Features

Academia, Books 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…

Essays, Interviews June 9, 2025

Thruth and the Holocaust

“If you no longer want to believe the truth, nobody will want to believe you.” Zelman Lewental, prisoner of the Auschwitz Sonderkommando, quoted in Franco Fortini, “I cani del Sinai”. …

Essays September 2, 2024

Hatching the Cobra

Let no one praise Perillus, who was cruder than the tyrant Phalaris, for whom he constructed a brazen bull, promising that when a man was enclosed therein and a fire…

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Books March 29, 2012

Fascism and the Police

Jonathan Dunnage, The Italian Police and the Rise of Fascism, Cambridge University Press, 1998 Based on research using official documents, this account of the role of the police in the…

Books March 29, 2012

The Ghetto Reveals Rome

Luca Fiorentino, The Ghetto Reveals Rome, Gangemi editore, 2005 Benjamin walked down from the Capitoline Hill towards the Circus Flaminius in order to reach the other Jews on the banks…

Books March 29, 2012

The Holocaust and the Book

Jonathan Rose, The Holocaust and the Book, Univ. of Massachusetts Press, 2008 Between 1933 and 1945, Nazi Germany systematically destroyed an estimated 100 million books throughout occupied Europe, an act…

Books March 29, 2012

Fascism and the Jews

Salvatore Garau, Daniel Tilles, Fascism and the Jews: Italy and Britain, Vallentine Mitchell,  2011 Franklin Adler. Review of Garau, Salvatore; Tilles, Daniel, eds., Fascism and the Jews: Italy and Britain….

Books March 29, 2012

The Scandal of Kabbalah

Yaacob Dweck, The Scandal of Kabbalah: Leon Modena, Jewish Mysticism, Early Modern Venice, Princeton University Press, 2011 The Scandal of Kabbalah is the first book about the origins of a…

Books March 29, 2012

The Hebrew Book in Italy

Joseph R. Hacker and Adam Shear, The Hebrew Book in Early Modern Italy, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011 “A remarkably valuable contribution to the cultural history of the Jews in…