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Books March 12, 2024

These Thoughts of Mine

These Thoughts of Mine: Diaries of an Italian Jewish Partisan, January 1940–February 1944, edited by Guri Schwarz, Yad Vashem 2023 Emanuele Artom (Aosta, 1915–Turin, 1944) was an Italian Jewish intellectual….

Essays September 19, 2023

The Heretical Origins of the Sonnet

This essay was published in: Daily JStor, April 21, 2021 Of variable rhyme scheme and meter, sonnets are sometimes structured into stanzas of an octet and a sestet or of…

Books in Italian July 18, 2023

Thanks Goodness I Am Here

Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco. Ringrazio il cielo di essere qui Lettere a Alberto Carocci da Larchmont e Beverly Hills 1939/41.  Alessandro Panajia, Ed. Le Sillabe, Florence, 2021  In July 1939, Mario and Clara…

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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…

Essays November 19, 2008

Vito Volterra (1860–1940)

Vito Volterra (1860–1940): Scientist, Policymaker, and Bibliophile Vito Volterra is generally considered one of the greatest mathematicians of his time: “His most important contributions were in higher analysis, mathematical physics,…

Books November 3, 2008

In Praise of Imperfection

Rita Levi Montalcini, In Praise of Imperfection: My Life and Work, Sloan Catering Foundation Science Series, 1988   Rita Levi Montalcini, In Praise of Imperfection: My Life and Work, Sloan…