Who Am I

By David Bidussa*

I think that, in her latest book (Marranos, Einaudi), Donatella Di Cesare sees Marranism as an issue concerning modernity and anyone, Jewish or not, when she writes that “the marrano becomes the matrix of the modern Jew in his various figures. ‘What do I have to do?’ is the question that characterized Jews’ existence over the centuries. Now, it has changed into ‘who am I?’” (pp. 89-90).

*David Bidussa is a historian of ideas.
Translated by Giulia Schincariol with the help of Anna Pagetti, students at the Advanced School for Interpreters and Translators of Trieste University, interns at the newspaper office of the Union of the Italian Jewish Communities.