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Books, Essays October 16, 2025

La Storia

Elsa Morante. Excerpts from La Storia, remembering October 16, 1943 Not even from her mother had she ever heard this denomination “Aryans”; in fact, the de-nomination of Jews itself, for…

News April 15, 2025

A Woman’s Resistance

A new book by Giorgio van Straten, La Ribelle. Storia straordinaria di Nada Parri, Laterza, 2025 (forthcoming in English with Other Press, in 2026) recounts a little-known yet remarkable story…

Books March 5, 2025

Primo Levi in Swahili

A new translation of If This is a Man into Swahili is available on the site of the International Center of Primo Levi Studies in Turin and can be downloaded…

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Essays, News October 5, 2014

Ethiopia 1935

Ethiopia is one of only two African countries that managed to escape colonization during Europe’s great scramble for Africa in the 1870s. Italy, a latecomer to the colonial enterprise, was…

Academia, Essays October 3, 2014

A Polishman among Ethiopians

  A century before global Jewry reached out to Ethiopia’s community, a researcher named Jacques Faitlovitch sowed the seeds for a future ingathering. An odd sculpture recently appeared on the…

Academia, Essays October 3, 2014

Jewish Settlement in Ethiopia

Plans for Mass Jewish Settlement in Ethiopia (1936-1943) Source: Tetzeta Mussolini’s invasion of Ethiopia in the autumn of 1935, and the development of anti-Semitism in both fascist Italy 1 and…

Essays, News October 3, 2014

The Mysteries of Italian Jewry

  Many years ago, at a lunch in Princeton, a venerable professor asked me whether Jews still existed in Italy. Was it a justified question? In a sense, yes. Of…

News September 14, 2014

Oratorio di Castro: 100 Years

L’oratorio Di Castro, Cento anni di ebraismo a Roma (1914-2014) Her name was Grazia Pontecorvo, and she was the widow of Salvatore Di Castro. She died in 1909 and left…

Academia, News September 13, 2014

Isacco Lampronti

Contemporary Science and Jewish Law in the Eyes of Isaac Lampronti of Ferrara and Some of His Contemporaries The Jewish community of Ferrara in the first half of the eighteen…