The Italian rite מנהג בני רומה
Jews lived in Rome two centuries before the destruction of the Temple and pray there in their own way still. It is not a branch of the Sephardi rite but a root of its own.
The *Italkim* are the native Jews of Italy, whose community in Rome has been continuous since pre-Christian times. Their rite took shape in the early Middle Ages, before the Ashkenazim came down from the north and the Sephardim came after the expulsion of 1492, and so in the Italian cities three rites stood side by side: *italiani*, *tedeschi*, *ponentini* and *levantini*. Hence Venice's five *scole*, and Rome's five *scole* inside a single building: the bull permitted one synagogue, and five congregations were packed under one roof.
The legal backbone of the rite is Shibbolei ha-Leket of R. Zedekiah ben Abraham Anaw (Rome, 13th c.) and the Tanya Rabbati. Its own body of piyyut is vast: Solomon ha-Bavli, Amittai and Shefatiah of Oria, the Anaw family, Immanuel of Rome, Moses Rieti, Moses Zacuto.
The differences are visible in any printed mahzor. The Musaf Kedushah takes the *Keter* form, but in wording that matches neither Sephardi nor Ashkenazi. Kol Nidrei is said in Hebrew, not Aramaic. Mizmor le-Todah is said only on Shabbat and festivals — the exact inverse of everyone else. On weekdays the scroll is returned to the ark between Ashrei and U-va le-Ziyyon. Kabbalat Shabbat was adopted late and abridged: the rite had set before the Safed customs spread.
Two common claims are wrong. The Italian rite is not a kind of Sephardi rite; the Sephardi congregations in Italy are precisely those founded by post-1492 immigrants — Livorno, the Venetian Scola Levantina and Spagnola, the Ferrarese and Anconitan ones. Nor is it "the surviving Palestinian rite": so Zunz and Shadal held, but the Genizah has shown the Babylonian stratum to predominate.
Today it is used in Rome — the largest community in Italy — and in Turin, Milan, Ferrara, Mantua, Padua and the Venetian Scola Italiana; outside Italy in just two places: the Italian synagogue on Hillel Street in Jerusalem, into which in 1952 the interior of the 1701 Conegliano Veneto synagogue was transported, and a congregation in Netanya.
On the timeline
Sources
Rishonim
- Zedekiah ben Abraham Anaw, Shibbolei ha-Leket, Rome, 13th c. — the legal backbone of the rite
Documents of the period
- Mahzor ke-minhag benei Roma, Soncino–Casalmaggiore 1485–86 — the earliest printed mahzor of the rite
Scholarship
- L. Zunz, Die Ritus des synagogalen Gottesdienstes; Shadal's introduction to the 1856 mahzor — the first scholarly description — and the Palestinian-origin hypothesis, later revised
Basis: documents and evidence.