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...
Translating Bassani
Poet and translator Jamie McKendrick has found a way to render Bassani’s notoriously complex syntax, his long, languorous sentences with many dependent clauses, and his almost musical rhythm — were ritardandos and diminuendos rule—...
Hebrew University Symposium Explores Fascism, Racism and Nationalism
Scholars from different countries gathered in Jerusalem for a symposium that revisited the Italian Racist legislation of 1938 in a interdisciplinary and contemporary perspective. The themes investigated in the colloquium included...
Historian Michele Sarfatti is Honored at Columbia University
A crowd of 250 people at the Italian Academy at Columbia University paid homage to historian Michele Sarfatti. Renowned for his groundbreaking research on Italian Jewry, Fascist antisemitism and the Shoah in Italy,...
New Book Explores American Flirt with Italian Fascism
Mauro Canali’s La scoperta dell’Italia examines the activity, impact, and perspectives of American correspondents in Italy from 1900 to 1945 and the beginnings of the modern tradition of international political journalism. ...
The Year of History, A Novel
When Elsa Morante published La Storia. Romanzo in 1974 it was a watershed event that invested Italian society both in terms of the unprecedented success among readers and the ideologically fueled controversy among critics. Echoes of...
The resurgence of the Italian silk tallit.
Many of us remember well the years Rav Umberto Piperno spent in New York: his enthusiasm, wisdom and tireless efforts to present the specific traditions of Italian Jews from liturgy to food and beyond. In July he is back in...
Corrado Cagli: The American Years
In the 1930’s the young Italian artist, Corrado Cagli was a rising star of the Scuola Romana, supported by the Fascist regime despite being both Jewish and a homosexual. Following the Racial Laws, he moved first to Paris, and then...
Nuto Revelli: the History of the Present
For the rest of his life, Revelli did not stop studying and conducting interviews about the war and its devastating impact. His métier became that of bearing testimony and continuously questioning the past, the facts and their memory....
A Thousand Years Deep
In and of itself, this beam that, from the prison of Via Piangipane illuminates the land beneath which —in Carlo Levi’s famous depiction— Christ did not venture, creates a short-circuit within the narrative of the exhibit and opens an...
Silvio Zamorani: Through Books One Thinks the World
One of the most challenging projects was an Aramaic grammar book. To begin with, who is going to buy such a book? It was a hyper specialized volume, not an elementary grammar, so you can imagine my surprise when I...
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
Jewish Book Council: Book Review of Mixed Messages
The Jewish community of Italy is over two thousand years old, and yet, when Eleanor Foa’s father tried to explain their Italian Jewish heritage, it was always a struggle....
The Oral History Center: Los Corassones Avlan
We all have stories in our archives. We know it is best to bring the stories out, for people to hear and see them. But how? One idea: Involve the narrator, maybe she or he will have an idea. That...
I.Italy: The Life of a “Foreign Italian”
Leo Yeni, an Artist’s Paper Life, presented by NYU Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò in collaboration with Centro Primo Levi showcases the life and struggles of a man through his art. To some, the show, curated by Cynthia Madansky, is an...
Haaretz: From Rhodes With Love: Memories of Jewish Life on the Greek Island Celebrated in NY Show
In unconventional exhibit, the public is encouraged not only to touch the displays but to converse with Stella Levi, a 96-year-old Jewish native of the island that was occupied by the Nazis in World War II. By Danielle Ziri for...
The New York Times: She Grew Up on a Remote Italian Island. Then Came the Holocaust.
Recalling the once-vibrant Jewish life in prewar Rhodes, an island in the Mediterranean. By Michael Frank for The New York Times. Four years ago, while researching the war years in Italy, I was introduced to Stella Levi, now 96, probably...
Woman Around Town: Eleanor Foà’s Poignant Memoir About Her Italian Jewish Family
By Charlene Giannetti for Woman Around Town “To a child growing up in WASP America, with parents who had funny accents, feeling good about being an Italian Jew was a great gift. But like many gifts of childhood, I took...
Times of Israel: In the heart of NY, pop-up education center revives extinguished Rhodes Jewry
Near Washington Square Park through November 24, a living memorial dedicated to a 2,000-year-old Jewish community is manned by a spitfire nonagenarian survivor. Jordan Hoffman for The Times of Israel NEW YORK — In Lower Manhattan, a...
La Voce di New York: “Los Corassones Avlan”: a New York i cuori antichi degli ebrei di Rodi parlano ancora
La storia sconosciuta di una piccola comunità millenaria distrutta dal nazismo nell’isola delle rose: la mostra del Centro Primo Levi fino al 24 novembre. Gianna Pontecorboli for La Voce di New York Il risultato è stato possibile...
ANSA: Nel West Village rivive la storia degli ebrei di Rodi
omaggio a Stella Levi, che usci’ viva da Auschwitz Alessandro Baldini for ANSA Cultura In una vecchia “carriage house” nel cuore del West Village torna a vivere la comunità ebraica di Rodi sterminata ad Auschwitz nel...
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...
