Today there are further categories: Italian Jews can be traced as far back as the 2nd century BCE: tombstones and dedicatory inscriptions survive from this period.

Medieval Italian Jews also produced important halachic works such as the Shibbole ha-Leḳeṭ of Zedekiah ben Abraham Anaw.

Two of the most famous of Italy's Jews were Obadiah ben Jacob Sforno (1475–1550) and Moshe Chaim Luzzatto (1707–1746) whose written religious and ethical works are still widely studied.

[5] Even after the Byzantine Empire had lost the Southern Italian provinces, the Kehillot in Apulia, Calabria and Sicily maintained connections to their coreligionists in Greece and Constantinople.

[6][7] Nevertheless, Jews in rural areas of Emirate of Sicily and Apulia are known to have made some use of Judeo-Arabic and Judeo-Latin languages in addition to Greek.

Following the invention of printing, Italy became a major publishing centre for Hebrew and Yiddish books for the use of German and other northern European Jews.

A notable figure was Elijah Levita, who was an expert Hebrew grammarian and Masorete as well as the author of the Yiddish romantic epic Bovo-Bukh.

In Italy they ran the risk of prosecution for Judaizing, given that in law they were baptized Christians; for this reason they generally avoided the Papal States.

With the decline in the importance of Venice in the 18th century, the leading role passed to Livorno (for Italy and the Mediterranean) and Amsterdam (for western countries).

This remained separate from the "Ponentine" (i.e. Spanish and Portuguese) community and close to their eastern roots, as evidenced by their use in the early 18th century of a hymn book classified by maqam in the Ottoman manner (see Pizmonim).

Later on the community of Livorno acted as a link between the Spanish and Portuguese and the eastern Sephardic Jews and as a clearing house of musical and other traditions between the groups.

Thus in Tunisia there was a community of Juifs Portugais, or L'Grana (Livornese), separate from, and regarding itself as superior to, the native Tunisian Jews (Tuansa).

Smaller communities of the same kind existed in other countries, such as Syria, where they were known as Señores Francos, though they generally were not numerous enough to establish their own synagogues, instead meeting for prayer in each other's houses.

A 2000 genetic study by M. F. Hammer et al. found that the paternal haplogroups of Jews in Rome are of Middle Eastern origin with low level European admixture.

A strong genetic connection between Jews in Rome and other Jewish populations from Europe, North Africa and the Middle East was noted.

[14] Atzmon–Ostrer's team found that the SNP markers in genetic segments of 3 million DNA letters or longer were 10 times more likely to be identical among Jews than non-Jews.

Another significant aspect of this tradition was observing the religious ways of challah, from its ingredients, to its preparation, to the very moment it is shared amongst those gathered.