The Jewish Quarterly Review (Fall 2020) Copyright © 2020 Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies. All rights reserved. T H E J E W I S H Q U A R T E R LY R E V I E W, Vol. 110, No. 4 (Fall 2020) 610–612 David Castelli on Nationalism and Universalism JESSICA M. MARGLIN AT THE AGE OF twenty- seven, David Castelli had a crisis of faith. Born in the Tuscan port city of Livorno in 1836, Castelli was a promising student on the path to rabbinic ordination. He studied with some of Italy’s most influential teachers— including Benedetto (Abraham Barukh) Piperno, who also taught Sabato Morais, founder of the Jewish Theological Seminary.1 But his doubts made Castelli abandon the path to the rabbinate; he moved to Pisa, home of the Scuole Normale Superiore, one of Italy’s most venerable seats of Orientalist scholarship. In Tuscany’s most famous university town, he devoted himself to the study of Arabic and Syriac.2 As a colleague and friend remarked after Castelli’s death in 1901, the scholar’s religious crisis was “easily explained.” Castelli’s “acute and logical intellect” made it impossible for him to conform to the “demands of the synagogue, where, as in any other religious institution,” one is required to take part in “indisputable veneration for tradition and practice.” Like Ernest Renan—to whom Castelli was often compared by both his admirers and his detractors— the late scholar opted for “complete intellectual liberty.”3 Castelli found this in the “scientific” study of Judaism; after publishing The Messiah according to the Jews in 1874, Castelli assumed a position as professor of Hebrew at the Istituto di Studi Superiori in Florence. In its first year of existence, JQR published Castelli’s only work in English;4 Castelli’s full- length essay “The Future Life in Rabbinical Lit er 1. Arthur Kiron, “Livornese Traces in American Jewish History: Sabato Morais and Elia Benamozegh,” in Per Elia Benamozegh, ed. A. Guetta (Milan, 2001), 46. 2. Christiana Facchini, David Castelli: Ebraismo e scienze delle religioni tra Otto e Novocento (Brescia, 2005), 40–41. 3. Angiolo Orvieto, “Di David Castelli e della sua opera,” in David Castelli, pubblicato in occasione del primo anniversario della morte di Lui per cura del figlio Guido, ed. G. Castelli (Livorno, 1901), 37. 4. In the third issue, published in the spring of 1889, Castelli authored a short philological note, titled “A Conjecture on Job vi.4,” JQR 1.3 o.s. (1889): 286. Castelli on Nationalism—Marglin 611 a ture” appeared in 1889. The essay was in many ways pathbreaking— one of the first sustained examinations of Jewish conceptions of the afterlife, the resurrection of the dead, and the messianic age in Anglophone scholarship .5 “The Future Life” is a classic example of the kind of Wissenschaft des Judentums most commonly associated with nineteenth- century Germany. Castelli’s crisis of faith led him to engage with Judaism as an object of study rather than as a lived religion. This scientific approach infuriated his more famous contemporary—and former teacher—Rabbi Elia Benamozegh. Also hailing from Livorno, Benamozegh took a dif fer ent approach to Jewish modernity; he combined mysticism and philosophy to argue strongly that Judaism was a universalist faith.6 Most of all, Benamozegh was a believer; he wrote to elicit what he saw as the divine truth of the Jewish tradition— not a supposedly scientific truth that was inherently alien to religion. Benamozegh accused Castelli of relativism, the same sin of which Renan was guilty.7 The dislike was mutual; Castelli, in turn, dismissed Benamozegh’s account of Jewish theology as inaccurate, misleading, and confusing.8 Castelli teased clarity out of the Talmud with the aim not of offering guidance but rather of exposing the multiple and often conflicting accounts held within the rabbinic corpus. The tension Castelli observed in rabbinic texts on the afterlife mapped onto debates raging in postunification Italy— indeed, in Eu rope more broadly— over the place of Jews in the nation- state. Castelli was deeply influenced by Italian nationalism and his desire for Jews to participate fully as members of a united...