The Jews of the Italian Renaissance

During the 15th and 16th centuries, Europeans produced a great amount of new and beautiful art. The same era also saw a revival of classical scholarship and an interest in humanistic textual scholarship. Did the Jews of Europe participate in this rebirth of the arts? Joanna Weinberg answers with a resounding yes and, in conversation with J.J. Kimchi, tells the stories of a number of rabbis and other Jewish scholars who taught and exchanged ideas with Christian men of letters. They also produced what, Weinberg argues, can best be described as impressive works of Jewish humanism. (Audio, 68 minutes.)