The Jews in the Divina Commedia
What did contemporary Jews see in Dante Alighieri? How did subsequent generations deal with and elaborate on his legacy? And what themes mainly capture the attention through these centuries of study and interpretation? In the 700th anniversary of the Italian poet death, many scholars confronted for Pagine Ebraiche the relationship between Dante and the Jewish world in a dossier of which the following article is an example.
By Anna Segre*
Where are the Jews going to end up in Dante’s afterlife? That is the question I have asked myself since I discovered the existence of the Commedia. In Limbo – my grandmother used to say firmly – and for many years I have assumed that she was right. In fact, Dante does not place in Limbo only characters who lived before Christianity. Seneca, Lucan, Galen, Ptolemy and, most importantly, Averroes, Avicenna and even Saladin, three Muslims who were almost his contemporaries can also be found there. However, it is not granted that those who live among Christians and partially share their holy texts, yet follow a different religion, can be treated with the same generosity. Perhaps, Jews could be among the heretics. But there is nothing that can confirm this hypothesis in the tenth canto of Inferno about heretics (one of those which are always read at school). Just as there is no ground for saying that the characters in the fourth and last part of the ninth circle of Inferno, the worst traitors of all – completely buried in the ice, so much so that is not even possible to talk to them – are Jews. The hypothesis derives from the fact that the area is called Giudecca, like the places inhabited by Jews in many medieval cities. Yet, it is much more likely that the name simply derives from Judas Iscariot. He is there, in the depths of Inferno, forever mangled by one of the three mouths of Lucifer. Moreover, apart from the name of the area, in the text there is nothing that suggests that the damned of Giudecca were Jews.
We cannot know if Dante ever considered where to place the Jews of his time. He may not have thought about it at all, or – a far more fascinating hypothesis – he may have deliberately left the question open. Actually, although almost none of them converses directly with Dante, there are many Jews in the Commedia. They even hold the absolute majority of Paradiso: some Jewish characters of the Old Testament who lived before Christ constitute an exact half of the blessed souls (while for those who lived after Christ, Dante uses the term Judean). The other half of the blessed souls are Christians, even though some of them – such as Mary or the Apostles – would have defined themselves Jews. […]
The only reference to Jews contemporary to Dante I found in the whole Commedia is in the fifth canto of Paradiso, where it is said “Be men, and not like sheep gone mad, so that the Jew who lives among you not deride you!” (from Mandelbaum translation) to invite Christians to be cautious in making vows. Inserted in its context, the quote means “do not behave in such an absurd way as to make even the infidels who live among you laugh” or something similar; I do not think it possible to interpret it differently.
Extrapolated from its context, it is an awful quote, often repeated by anti-Semites of yesterday’s (for instance, it was on all the covers of the Italian magazine La difesa della razza – Race’s Defense), and unfortunately also of today’s. By looking it upon the internet out of curiosity, I found out that the fifth canto of Paradiso appears as second or third result. What appears next is really terrifying: a delirious anthology of all the contemporary anti-Semitism’s clichés expressed very aggressively. With respect to this distorted use of Dante’s quote, it is worth saying that in my experience as a teacher I have not found textbooks that properly address these two sensitive verses. No notes or boxes, no hints on interdisciplinary connections with history, not even a mention of seven centuries of anti-Semitism (as is the case in the sixth and seventh canto dealing with the accusation of deicide). Almost a sort of embarrassed silence. Fortunately, some teachers outweigh this reticence in textbooks with their competence. But how many teachers are that competent? What about all the others?
*Teacher
Above, a Gustave Doré engraving for the first lines of Canto I in Dante’s Inferno.
Translated by Antonella Losavio and revised by Silvia Bozzo, students at Trieste University and the Advanced school for interpreters and Translators of Trieste University, intern at the newspaper office of the union of the Italian Jewish Communities.