Our Program Calendar
Public and Academic Programs
Public programs
Centro Primo Levi’s programs explore the diversity of the Italian Jewish experience and take inspiration from Primo Levi’s humanism and his quest to explore the past and understand different aspects of the world we inhabit.
Italian Jewish Studies Seminars
A collaborative initiative of Centro Primo Levi with the NYU departments of Italian, History and Judaic Studies and Casa Italiana Zerilli Marimò to develop a context for the study of Italian Jewish history, generally absent from curricula of Italian studies and only marginally featured in Jewish Studies programs.
Primo Levi Forum
Readings, roundtables and presentation periodically connect scholars and practitioners from the many fields of the humanities and sciences that defined Levi’s intellectual horizon. Year after year, contributions from all over the world demonstrate
Memoria
Studies and research on the history of the anti-Jewish persecution in Italy, fascism and the post-war construction of memory. A collaborative effort of the Consulate General of Italy, Centro Primo Levi, the Italian Cultural Institute, NYU Casa Italiana Zerilli Marimò,
CPL Editions & Printed Matter
Los Corassones Avlan
Conversations on Jewish Life on the Island of Rhodes. A pop-up installation to discover, discuss and imagine. New York, NY – September 24, 2019 – A fully immersive experience celebrating and exploring the lives of the Jews of Rhodes, ...
Primo Levi: A Multilanguage Reading
Primo Levi at 100: A Multilanguage Reading The Italian Cultural Institute, Centro Primo Levi and the New York Public Library presented a day-long multi language reading of Primo Levi’s memoir If This Is a Man....
Periodic Words: Stranger
In the Preface to If This Is A Man, Levi warns the reader about some possible consequences of organized political systems: “Many people—many nations—, can find themselves believing, more or less consciously, that ‘every stranger is an ...
The Language that Lived Twice
The almost daunting task of tracing the history of the Hebrew language, and that of the literature and of the people who have read it or spoke it, is achieved in 214 pages, balancing real scholarship with lightness, enthusiasm, personal...
Letter to a Friend in Gaza
Amos Gitai’s stage version of Letter to a Friend In Gaza, which had its World Premiere at Spoleto Festival USA in Charleston on May 29th, is an absorbing, demanding, thought-provoking, and lyrical multimedia work. In times of ...
Primo Levi at 100
Primo Levi’s 100th anniversary will be celebrated around the world through lectures, book presentations, staged readings, and academic seminars....
Journal of Modern Italian Studies Honors Michele Sarfatti
2018 marks the 80th anniversary of the Racial Laws introduced in Fascist Italy by the dictator Benito Mussolini. As often happens with decennial milestones of major historical events, an opportunity is afforded to look back and see the ...
Corrado Cagli’s Drawings in the Collection of the NYPL
In 1948, the New York City Ballet presented The Triumph of Bacchus and Ariadne, a Renaissance poem by Lorenzo de’ Medici whose refrain “del doman non v’è certezza” (the future holds no certainty) may have had a particular resonance in...
Primo Levi at 100
Primo Levi’s 100th anniversary will be celebrated around the world through lectures, book presentations, staged readings, and academic seminars....
Current scholarship on Italian Fascist anti-Semitism in honour of Michele Sarfatti.
2018 marks the 80th anniversary of the Racial Laws introduced in Fascist Italy by the dictator Benito Mussolini. As often happens with decennial milestones of major historical events, an opportunity is afforded to look back and see the ...
Research & Learning
Primo Levi
Primo Levi’s life and work through archives and research institutions, a short film and an anthology of essays....
The Shoah in Italy
A brief guide to the study of the persecution of the Jews in Italy based on material provided by the Center for Contemporary Jewish Documentation in Milan....
Americordo
Documenting the lives of Italian Jewish exiles in America, their struggles and achievements, through research, oral history and family albums....
Italian Jewish Press
Guided portal to the Italian Jewish press of 19th and 20th centuries. Created in collaboration with the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa. Coming Soon...
From & For the Press
Primo Levi at 100
New York, May 28, 2019 – Centro Primo Levi and the Italian Cultural Institute inaugurate Primo Levi’s Centenary with two programs highlighting Levi’s relevance today and his ability to continue to speak to people of different ...
