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Academia, Essays March 10, 2023

The Last Muslims in Italy

During Dante’s lifetime, the only Muslim city on the Italian peninsula ceased to exist.  Dante does not mention Lucera Saracenorum (a Latin placename meaning “Lucera of the Saracens”) in his writings,…

Interviews January 4, 2023

A Double Bow for Primo Levi

The legendary cellist /composer France -Marie Uitti will premiere Luciano Chessa’s Piombo based on a text by Primo Levi at Magazzino Italian Art on January 21. The two-bow technique she…

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Books November 29, 2008

October 16, 1943, Eight Jews

Giacomo Debenedetti, October 16, 1943: Eight Jews, University of Notre Dame Press, 2001   Debenedetti (1901-1967), one of Italy’s most influential literary critics, editors and literature professors, endangered his career…

Books November 29, 2008

Marriage Rituals Italian Style

Roni Weinstein, Marriage Rituals Italian Style, Brill Academic Publishers, 2003   Marriage Rituals Italian Style: A Historical Anthropological Perspective on Early Modern Italian Jews is the first comprehensive attempt to…

Books November 27, 2008

The Garden of the Finzi-Continis

Giorgio Bassani, The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, Everyman’s Library, 2005   “The Garden of the Finzi-Continis is first and foremost a love story and on quite a different level from anything…

Essays November 26, 2008

Giorgio Levi della Vida

Islam in the academia. The case of Giorgio Levi della Vida by Miriam Haier As an Italian Jewish professor in fascist Italy, Levi della Vida completed his groundbreaking work in…

Essays November 26, 2008

Growing up Jewish in Ferrara

  Courtesy of Judaism: A Quarterly Journal of Jewish Life and Thought, June 2004 Giorgio Bassani’s Ferrara may be, as an American critic has called it, a “semiotic labyrinth,” but…

Essays November 19, 2008

Reflections

Reflections on an Italian Jewish life From: The Most Ancient of Minorities: The Jews of Italy, Stanislao G. Pugliese, editor, 2002 I am an Italian Jew. My forefathers settled in…