Left-Wing Italian Jews from the 1960s to 1980s: A Fluid Identity

Abstract

The aim of this chapter is to show how belonging to the Jewish Community as well as to the Italian left contributed to create the identity of certain Italian Jews. Through three life stories an attempt will be made to demonstrate that this link with the left-wing movement, which was very strong in the 1960s and 1970s, started to disappear in the early 1980s. At this time, due to the debate on the Lebanese war, Israel became the main component of their identity. Of course, this process had different characteristics which depended on different experiences. However, generally speaking we can talk about ‘mixed identities’ in which the link with Israel and political ideologies were balanced in various ways against different Italian political periods.