Our Program Calendar

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open event30OctoberMine is the Golden Tongue
The Hebrew Sonnets of Immanuel of Rome
The poetic voice of Immanuel of Rome, a Jewish contemporary of Dante, reappears after 700 years in a staged reading of his sonnets by acclaimed actor Ronald Guttman with literary scholar Fabrizio Lelli. The occasion is the publication of Immanuel's Hebrew Sonnets translated into English by Yehudah Cohn, (CPL Editions, 2023). The program is free and open to the public. Make your reservation. On the occasion of the publication of the volume Mine is the Golden Tongue. The Hebr...
New York Public Library. Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library, New York Public Library. Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library. 455 Fifth AvenueMonday, October 30, 2023 from 6:30PM to 8:00PM -
open event18OctoberThe Jewish Tennis Philosopher
Roni Cohen (Columbia University, Tel Aviv University) As early as the twelfth century, Jewish parodic literature circulated conspicuously in Europe. Nearly all main texts of the Hebrew tradition was addressed in the form of parody: the Hebrew Bible, the Mishna and the Talmud, liturgical, halakhic, and mystic literature. In general however, Jewish philosophical literature did not become a relevant target of parodic writings. The lack of parodies of philosophical treatises is extremely interes...
Vol de Nuit, 148 West 4th StreetWednesday, October 18, 2023 7:00PM -
open event17OctoberCorrado Cagli: Transatlantic Bridges: 1938-1948
Please join the Center for Modern Italian art and Centro Primo Levi for the inauguration of the exhibition of Corrado Cagli curated by Raffaele Bedarida and the presentation of CPL Editions' new volume Corrado Cagli: Transatlantic Bridges: 1938-1947. In the 1930s, the young Italian artist Corrado Cagli was a rising star of the Scuola Romana, supported by the Fascist regime despite being Jewish and openly gay. Following the Racial Laws, he fled to the USA, where he remained until 1947. In thi...
CIMA Center for Italian Modern Art, CIMA Center for Italian Modern Art, 421, Broome Street, 4th floorTuesday, October 17, 2023 from 6:00PM to 8:00PM -
open event20SeptemberOutside In: The Oral History of Guido Calabresi
Norman I. Silber, Hofstra University, in conversation with Judge Guido Calabresi, former Dean of the Yale Law School Alessandro Cassin, Centro Primo Levi Stefano Albertini, NYU. RSVP at Casa Italiana Zerilli Marimò "This book combines family memoirs, an account of Jewish integration in Italy and the United States, an account of successful immigration, of the formation of a famous intellectual, of a piece of history of a renowned American university, and an investigation into American legal c...
Casa Italiana Zerilli Marimò, Casa Italiana Zerilli Marimò, 24 West 12 Street, New York, NY 10011Wednesday, September 20, 2023 6:30PM -
open event03MayThe Transient Worlds of Immanuel of Rome
Isabelle Levy (Columbia University), Karla Mallette (University of Michigan), Fabrizio Lelli (University of Rome La Sapienza), Davide Liberatoscoli (University of Postdam), Dario Internullo (Università di Roma Tre). This program follows two study days whose aim is to reconsider Immanuel of Rome and his work in relation to three areas of interest: recent historiography on fourteenth-century Roman culture from the communal experience to the end of Avignon; the role of language and the question...
Casa Italiana Zerilli Marimò, Casa Italiana Zerilli Marimò, 24 West 12 Street, New York, NY 10011Wednesday, May 3, 2023 from 6:30PM to 8:00PM -
open event01MayThe Transient Worlds of Immanuel of Rome
Study days held in collaboration with NYU Casa Italiana Zerilli Marimò and the University of Rome La Sapienza. Fabrizio Lelli (University of Rome La Sapienza), Davide Liberatoscoli (University of Postdam), Dario Internullo (Università di Roma Tre), Serena Di Nepi (University of Rome La Sapienza), Roni Cohen (Tel Aviv University), Karla Mallette (University of Michigan), Mahnaz Yousefzadeh (New York University), Michela Andreatta (University of Rochester), Isabelle Levy (Columbia Un...
Vol de Nuit, 148 West 4th StreetFrom monday, May 1, 2023 9:00AM to thursday, May 4, 2023 5:00PM -
open event30April“A more noble desire undoes my heart”
Catholic and Jewish Women writer in post-Tridentine Italy: Sarra Copio Sullam, Arcangela Tarabotti, Emilia Fiorentina and those whose letters were surrendered to oblivion.
