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The Italian Jews between the Risorgimento and fascism: an overviewThe full emancipation of the Italian Jews in 1870 should serve as the starting point for any evaluation of this population’s history at the beginning of the 20th century and of its specific approach to modernity. This is because it is important to understand the close links between their participation in the national idea and their emancipation and between their political support and their construction of a specific, ancient religious path. This period in their history was characterized by their lack of support for Zionism and by confusion between Zionism and the reconstruction of the Jewish identity. It was also marked by social attitudes, the absence of a single path and the birth of a “Roman” model that was closer to that of the outside world than that of other Jewish communities.