Book launch with the  author Anthony Gad Bigio.
RSVP to  amarcus@kkjsm.org

Join us for a presentation on the fascinating life of Gad Franco (1881-1954), a prominent Sephardic journalist, lawyer, and jurist, who worked relentlessly for the Jewish community’s belonging to the national Turkish polity, and for the consolidation of the rule of law. This historical biography, written by his grandson, takes the reader from Izmir to Istanbul and beyond at the turn of the twentieth century.

The multifaceted history of Sephardic Jewry, the convulsions and conflicts of the late Ottoman Empire, and the birth, consolidation, and promising reforms of the young Turkish Republic, provide the context to this life story.

Following the presentation, Natalia Indrimi, Director of Centro Primo Levi, will join the author for a conversation.

Signed books will be available and refreshments will be served after the program.

The English Voice of Giorgio Bassani’s Poetry: The Complete Poems (Agincourt, 2023)

Translated by Roberta Antognini and Peter Robinson

Conversation with the translators; Welcome by Stefano Albertini; Luigi Ballerini: A Word from the Publisher; Paola Bassani: Opening Remarks

Giorgio Bassani’s popularity among anglophone readers was sparked by the 1965 English edition of The Garden of the Finzi Contini, the first novel to familiarize American readers with the Fascist persecution of  Italian Jews. His international reputation was consolidated by Vittorio De Sica’s 1970 Oscar-awarded film, which he publicly repudiated, and by the subsequent translation of most of his novels.

However, an appreciation of Bassani’s poetry has been limited to Italian readers with the occasional exceptions of selected English translations.

The purpose of The Collected Poems, the first authorized English translation of Bassani’s poetic oeuvre, is to introduce readers to another aspect of his work and to the diverse styles he used at different stages in life. Bassani’s rhythm, versification, and sound choices shed light on the poetic dimension of his novels and on the ways he initially conceived the powerful atmospheres for which they are known. The publication of this volume propels readers and scholars, into his life-long poetic practice.

Composed during and soon after the Second World War, the early poems retell the experience of persecution of Ferrara Jews, including the author’s arrest and imprisonment for anti-fascist activities. Their compactly rhymed verses contain the kernel of many situations he then explored in his fiction. The later poems, unrhymed, expansive free verse, all written after his last novel, revisit the life and career of an established man of letters.

In bringing together these different lyrical seasons, this volume shows how Bassani didn’t simply transitioned from a style modeled after the Italian poetic tradition to one freed from formal constraints; rather, he invites readers to understand the interdependence of different ways to compose verses. Bassani’s poetry compels us to open ourselves to a full range of artistic possibilities and carry them forward as both readers and writers.

Giorgio Bassani was born in Ferrara in Emilia Romagna, Italy, in 1916 and died in Rome in 2000.

The Collected Poems of Giorgio Bassani is available now both in paper and ebook form, through Amazon, and Agincourt Press. For more information please visit www.agincourtbooks.com 

The American Sephardi Federation is pleased to invite colleagues and the public to the sixth-floor Bookhouse at the Center for Jewish History.

The Bookhouse is an intimate space for collaborative work on books, book culture, and history, comprised of a Reading room, a Study room, a History of the Hebrew Book “Showbox,” and a Bookstore. Dwellers of the “house” are the American Sephardi Federation, Centro Primo Levi, and Dan Wyman Books.

COME VISIT THE BOOKHOUSE!

When – The Bookhouse will be inaugurated on Monday, November 11, with an open house from 5:00 pm and 8:30 p.m. Light refreshments will be served. Dan Wyman will showcase selected items from his inventory. At 6:30 pm he will give a brief talk, “Post-Election Pledges to the Jews of Newport: George Washington’s 1790 Decree to Give ‘to Bigotry No Sanction.’” With an original period publication of Washington’s 1790 famous promise on hand. Reservation is required. Please sign up at this link.

Where – The Bookhouse is located on the American Sephardi Federation’s floor (6th) of the Center for Jewish History, a consortium of Jewish libraries, archives, research institutes, and a museum at 15 West 16th Street in Chelsea.

