Tariq Alì on Chemin Abramsky: My Life, My Library, and the Left

Bookhouse is a small place about books on the sixth floor of a Chelsea library building. Take the elevator and discover cozy rooms softly illuminated and infused with music, filled with books and carpets, a samovar from Izmir, porcelain tea cups made in the DDR, and all sorts of lovely obsolete items abandoned and found in the streets of New York.

THURSDAY OPENHOUSE – Every Thursday we are open to the public from 10 am to 5 pm. Just ask for Bookhouse at the door, we’ll meet you there and pick you up. Or send us a message at rsvp@primolevicenter.org.

Come and browse, study, have a conversation, sip a sweet chai, and watch a film. You can purchase books from Dan Wyman’s inventory, check out his rotating showcase, learn about CPL Editions (books we make here at Bookhouse), and explore the Sephardic House bookstore.

This Thursday, December 5 at 5:00 pm we will show Tariq Alì’s short film My Life, My Library and the Left, on the polymath, bibliophile, and book dealer Chimen Abramsky a few years before the scholar’s death in 2010. Doors close at 5:00 – Reservation is required: rsvp@primolevicenter.org

Alessandro Cassin and Dan Wyman will discuss Sasha Abramsky’s The House of Twenty Thousand Books (2014). For over fifty years, Chimen amassed a legendary collection of socialist literature and Jewish history. He and his wife, Miriam, hosted epic gatherings in London, that brought together an extraordinary mix of people, including Eric Hobsbawm, Isaiah Berlin, and Piero Sraffa, bound by books and ideas. His life is a wondrous journey through from the vanished worlds of Eastern European Jewry to the cacophonous politics of modernity and beyond.