JUDAICA TERRE SALEM. GLI EBREI A SALEMI NELLE FONTI NOTARILI DEI SECOLI XIV E XV

In this text, the authors offer the first contribution to the history of Jews who lived in the Sicilian city of Salemi for about a century and a half, from 1349 - the first document attesting the presence of Jews in that town - until the expulsion of 1492. Although several documents relating to the Jewish community of this city have been reported, both in the Diplomatic Code of the Jews of Sicily compiled by the Lagumina Brothers and in the vast repertoire of eighteen volumes The Jews of Sicily edited by Shlomo Simonsohn, there was no specific study so far dedicated to the Jews of Salemi. A new search recently carried out by the authors in Salemi’s Notarial Archive has thrown new light on the life of this Jewish community. From some documents we know that on the eve of the expulsion, Salemi’s Jews had reached the number of about 150 people, a small group in comparison to the larger number of Jews living in Sicily at that time, namely between 20,000 and 30,000. The small community had the kosher slaughterhouse and a cemetery, and was organized into a collegium judeorum led by leaders or in Sicilian proti, and by a General Sicilian Judge named Dienchelele (from Hebrew Dayan kelal) role, covered in Salemi by Maurice de Bonavoglia. Yona de Yona bought a synagogue - in Sicilian called meskita (from Arabic Mosque) – with a ritual bath or Miqweh. As usual practice, in the year of the expulsion 1492, the synagogue was transformed into the church of Santa Maria della Catena. The main economic activities of Salemi’s Jews, as that of Sicily in general, were the production and sale of wheat, cheese and cloth, and the trade of horses. Some Jews were moneylenders, practicing the loan on interest, like the Yonah and Gabrieli families. On September 27 1437, Salemi Aron ben Gershon Abu al-Rabi was present, he was a leading scholar and commentator of Rashi’s commentary. After the expulsion, several families of Salemi’s Jewish aristocracy moved to the Kingdom of Naples and to other regions of southern Italy.