Piergabriele Mancuso

Piergabriele Mancuso (Venice, 1975) received his doctoral degree in Jewish Studies from University College London, 2009. He was a fellow at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies) as a Phd student fellow and at the Warburg Institute, London (Sophie Fellowship Programme). He has taught at Boston University Abroad Programs, University of Kentucky, Lexington, at “Cà Foscari” University, Venice (seminars on Jewish music), at Università dell’Insubria, Como (Dipartimento di Diritto, Economia e Culture, seminars on Jewish Law and Jewish legal traditions). In 2001 he received a degree in music at the music academy in Adria, Venice and since 1999 he has been an active member of Laboratorio Novamusica, a contemporary music ensemble based in Venice. His research interests include early medieval southern Italian Judaism, Jewish astronomical and astrological tradition, Hebrew and Latin paleography, Jewish music and ethnomusicology, 17th-19th century Italian Jewry , as well as Venetian and Florentine history. He is member of several research and associations (AJS, EAJS, AISG, Viola d’Amore Society, etc…) and serves as a board member of the Centro Veneziano di Studi Ebraici Internazionali, Venice. Selected publications:

• The Manuscript Tradition of Shabbatai Donnolo’s Sefer Hakhmoni and Il mondo fu creato a Nissan. Teorie e ipotesi sulla creazione dei pianeti: da una sezione del ms. ebr. 214 della Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana. Un testo donnoliano?, in Fabrizio Lelli, ed., Miscellanea di studi sul giudaismo nell’Italia meridionale (forthcoming).
• Jewish Music in Apulia: the liturgy and the songs of the Jews of Sannicandro Garganico, in Proceeding of the ITCM Colloquia in Mediterranean Music, Cambridge, July, 2008 (forthcoming by Scarecrow Press).

• The birth of Astrological Jewish Terminology, in Proceedings of the Congress “From Masha’alla to Kepler – The Theory and Practice of Astrology in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. London, Warburg Institute, 13-15 November 2008, Culture and Cosmos (forthcoming).

• A proposito di un passo del Sefer Hakhmoni di Shabbatai Donnolo nel Sefer Rossina (ca. XII secolo), in Sefer Yuhasin, XXIV-XXV (2008/20098), pp. 3/16.
• Manuscript production in Southern Italy: new information from a 11th-12th century manuscript from the Cairo Genizah, in Materia Giudaica, XIV/1-2 (2009), pp. 419-430.
• The Dissertazione divisa in lettere sulla portata dei musicali strumenti by Benedetto Frizzi (1757-1844), in AAA TAC - Acoustical Arts and Artifacts - Technology, Aesthetics, Communication, 6/2009, pp. 25-50. 
• La tradizione musicale ebraica nella Dissertazione di biografia musicale di Benedetto Frizzi. Testimonianza di un pensiero musicale, in M. Brignani and M. Bartoletti, eds., Benedetto Frizzi - Un illuminista nell’età dell’emancipazione, Florence, 2009, pp. 177-194.

• La scienza astrologica nel mondo ebraico. Dalla Baraita di-Shemu’el al Liber Alchandrei (ca. X secolo), in Materia Giudaica, 2008, pp. 135-141.

• Shabbatai Donnolo, commentateur byzantin du Sefer Yetzirah, in Réceptions de la cabale. Sous la direction de Pierre Gisel et Lucie Kaennel. Éditions de l’éclat, Paris- Tel Aviv, 2007, pp. 89-107.

• Ornamento del mio sposo e popolo della mia fede: a proposito di un pizmon attribuito a Shabbatai Donnolo, in Sefer Yuhasin, XXII, 2007, pp. 35-44.

• (with Sacha Stern): An astronomical table of Shabbetai Donnolo and the Jewish calendar in 10th-century Italy, in Aleph – Historical Studies in Science & Judaism, 7, 2007, pp. 13-41.

• Il Sefer Hakhmony nella biblioteca degli Haside Ashkenaz – L’esempio del commento alle tefillot di El‘azar da Worms, in Materia Giudaica, XI/1-2 2006, pp. 263-286.

• I manoscritti e le edizioni dei frammenti della Cronaca di Obadiah, in M. Perani and A. De Rosa, eds., Giovanni-Ovadiah da Oppido proselito, viaggiatore e musicista dell’età normanna - Atti del Convegno Internazionale si Giovanni Ovadiah - Oppido Lucano (PZ). 28, 29 and 30 Marzo 2004. Florence, 2005, pp. 103-117.