The Inspiring History of Europe’s Largest Jewish Publishing House
Simone Somekh for Tablet, May 2018 Whether you’re looking for the latest Israeli best-selling novel, the five books of the Torah, or even the translation of the Babylonian Talmud, in Italy, there is one man behind all of these books....
Italy’s Jews to Israel’s Rabbinate: Hands off Our Artichokes!
Simone Somekh for Tablet, April 2018 When Ba’ghetto, the oldest Jewish restaurant in Rome, announced the opening of its new location in Milan, someone must have made a quick phone call to inform the Chief Rabbinate of Israel that the...
Tablet Magazine: Did Gino Bartali Actually Save Jews? An Investigation.
As the Tour de France wraps up this week, a historical debate still rages over who deserves credit for the production of identity cards for Jews hidden in Florence Michele Sarfatti, Tablet Magazine An exhibition at the Italian American ...
Tablet Magazine: A Holocaust Story form the White Pages
An ‘archaeologist of bureaucracy’ traces the ghostly lives of foreign Jews in Italy during World War II. By Michael Frank In the fall of 2011 I received a letter from my friend Letizia Gualandi, a professor of archaeology at...
Boston Review of Books: Finding Ourselves in the Venetian Ghetto
Michael Frank. “We do not see things as they are; we see them as we are.” This is the Talmud quoting Shmuel ben Nachmani on dreams, but the observation speaks fittingly—and pointedly—to last summer’s commemoration of the establishment of the...
New York Transatlantic: In Old Synagogue, New York Discovers Italian Chazanut
NEW YORK—Besides Israel, Italy is perhaps the smallest region in the world to feature the greatest concentration of different Jewish traditions. In its 2,000 years of history, the Italian Jewish scene has drawn on a number of ...
Giorno della Memoria 2017
Holocaust Remembrance Day 2017 inspires reflections on the crisis of the European Union and the plight of refuges New York, NY, January 13, 2017 – The 2017 commemoration of Holocaust Remembrance Day, coordinated by Centro ...
New York Transatlantic: 500 Years of Jewish History from the Venice Ghetto
Donatella Calabi presented her new book Venice, the Jews and Europe 1516–2016 at the Rizzoli Bookstore. Read the original article On the March 29, 1516, the Senate of the Republic of Venice decided that the city’s Jews had to live in a ...
Washington Post: Celebrating Primo Levi
Noon-1 Primo Levi, the preeminent writer on the Holocaust who died in 1987, is celebrated in a panel discussion featuring Ann Goldstein, translator of Primo Levi’s work and editor of “The Complete Works of Primo Levi,” and her ...
Editors’ picks from our partners and elsewhere
The Primo Levi Archive in Turin
The International Primo Levi Studies Center offers scholars and students access to Primo Levi’s work and to research on different aspects of his writing. The archive collects the editions of his works, translations, critical ...
CDEC Digital Library
CDEC Digital Library a web portal dedicated to the history, culture and traditions of the Jews in Italy from the emancipation era the present as well as to the largest collection, library and research body on the history of...
Archivio Ebraico Terracini
The Archive of the Jewish traditions and customs Benvenuto and Alessandro Terracini collects and preserves objects, documents and books from the Jewish tradition of Piemonte. Established almost forty years ago in Turin by a bequest of ...
Jewish Museum of Rome
Discover the Jewish Museum of Rome’s mappoth collection. Traditionally used to cover the sacred text between readings of different portions, these beautifully embroidered textiles are testimony to centuries of Jewish life in Rome. ...
Fondazione Fossoli
The Fossoli Foundation is dedicated to the preservation of the history of the concentration camp of Fossoli (Carpi, Modena) in its various phases (POW camp, national concentration/transit camp for Jews, DP camp and orphanage). The ...
Franco Antonicelli Archive
Writer, public intellectual and publisher Franco Antonicelli was among the early opposers of Fascism, an activist of Giustizia e Libertà and later in the Comitato di Liberazione. He was responsible fo the first publication of Primo ...
