Our Program Calendar
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open event17FebruaryThe Pain of Others. Reflections on a text.
Centro Primo Levi's book talks at the Mitchell Algus Gallery, 132 Delancey Street, 2nd fl. (entrance on Norfolk Street. There is no elevator. Sorry about this). At 7:00 pm EST RSVP: info@primolevicenter.org In Regarding The Pain of Others, Susan Sontag reevaluates the interaction between spectators and the spectacles of war. Her last book, published in 2003, reads like a history of the Western gaze on war, punctuated by unanswered questions. What do we make of the act of looking, of the im...
Mitchell Algus Gallery, 132 Delancey Street, 2nd fl. (entrance on Norfolk Street)Saturday, February 17, 2024 -
open event31JanuaryThe Racial Laws at the University of Rome La Sapienza
Giorno della Memoria
The Consulate General of Italy and the University of Rome La Sapienza present the recently opened archive and digital portal of La Sapienza (https://1938-sapienza-leggirazziali.it/Sito/) documenting the expulsion of faculty members, researchers, students, and administrative staff, whose lives were taken apart by the persecutory laws of 1938. Historian Umberto Gentiloni and project coordinator Serena Di Nepi will illustrate the archival project, its relevance for new research, and its impact i...
Consulate General of Italy, Consulate General of Italy. 690 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10065Wednesday, January 31, 2024 from 6:00PM to 7:30PM -
open event30JanuaryCorrado Cagli’s Triumph of Bacco and Ariadne
Giorno della Memoria
Presented by the Center for Italian Modern Art and Casa Italiana Zerilli Marimò. Make your reservation now! Bruno Walter Auditorium. The Library for the Performing Arts Lincoln Center, 111 Amsterdam Avenue. The score of The Triumph of Bacchus and Ariadne will be presented in its entirety for the first time since 1948. Cantori New York directed by Mark Shapiro will perform Vittorio Rieti’s music for the Magnifico. In 1948, the New York City Ballet presented The Triumph of Bacchus and ...
Bruno Walter Auditorium, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, 111 Amsterdam Avenue at 65th StreetTuesday, January 30, 2024 from 7:30PM to 9:00PM -
open event29JanuaryGiorno della Memoria
Ceremony of the Reading of the Names
Ceremony of Giorno della Memoria. Consulate General of Italy - 690 Park Avenue from 8:30 am to 2:30 pm Reading of the names of the Jews deported from Italy and the territories under Italian rule. The ceremony is held each year in front of the Italian Consulate and everyone is invited to join and read. Giorno della Memoria (Remembrance Day) commemorates the day of 1945 in which Auschwitz was liberated by the Soviet Army. European countries and the UN mark this day with programs and ceremon...
Consulate General of Italy, Consulate General of Italy. 690 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10065Monday, January 29, 2024 from 8:30AM to 2:30PM -
open event28JanuaryArt After War: Paola and Lorenza Mazzetti
Giorno della Memoria
Reservations: https://www.magazzino.art Magazzino Italian Art, in collaboration with the Centro Primo Levi New York, presents a program focused on the resilient Mazzetti sisters. On August 3, 1944, Paola and Lorenza, twins adopted by Robert Einstein and Nina Mazzetti, witnessed the murder of their family by the Nazis. For the remainder of their lives, they channeled their experience into a profound artistic expression that spanned painting, filmmaking, writing, and psychoanalysis. The progra...
Magazzino Italian Art, 2700 Route 9, Cold Spring, NYSunday, January 28, 2024 from 12:30PM to 2:30PM -
open event25JanuaryEdith Bruck’s Lost Bread
Giorno della Memoria
Literary scholar Gabriella Romani in conversation with Fabio Finotti presents Lost Bread by Edith Bruck, which she translated with David Yanoff. The Italian original, Il pane perduto (2021), was a finalist for the prestigious Premio Strega. Born in Hungary, Ms. Bruck was deported to Auschwitz in 1944 and survived with her sister. After living in Israel, she moved to Italy in 1954. Bruck began writing her memories of the camp in Italian, a language she learned as an adult that she described as th...
Italian Cultural Institute, Italian Cultural Institute, 686 Park AvenueThursday, January 25, 2024 from 6:00PM to 7:30PM -
open event24JanuaryA Lens on History: Lorenza Mazzetti’s Films
Giorno della Memoria
A Lens on History: Lorenza Mazzetti’s Films. Reservations: http://www.casaitaliananyu.org Alessandro Cassin will present and discuss excerpts of Lorenza Mazzetti's films The Country Doctor (1953) and Together (1956) recently restored by the British Film Institute in London. A long time friend of Lorenza and Paola Mazzetti, Cassin reflects on the twin sisters' approach to art and life, their attitude toward history and their investigation of human nature, which was central not only to Lorenza...