Opening Hours – Every Thursday, from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm visitors are welcome to visit and browse books on Jewish history and culture, including rare, classics and new titles. Talks, roundtables, and readings will be held on-site. The Bookhouse is also open by appointment.

HOUSE AND BOOKS

House – A house is a place where people gather to do something together. Beit, Maison, Casa, Ev, and Bayt are words traditionally affixed to concepts with private and collective dimensions—fundamental traits that books share. Many languages include phrases denoting a “house of prayer,” a “house of study,” a “publishing house,” “house of memory,” and a “fun house.”

Bookhouse is a small space with many uses and sustained by personal relationships. We have furnished it with re-purposed items and populated with books from earlier owners, each with a previous life whose meaning is re-worked into the new setting. We plan to use technology in idiosyncratic ways, and never to substitute, expand, or reproduce human presence. What is said and done in this small room might be the beginning of long-lasting conversations and endeavors. Just as well – might never be heard again, set in print, or even remembered.

Books – Throughout history, books have come into existence in many forms. While technology has influenced their development and social roles, the conundrum of seizing the spoken word on stone, parchment, papyrus, paper, or a screen continues to loom large in the making of books. For Muslims and Jews alike, and not uniquely, the tension between the spoken “breath” and its organized form on a surface has never ceased to be a source of awe and ambivalence even as they sought to inscribe themselves in the history of the People of the Book. That tension incessantly accompanies writers, book-makers, book-sellers, and book-lovers.

Today, books have thoroughly been co-opted into branding, mass production, corporate efficiency, and the cult of best practices. Yet, communities of book people continue to flourish everywhere, embracing the tools of modernity and yet sharing the values of uncertainty, discontinuity, and inconsistency that book-making teaches. Books carry meaning in all their components, including many that only a few can read. Like their making, their circulation carries layers of history.

Each of the dwellers of the Bookhouse has long been involved with books: ASF with collecting, CPL with publishing, and Dan Wyman with trading. We come together to share old and new ways of enjoying books. It is the beginning of a new story, and we hope that every visitor will contribute to and be part of this adventure with us.

WHO WE ARE

The American Sephardi Federation preserves and promotes the history, traditions, and rich mosaic culture of Greater Sephardic communities as an integral part of the Jewish experience. A founding Partner of and housed in New York’s Center for Jewish History, our work is focused on ensuring that today’s Jews know our history; appreciate the beauty, depth, diversity, and vitality of the Jewish experience; and have a sense of pride in our contributions to civilization. For 50 years the ASF has achieved representation with results by giving platforms to scholars, preserving artifacts and memories, as well as engaging diplomatically to ensure access, preservation, and education. The ASF hosts events and exhibitions, produces online and print publications, supports research, scholarship, the Broome & Allen and Sephardi House Fellowships, the ASF Institute of Jewish Experience, the National Sephardic Library and Archives, as well as represents the Sephardic Voice in Jewish communal and diplomatic affairs. The ASF champions a vision of intercultural exchange and human flourishing that is Jewish, worldly, and cosmopolitan  in partnership with Muslim, Christian, Hispanic, African American, & other friends. americansephardi.org

Centro Primo Levi (CPL) is a New York-based organization founded in 1998. It runs a publishing house, CPL Editions, and the online zine Printed Matter. CPL cultivates education and debate regarding some of Primo Levi’s questions on power, human nature, and the ethics of science and technology. Projects also draw on Levi’s exploration of historical Judaisms, poetry, languages, and translation. CPL supports research, seminars, public programs, and publishing on history seen through the gaze of Jewish minorities that have settled on, departed from, or arrived in the Italian peninsula. It has supported extensive research and publications on the history of the persecution of the Jews in Italy in the context of Nationalism and Fascism. Its activities are propelled by a network of scholars, artists, and scientists, and it houses study groups on topics connected to its main work: Immanuel of Rome: historiography, philosophy, and poetry; The Hebrew Book Workshop; The Dissolution of the Ottoman Empire; Primo Levi’s Sixties and Seventies; Günther Anders’s work. The Center works closely with many Italian organizations, particularly the Center for Contemporary Jewish Documentation in Milan and the Jewish Museum of Rome. It operates under the auspices of the Consulate General of Italy and partners with many universities, the New York Public Library, as well as private and public archives. primolevicenter.org