A Sunday brunch conversation at Vol de Nuit with Serena Di Nepi (University of Rome La Sapienza), Lynn Westwater (George Washington University) and Ida Caiazza (Marie Curie Global Fellow, New York University) Co-presented by: Centro Primo Levi New York, Casa Italian Zerilli Marimò at NYU and the University of Rome La Sapienza. Reservation is required: info@primolevicenter.org Prompted by the Protestant Reformation and held between 1545 and 1563, the Council of Trent was a cultural and ...
Vol de Nuit, 148 West 4th StreetSunday, April 30, 2023 from 11:30AM to 1:00PM
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
La iente de Zion
La iente de Zion is a Jewish liturgical poem composed for the observance of the fast of the 9th day of the month of Av (Tisha B’Av). It appears in two prayer books of the Roman rite compiled in the 14th and 15th centuries. It was...
My Betrayed Garden
But what most displeased me, personally, was that my characters were used so freely, with so little reference to my work, in a way that would have been inappropriate even if they were marionettes. Although fine folk, the Finzi-Continis...
Formiggini’s Talking Cards
A brilliant publisher, Formiggini started running his business in the first decade of the twentieth century in his hometown of Modena. He then moved to Genoa and finally to Rome in 1916. The wit and refinement of his publications, as...
Piero Dello Strologo (1936-2022)
I met Piero Dello Strologo many years ago in Genova. He was younger than I am today and became the initial inspiration for what, years later, would be established as Centro Primo Levi in New York. I arrived at his office in...
Interview with Peter Cole
Going elsewhere might just show you who you are and what you might become. That physically, psychologically, imaginatively, you have to work your way into each of the “languages” involved in any broadly translational situation. And...
Under Gentile Eyes
As the reader will no doubt recognize, Under Gentile Eyes, the title chosen for this inquiry into some of the sundry ways in which Jews and Judaism have been represented in Christian Europe throughout the centuries, is quite blatantly...
Jewish Citizens
The National Museum of Italian Judaism and the Shoah opened its third exhibition entitled Beyond the Ghetto. Inside Out curated by Andreina Contessa, Simonetta Della Seta, Carlotta Ferrara degli Uberti, and Sharon Reichel. Image:...
The Time of Love
Italian Jews Between Segregation and Emancipation (1849-1871). The Jewish Museum of Rome opens a magnificent exhibition dedicated to the period that goes from the second Roman Republic to the annexation of Rome to unified Italy:...
Il Rinnegato: The Scandalous Life of a 19th Century Kabbalist
On a November morning in 1840, a young boy discovers the body of David Ajash, an Italian kabbalist rabbi of Algerian origin, under an olive tree, in the outskirts of Nablus. Homicide or suicide? The doubt remains, past the end of Il...
Primo Levi: An Identikit
Over the last seventy years, Primo Levi (1919–87) has been recognized as the foremost literary witness of the extermination of the European Jews. In Primo Levi: An Identikit, a product of twenty years of research, Marco Belpoliti...
The Indecipherable Mess of Human Life
Due vite (Two Lives) by Emanuele Trevi is a luminous, beautifully written wisdom book. It was deservedly awarded the 2021 Premio Strega, Italy’s major literary prize, and awaits the foresight of an American publisher for an English...
A Chemist’s Book Changed John Barnett’s Life.
Chemist and writer Primo Levi’s The Periodic Table—a memoir in the form of short stories about elements—closes with a chapter called “Carbon,” which tracks a single atom through time and space. Graphic designer and illustrator...
Angelo Fortunato Formiggini: An Italian Publisher
Eliza Pederzoli’s biography L’arte di farsi conoscere. Formiggini e la diffusione del libro e della cultura italiana nel mondo (Roma, Associazione Italiana Biblioteche, 2019) offers an in-depth survey of the archival resources on the...
Slavery and Conversion in Papal Rome
Scholar of forced baptisms Marina Caffiero talks about the House of Catechumens and the various groups that were forcibly or voluntarily interned there to be converted to Catholicism. Like ghettos a product of the Papal...
Marina Jarre’s Distant Fathers
Rewarding memoirs, like portraits, introduce us to a central character interacting with his or her world at a specific time in history. We are drawn to a memoir when all those elements come alive and acquire relevance for the reader....
The Persecution, Exclusion and Exile of Jewish Musicians
Italian Jewish Musicians and Composers under Fascism–Let Our Music Be Played, (Palgrave, Macmillan 2021), edited by Alessandro Carrieri and Annalisa Capristo, is a long-overdue comprehensive overview of how Mussolini’s...
