Dal mito dell’Ebreo errante agli ebrei 'erranti'. Comunità ebraiche e devianza morale nel teatro romano barocco.

The paper examines the theme of religious deviance in the Roman Jewish community, declined both as the neglect of halachic norms and as moral error in a broader sense. The investigation will be carried out on the Roman Baroque theatre production and, specifically, on some anonymous giudiate: Il giudio punito (‘The punished Jew’); Le vane speranze degli amanti ovvero l’ebrea superba e vana che dà morte al marito vecchio con intenzione di prenderne uno giovine (‘The vain hopes of the lovers, that is the proud and vain Jewish woman who kills her old husband with the intention of taking a young one’); La confusione tra gli amanti (‘The confusion of the lovers’); L’Aquilano finto ebreo (‘The fake Jew from L’Aquila’). Although they are comedies written by Christian authors to ridicule Jews, these texts testify to a knowledge of the lifestyle of the Jewish community that suggests, if not a collaboration with Jewish actors, at least a familiarity with the inhabitants of the ghetto. The deviant Jewish characters involved in those plays can be interpreted as a variation of the myth of the Wandering Jew in a broader sense: the deep-rooted Roman Jewish community, in fact, viewed any change in religious conduct with suspicion and condemned it.