Women and the Torah
In Italy, a Unique Connection Between Women and the Torah. Creating special Torah coverings—often from discarded scraps of fabric—has a long history for Italian women A Torah scroll takes years to…
Essays
On the Dark Side of History
The historian Carlo Ginzburg talks about his publications and his historical method of microhistory, which he pioneered. Ginzburg dismisses the prevailing relativism of historical truth as intellectually, politically, and morally lazy,…
The Enigma
The Enigma of a Rare Jewish Sixteenth Century Portrait from Cremona Recently, while visiting an art fair in New York, I was surprised and intrigued by a painting by Antonio…
From Odessa to Florence
From Odessa to Florence: Elena Comparetti Raffalovich. “Non capisco come possono affollare chiese e sinagoghe, quando si puo avere come tempio l’universo interno Abstract In the nineteenth and the first…
After Mussolini
After Mussolini: Jewish Life and Jewish Memories in Post-Fascist Italy. In 1922, in a Vienna where anti-Jewish sentiments were intense and exploited by various political movement, the Austrian-Jewish writer Hugo…
From Musa Dagh to Masada
How Franz Werfel’s novel about the Armenian Genocide inspired the Warsaw Ghetto fighters and the Zionist resistance A crowded hotel lobby in Breslau in late 1932. People waited there to…
Holocaust Music
Why the new “Holocaust Music” is an insult to music and the the victims of the Shoah In the never-ending search for ways to remember the Holocaust, the newest…
An Evening for Bianca
On January 25th, 2016, was a special evening at the Italian Cultural Institute. The occasion was the launching of Primo Levi, The Friend by Bianca Guidetti Serra, CPL Editions, 2015….
Writing for Justice: Rethinking the Saga of Edgardo Mortara
“A masterful examination of what must be one of the most intriguing figures of mid-nineteenth-century American literature, Writing for Justice reflects a refreshing transnational turn in literary study.”—David I….
Lagersprache: Primo Levi and the Language of Survival
In a story from 1976 entitled “Decoding” (Decodificazione), Primo Levi investigates the appearance of swastikas and Fascist graffiti in a small Italian town.[1] Discovering they were made by a disaffected teenager,…