Seder ha-Ha’arachah ve-ha-Hanhagah [communal regulations and obligations]

(ITALY).

Eliezer Shlomo M’Italia

Mantua

1795

Vinograd, Mantua 585

The Mantuan Community began to organize its financial obligations through the levying of taxes from the beginning of the 16th century. Tax regulations were published, until the end of the 18th century. These chart the economic changes of Mantuan Jewry and the kinds of property and income that were taxable. Every three years the tax regulations of the Jewish community would be reviewed and a new book of regulations issued. “It was a special characteristic of the Mantuan community that it never went bankrupt, despite the great financial burden it was required to bear... The decline of the economic position of Italy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the increasing burden of taxes borne by the Jews, and the growth in the number of Jewish poor, all affected the Duchy of Mantua..but [they] succeeded in..balancing their budgets because they were able to manage their affairs more wisely than their brethren in neighbouring states.” See S. Simonsohn, History of the Jews in the Duchy of Mantua (1977) pp.375-90