A Memory of Le Murate
I was released from Le Murate three days ago. In my section, there was an inmate from Prato – the nicest man, who had been “in” for the past fourteen months for some textile deal gone wrong. He knew all the ins of the prison rules and...
Remembering Nedo Fiano z’l
What has characterized my whole life has been my deportation to the Nazi extermination camps. My entire family ended in Auschwitz with me; they were all exterminated. At eighteen, I was orphaned, and this devastating experience made me...
For a Memory of Culture Beyond Victims and Perpetrators
Has a much-vaunted cosmopolitan Holocaust memory — with its linked slogans of “Never forget!” and “Never again!” — simply failed to prevent the rise of the right or, more darkly, might it even be implicated in that political turn? ...
Legitimizing Fascism Through the Holocaust?
As the Holocaust becomes increasingly present in the political discourse in the US, Europe and Israel, we republish this reflection by Emiliano Perra written in 2010. The article surveys the transformation of the public image of the...
… the contrast between the texture of their speech … and the Hebrew interpolation, snatched from the language of the fathers, sacred and solemn… reflects another, the essential one of Diaspora Jews, scattered among Gentiles … trapped in tension between their divine calling and the daily misery of exile… Primo Levi, Argon
I will set down in order the traditions of my fathers, who were brought on a ship over the Pishon, the first river of Eden, […] They came to Oria; they settled there and prospered through remarkable achievements… The Chronicle of Ahimaaz
Not all of them where materially inert, for that was not granted to them. On the contrary, they were, or had to be, quite active; but inert they undoubtedly were in the innermost selves, inclined to disinterested speculation … the events attributed to them …shared a static quality, an attitude of dignified abstention, of deliberate (or accepted) relegation to the margins of the great river of life. Primo Levi, Argon
In order for the wheel to turn, for life to be lived, impurities are needed, and the impurities of impurities in the soil, too, as is known, if it is to be fertile. Dissension, diversity, the grain of salt and mustard are needed… Primo Levi, The Periodic Table
Intolerance is inclined to censor, and censorship promotes ignorance of the arguments of others and thus intolerance itself: a rigid, vicious circle that is hard to break. Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved
[…] to understand why the Jews were less a part of Italian life than they thought they were. Arnaldo Momigliano, The Italian Jews
In order for the wheel to turn, for life to be lived, impurities are needed, and the impurities of impurities in the soil, too, as is known, if it is to be fertile. Dissension, diversity, the grain of salt and mustard are needed… Primo Levi, The Periodic Table
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
USA: Amb. Zappia, a Stella Levi onoreficenze Cavaliere di Gran Croce
Giornale Diplomatico...
A New York Stella Levi diventa Cavaliere di Gran Croce della Repubblica Italiana
La Voce di New York A consegnarle l’onorificenza l’Ambasciatrice Italiana a Washington Mariangela Zappia...
Turning Lead To Air: Music for Cello From Primo Levi, The Brooklyn Rail
By Alessandro Cassin, our Director of Publishing at CPL Editions...
Interview with Valentina Pisanty in HISTORICAL EXPERTISE
Valentina Pisanty: “The more Memory Culture grew and the more institutionalized it became, the more the deniers gained visibility”...
Un film del 1948 finora sconosciuto racconta il ghetto di Roma e il destino dei suoi abitanti
By Gianna Pontecorboli Al Center for Italian Modern Art la pellicola di Barzini e Marcellini...
New York ricorda le vittime dell’Olocausto: cerimonie al Consolato Italiano e all’ONU, La Voce Di New York
By La Voce Di New York A Park Avenue tradizionale lettura dei nomi dei deportati. L’Assemblea Generale delle Nazioni Unite si riempie per l’evento “Home and Belonging”...
Palatucci, il mito sfatato
By Giuseppe Galzerano in Manifesto Giovanni Palatucci non salvò 800 ebrei e non distrusse 5 mila fascicoli. Il centro Primo Levi di New York fa a pezzi la leggenda del poliziotto fascista a Fiume considerato lo «Schlinder italiano»...
‘One Hundred Saturdays’ Review: Afternoons With Stella – The Wall Street Journal
By Heller McAlpin in The Wall Street Journal A chance meeting with a Holocaust survivor blossomed into weekly conversations—and a journey into a vanished world....
What It Took for Stella Levi to Talk About the Holocaust – The New York Times
By Michael Frank in The New York Times There is something unique about the way cataclysms are preserved in oral histories. In his 1936 essay “The Storyteller,” Walter Benjamin draws a distinction between the printed novel and the oral...
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 the...
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...