Dan Wyman is a leading international dealer in rare, out-of-print, unusual, and important Jewish books, periodicals, and ephemera. Since 1991 he has supplied primary and secondary materials in Jewish history to libraries, museums, scholars, and collectors across the globe. He buys, sells, and brokers important Jewish materials in all areas of the field, with a special focus on American Jewish history, Yiddish printing, and the Holocaust.  Dan Wyman Books issues fully annotated illustrated catalogs several times a year. His warehouse with an inventory of over 30,000 titles is located in the East Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. Growing up in a family of historians and refugees, Dan was always drawn to exploring the past through objects and literature. His favorite holiday was the local public library annual book sale. While working as a union organizer, he was drawn to the antiquarian booktrade, and, responding to the advent of the internet and the tugs of family life, he began to sell rare Jewish books full time. It is a pursuit that one scholar noted “often anchors books to personal networks and to history itself, and defies the idea that they can be turned into commodities…” while at the same time the bookseller has to develop their intimate understanding of the business of libraries, archives, private collections, and, above all, the history and stories that each book carries within. Dan invites you to visit him at Bookhouse, at his warehouse in Brooklyn, or online at DanWymanBooks.com

Book Launch: In A Corner of Carnaro: We Were Too Few to Make History. A memoir by Caty Lager Bottone (1920-2015).

Conversation with Caty Lager’s daughters Dr. Marsha Fink and Sandra Bottone.

Reservations are required: rsvp@primolevicenter.org

“As Caty approached her 80th birthday she realized she had to cut back on her whirlwind lifestyle. So, in recent years, she has limited her traveling to Alaska, Scandinavia, California, Czech republic Canada, middle Europe and of course Italy with an occasional trip to New York. Oh yes, there was also a trip to Maine, squeezed in and one to the Canadian Rockies. Life in Norfolk has slowed down so she volunteers at the Symphony, participates in community activities and adds to this Tai-chi and her bridge games. We must not forget Torah study once a week. I’m breathless just reading this list. Also let us not forget that in her spare time she wrote an intriguing and sensitive autobiography dealing with her experience as a Jew in Italy in the 1930s and her early years in this country.”

With these words a friend of Caty Lager congratulated her on her 80th birthday in the year 2000. After more than 25 years, her memoir becomes available to the general public through CPL Editions.

Katrine or Caterina Lager was born in Fiume in 1920. Her parents’ families had landed in the city when it was a cosmopolitan and flourishing port of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Her mother valued education and encouraged her to pursue her passions: piano and dance. At a young age, she was sent with an older cousin to study in Vienna.

Back in Fiume, after the promulgation of Mussolini’s Racial Laws the entire Jewish population remained stateless overnight. The very large Goldstein-Lager family found itself in dire straits. They understood that there were no means for everybody to flee. With the help of ” Aunt Bertha”  who had moved to New York years earlier, they decided to send all the youngsters to America. Six and soon after eight teen-agers ended up living in their aunt’s apartment in the Bronx, seemingly unprepared for taking on factory jobs and the struggles of working class New Yorkers.

During the war years the family kept in touch as possible trying to follow or imagine the very different fates of various members. Some were deported to Auschwitz, some ended up in Italian internment, others fled to Palestine and some managed to flee Fiume and remained in hiding.

Caty’s memoir takes us through her return to Italy, her life in Bari where her parents had settled and established a transient Jewish life for many refugees and survivors who lived in the Apulian DP camps.

Many years later, when, in 1962, she started to work for the Rome office of HIAS (Hebrew Immigrant Aid society) helping refugees from Libya, Ethiopia, Yemen, Iran, and Russia, her life experience became a powerful resource to organize, foresee, assist, offer a shoulder and understand the state of mind of people who are in no position to make plans for the future and struggle to inscribe their past and their own lives in the narratives the relief organization system tries to impose on them.

