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Cuneo

The 1901 Jewish Encyclopedia

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Cunæus, Petrus

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• Cuneo
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• Diocese of Cuneo
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• Cuneo

Capital of the Italian province of the same name. According to local traditions, a Jewish community, founded probably after the expulsion of the Jews from France (1381), existed there in the fourteenth century. It seems to have been firmly established only after the immigration of Spanish and Portuguese Jews, the first of the immigrants being some bankers, who, at the end of the sixteenth century, received permission from the pope to open loan-offices ("Rev. Etudes Juives," 19:143). The oldest monument preserved by the community is a "dukan" of the year 1611. The societies also date back to an early time: the Gemilut Ḥasidim was founded in 1687; the Talmud Torah, in 1770 by Solomon Jehiel della Torre. Two special memorial days are celebrated in the synagogue of Cuneo: one in memory of a conflagration in 1750, the other of the siege of 1799. The Spanish and the Italian rituals are followed. Among the rabbis have been the following: Jacob ben Mordecai Poggetto, in the sixteenth century; Solomon Jehiel della Torre, in the eighteenth century; M. Sorani, in the nineteenth century.

The community has a permanent population of about 300 persons. The Lattes family, which has lived there continuously since the sixteenth century, is especially noted.