah Aryeh Mi-modena (1571–1648) was a Jewish scholar born in Venice of a notable French family that had migrated to Italy after an expulsion of Jews from France.
Family Tree and Autobiography of a Seventeenth-century Venetian Rabbi, Leon Modena, by Leone Modena. (Family Tree Chart, see preface Xl )
Warburg Family. They originated as the Venetian Jewish del Banco family, one of the wealthiest Venetian families in the early 1500s. Following restrictions imposed on banking and the Jewish community, they fled to Bologna, and thence to Warburg, in Germany, in the 16th century, after which they took their name.
- Rabbi Johanan Ghiron "Alluf Torah"(1646 - 1716), born in Casale Monferrato, Italy was rabbi of Florence for 34 years. The Ghiron family stemmed from Gerona, Spain.
- Judah Hayym Ghiron, son of Johanan was born in Casale Monferrato and was rabbi of Florence from (1719 to 1738)
- Judah Hayyim Leonti Ghiron (1739 -1761) was rabbi in Casale. Halachic correspondence archived at the Asiatic Museum in Leningrad.
- Samuel Hayyim Ghiron (1829 - 1895), born Ivrea appointed rabbi of Turin in 1854. Published prayer book (Leghorn, 1879)
- Ghirondi, Mordecahi Samuel ben Benzion Aryeh (1799 - 1852), born in Padua, an Italian scholar and biographer. Descendant of a rabbinical family. Chief rabbi of Padua 1829 - 31, and again from 1831 to 1852. His grandmother was Benevenida.
- Mazal-Tov Benevenida Ghirondi (c1760), wife of Mordecai rabbi of Cittadella, was famous in her Jewish learning and educated many disciples. Continued
Senigaglia Family Tree Chart
The Senigaglia family (sometimes spelt Sinigaglia) is an Italian Jewish family, whose origins can be traced back nearly 800 years, the period between the High Middle Age and the Renaissance. . . . Continued
- • Izchak ben Avigdor da Senigallia (1491), banker at La Volta Mantovana
- • Abraham Senigallia (1632), banker at La Volta Mantovana
- • Israel Jacob Senigallia, professor of surgery at the Mantova medical school (1751-1752)
- • Abraham Salomon Senigallia (1715) is one of the three leaders of Hadashim labakarim (for sacred studies)
- • Solomon Jedidiah Sinigaglia was rabbi and mohel in Scandiano in 1639. Later he went to Modena.
- • Abraham Vita Sinigaglia: rabbi of Modena during the first half of 18th century
- • Solomon Jedidiah Sinigaglia: rabbi in Modena during the 18th century
- • Moises Elijah Sinigaglia (1763-1849) rabbi in Modena
- • Graziadio Ghedalia Sinigaglia from Lugo. Famous goldsmith
- • Isaac Sinigaglia, last rabbi in Lugo
- • Isaac Senigaglia in Gorizia: banker and silk trader
- • Gilberto Senigaglia in Trieste, physician
- • Oscar Sinigaglia. Founder of the Italian steel industry
- • Jacob Senigaglia in Gorizia won a tribunal case against the Austrian Empire to obtain the right of ownership of houses and lands outside the Ghetto
Kalonymos or Kalonymus קלונימוס is a prominent Jewish family originally from Lucca, Italy, which, after the settlement at Mainz and Speyer of several of its members, took during many generations a leading part in the development of Jewish learning in Germany. The family is according to many considered the foundation of Hachmei and Hasidei Ashkenaz.
- David Kalonymus ben Jacob (David ben Jacob Meïr) was an Italian Jewish astrologer of the fifteenth century, and a member of the Kalonymus family.
- Moses I. (ben Meshullam), Liturgical poet; lived at Rome or at Lucca about 850.
- Kalonymus II. (ben Moses), Halakist and liturgical poet; flourished at Lucca or at Rome about 950. There exists in rabbinical literature a confusion concerning the identity of Kalonymus and his son Meshullam the Great, and the saying of one is sometimes attributed to the other.
- Meshullam the Great, called also the Roman, was a Halakhist and liturgical poet; flourished at Rome or at Lucca about 976. He carried on with Gershom Me'or ha-Golah and Simon the Great a scientific correspondence, which is included in the "Teshuvot Geonim Kadmonim" (13a).
- Eleazar of Worms (אלעזר מוורמייזא) (c. 1176 – 1238), or Eleazar ben Judah ben Kalonymus, also sometimes known today as Eleazar Rokeach ("Eleazar the Perfumer" אלעזר רקח) from the title of his Book of the Perfumer (Sefer ha rokeah ספר הרקח) - where the numerical value of "Perfumer" (in Hebrew) is equal to Eleazar, was a leading Talmudist and mystic, and the last major member of the Hasidei Ashkenaz, a group of German Jewish pietists.
Anacletus II (born Pietro Pierleoni), was born to the powerful Roman family of the Pierleoni, the son of the Consul Pier Leoni. One of his great-great grandparents, Benedictus, maybe Baruch in Hebrew, was a Jew who converted into Christianity.
-----------------------------------
Jewish Communities of Italy J-Italy Website contains innumerable menus with links all Jewish Italian communities and their cultural and historical resources.
History of the Jews in Italy Click for active Wikipedia Links for list below.
Notable Italian Jews
Mario Toselli (born 8 JAN 1903 in Cuneo, died 22 AUG 1969) is reported to have saved many Jews. [http://www.ajr.org.uk/journalpdf/1955_november.pdf AJR Article Page 7
He is also mentioned in a book "Luoghi della memoria, memoria dei luoghi nelle regioni alpine occidentali ..." that I cannot read: http://tinyurl.com/kp3l669