A note on history

Fiume (today, Rijeka, Croatia) was a theater to  the birth of fascism, the rise of nationalism, and the fall of empires after World War I. In 1919 the multicultural former Habsburg city was occupied by the paramilitary forces of the extremist poet-soldier Gabriele D’Annunzio, who sought to annex the territory to Italy. Many local Italians supported the effort, nurtured by a long-lasting nationalistic tale. Although Fiume population remained tied to the free port status it had enjoyed under Habsburg sovereignty, the Jewish community dwindled significantly after these events. After a period of turmoil and short-lived independence, between 1922 and 1924 the Fascist Regime lead a full-fledged coup d’état and annexed the city.

Thousands of Fiumani who identified as Croatians, Slovene, Hungarians, etc. became victims of legislative, political, and physical persecution. It was here that the first Fascist laboratory of ethnic cleansing took form. The Racial Laws of 1938 stripped of Italian citizenship all Jews who had acquired it after 1919. As Fiume became Italian in 1924, the entire Jewish community became stateless overnight and subject to immediate expulsion. The Laws were applied as efficiently as they were in the rest of Italy but with unmatched violence.

Many departed. Others managed to buy time foraging a predatory police department emboldened by its special status in a military zone. In 1940, when entering the war, the government ordered the immediate arrest of all foreign Jews who had remained in the country. Fiume’s Jewish men were arrested swiftly and en mass, including the elders and the sick, to be deported to various concentration camps in the peninsula. The women remained prey to a brutal system which they managed as they could until most of them were also arrested and interned. In 1943 the Germans occupied the region, maintaining the Italian civil administration in place. About 80% of approximately 400 Jews who had remained in the city were deported with the pervasive collaboration of civilians and the Italian authorities.

Historian and Rabbi Shaul Magid talks about his book The Necessity of Exile: Essays from a Distance (Ayin Press, 2023).

Seating is limited and reservation is necessary: rsvp@primolevicenter.org.  Thank you.

“Magid’s project—over the wide-ranging, moving, and learned essays that constitute the collection—is to do what Jews have always done when they want to mute or subdue the radicalism of a disruptive proposal: he locates the source of his authority in traditional antecedents.”
—Gideon Lewis-Kraus in The New Yorker

What is exile? What is diaspora? What is Zionism? Jewish identity today has been shaped by prior generations’ answers to these questions, and the future of Jewish life will depend on how we respond to them in our own time. In The Necessity of Exile: Essays from a Distance, celebrated rabbi and scholar Shaul Magid offers an essential contribution to this intergenerational process, inviting us to rethink our current moment through religious and political resources from the Jewish tradition.

On many levels, Zionism was conceived as an attempt to “end the exile” of the Jewish people, both politically and theologically. In a series of incisive essays, Magid challenges us to consider the price of diminishing or even erasing the exilic character of Jewish life. A thought-provoking work of political imagination, The Necessity of Exile reclaims exile as a positive stance for constructive Jewish engagement with Israel|Palestine, antisemitism, diaspora, and a broken world in need of repair.

About the Author

Shaul Magid is Professor of Jewish Studies at Dartmouth College, Kogod Senior Research Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America, Senior Fellow at the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard University, and rabbi of the Fire Island synagogue. He works on Jewish thought and culture from the sixteenth century to the present, focusing on the Jewish mystical and philosophical tradition. His three latest books are The Bible, the Talmud, and the New Testament: Elijah Zvi Soloveitchik’s Commentary to the Gospels (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019); Piety and Rebellion: Essays in Hasidism (Academic Studies Press, 2019); and Meir Kahane: The Public Life and Political Thought of an American Jewish Radical (Princeton University Press, 2021). He writes regularly for Religion Dispatches, +972, and other topical journals. He is an elected member of the American Academy for Jewish Research and the American Society for the Study of Religion.