Corfu, an Island of Multiple Resonances

This program is presented by the Center for Jewish Studies at Fordham University and Fordham’s Orthodox Christian Studies Center Jews and their Others Series

Registration link forthcoming

From the viewpoint of Jewish history, Corfu is more than a beautiful Ionian island set in the midst of the Mediterranean Sea. It is a place where different Jewish identities have met and overlapped over many centuries, thus creating a melting pot of Apulian, Venetian, Sephardic, Ashkenazi, Greek, and Ottoman traditions. Given its strategic position between the Balkans, Italy, and the eastern Mediterranean, Corfu, during the early modern period, welcomed Jewish exiles from the most different diasporas, who brought with them distinct languages, liturgical traditions, memories, and relationships, and integrated them into the surrounding non-Jewish worlds. The study of the Jewish legacy of Corfu makes this island a hub of multiple resonances, because its history is simultaneously a story of migration, adaptation, coexistence, creativity, resilience, and remembrance.

Fabrizio Lelli is Professor of Hebrew Language and Literature at “La Sapienza” University in Rome. His research mainly focuses on the philosophical and mystical literature of late Medieval and Early Modern Italian Jewish authors, and on the Southern Italian Apulian Jewish communities and their relationship with the Levant. He has published monographs, essays, and translations of Hebrew works composed by Yohanan Alemanno (c. 1434 – c. 1506), Elijah Hayyim of Genazzano (c. 1440 – c. 1510), Elijah Menahem Halfan (late 15th C. – c. 1541). He has edited monographs and collective volumes on the multiple intellectual identities of Apulian Jewish scholars. In recent years, while teaching at the University of Salento (Lecce), he has launched a project aimed at preserving the memory of the Jewish refugees in the United Nations DP (Displaced Persons) Transit Camps, which were operational in Southern Italy after WWII. He is Co-Founder and Director of the Jewish Museum in Lecce, Italy.