27. La cultura ebraica nelle edizioni anastatiche di Arnaldo Forni. Aspetti della storia del libro prima dell’e-book

In this study, the author examines an aspect of the history and spread of the book, particularly of works on Jews and Judaism, in Italy during the Sixties and Seventies of the last century. At that time, there was in Italy a growing interest in studying the history of Italian Jews and of Jewish culture in general. This rebirth of the Italian Jewish Studies or of Jewish studies on Italian Jews and Judaism, happened in a time when only photocopies or microfilms began to provide help to the reader, lacking both digital cameras and the e-book as today, when the book left the paper writing support to replace it with the much cheaper Pdf format. At that time, the editorial strategy of Arnaldo Forni, an Italian bookseller of Sala Bolognese, was winning, leading him to produce a number of anastatic reprints of rare or hard-to-find books relating to Judaism. People who deals with Jewish Studies cannot not to know the volume מזכרת חכמי איטליא - Indice alfabetico dei rabbini e scrittori israeliti di cose giudaiche in Italia, con richiami bibliografici e note illustrative, by the author, the Chief Rabbi of Mantua Marco Mordekhay Levi Mortara, published in Padua in 1886. This precious repertoire of information and historical data about Italian Rabbis and Jewish intellectuals was out of print, and so the anastatic cheap editions of Arnaldo Forni, filled this gap, with enormous advantage for students and scholars. Another repertoire of great importance, reprinted by Forni in 1978, is the Dizionario storico degli autori ebrei e delle loro opere, composed by Giovanni Bernardo De Rossi and printed in Parma in 1802. The Bologna publisher’s anastatic editions were 37, all related to Judaism, the majority on Jewish history (23), but also to epigraphy, cultural history, repertoires, demographics, travel stories and anti-Semitism. Arnaldo Forni’s role in the diffusion of Jewish culture in Italy and the world was certainly of great importance.