Rabbis and Jewish Communities in Renaissance Italy - Paperbackby Robert Bonfil (Author), Jonathan Chipman (Author) Focusing on the figure of the rabbi, this book provides a vivid picture of Italian Jewry during the Renaissance. The author discusses Jewish life of the period (c. 1450 1600) in its social, institutional, and cultural aspects, placing them against the backdrop of the wider Catholic environment to give an original interpretation of how Jewish cultural and religious life developed in the Renaissance