JEWISH WOMEN IN NON-JEWISH PHILANTHROPY IN ITALY (1870-1938)

Between 1870 and 1938, a small but visible minority of Jewish women were very active in secular philanthropy in Italy. Excluded from the institutional Jewish community, which refused to recognize their changing roles, a few well-educated Jewish women became leaders, promoters and major donors in non-Jewish philanthropic projects specifically devoted to education and women's welfare. The present paper explores this phenomenon from 1870, when the walls of the ghetto of Rome were finally brought down, to 1938, when Fascist antisemitic legislation forced the expulsion of Jewish activists and philanthropists from the institutions they had contributed to and, indeed, had often created.