Casa Italiana Zerilli Marimò, Casa Italiana Zerilli Marimò, 24 West 12 Street, New York, NY 10011Wednesday, January 24, 2024 from 6:00PM to 8:00PM
Public and Academic Programs
Public programs
Centro Primo Levi’s programs explore the diversity of the Italian Jewish experience and take inspiration from Primo Levi’s humanism and his quest to explore the past and understand different aspects of the world we inhabit.
Italian Jewish Studies Seminars
A collaborative initiative of Centro Primo Levi with the NYU departments of Italian, History and Judaic Studies and Casa Italiana Zerilli Marimò to develop a context for the study of Italian Jewish history, generally absent from curricula of Italian studies and only marginally featured in Jewish Studies programs.[expand] Italian Jews, the oldest minority in Europe, have lived in the peninsula since Roman times, producing a unique cultural milieu, and often acting as liaisons to neighboring societies. [/expand]
Primo Levi Forum
Readings, roundtables and presentation periodically connect scholars and practitioners from the many fields of the humanities and sciences that defined Levi’s intellectual horizon. Year after year, contributions from all over the world demonstrate [expand]the inspirational capacity of Levi’s work and the creative power of his journeys across disciplines. Translated in over 40 languages, Levi’s work transcends cultural boundaries and comes to plays often unexpected roles in different cultures. [/expand]
Memoria
Studies and research on the history of the anti-Jewish persecution in Italy, fascism and the post-war construction of memory. A collaborative effort of the Consulate General of Italy, Centro Primo Levi, the Italian Cultural Institute, NYU Casa Italiana Zerilli Marimò, [expand]the Italian Academy at Columbia University, CUNY’s John Calandra Italian American Institute and Scuola d’Italia Guglielmo Marconi and the Bronx High School of Science. Selected programs are held under the auspices of the Simon Wiesenthal Center.[/expand]
CPL Editions & Printed Matter
Lorenza Mazzetti Re-covered
Lucy Scholes, The Paris Review, 2020. In 1956, in a central London café, Lindsay Anderson, Karel Reisz, Tony Richardson, and Lorenza Mazzetti wrote a manifesto for what they termed the “Free Cinema” movement. Among the aims of these...
The Eternal Tendency Toward Fascism
Stanislao Pugliese. Levi was strongly attracted to the radical new ideology of Giustizia e Libertà. GL was the only movement that arose directly in response to Mussolini’s regime. It was a heterogeneous group of intellectuals; both a...
Truth of Dare?
Farah Abdessamad. The new English translation of Impostures from Basra-born Al-Harīrī (aka the Arab poet known as Abū Muhammad al-Qāsim ibn Alī ibn Muhammad ibn Uthmān al-Harīrī)revives the “eloquent rogue” genre of classical Arabic...
The Heretical Origins of the Sonnet
Ed Simon. Kleinhenz writes: “For centuries the sonnet has remained the most popular and the most difficult poetic form in Western literature,” with few canonical poets since the Renaissance completely avoiding them. The endurance of...
Italy and the Jews Beyond the Borders
Michele Sarfatti’s new book I confini di una persecuzione (The Borders of a Persecution-Fascism and the Jews outside of Italy 1939-1943,) examines the treatment reserved by the Italian regime to Italian and foreign Jews in Italian...
Night on Earth
Rodogno paints a broad picture of Western humanitarian organizations’ activities in the Near East after World War One, in particular those from the United-States, Great Britain, France, Switzerland, and Scandinavia. The focus of their...
The Last Muslim of Italy
David Abulafia 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, despite his...
Bashing Micól
It is never easy to reconcile literary works with their theatrical adaptations. Even more so when the work in question is a delicately complex novel like Giorgio Bassani’s The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, with its symbolic layers,...
La iente de Zion
La iente de Zion is a Jewish liturgical poem composed for the observance of the fast of the 9th day of the month of Av (Tisha B’Av). It appears in two prayer books of the Roman rite compiled in the 14th and 15th centuries. It was...
My Betrayed Garden
But what most displeased me, personally, was that my characters were used so freely, with so little reference to my work, in a way that would have been inappropriate even if they were marionettes. Although fine folk, the Finzi-Continis...
Formiggini’s Talking Cards
A brilliant publisher, Formiggini started running his business in the first decade of the twentieth century in his hometown of Modena. He then moved to Genoa and finally to Rome in 1916. The wit and refinement of his publications, as...
Piero Dello Strologo (1936-2022)
I met Piero Dello Strologo many years ago in Genova. He was younger than I am today and became the initial inspiration for what, years later, would be established as Centro Primo Levi in New York. I arrived at his office in...
Interview with Peter Cole
Going elsewhere might just show you who you are and what you might become. That physically, psychologically, imaginatively, you have to work your way into each of the “languages” involved in any broadly translational situation. And...
Under Gentile Eyes
As the reader will no doubt recognize, Under Gentile Eyes, the title chosen for this inquiry into some of the sundry ways in which Jews and Judaism have been represented in Christian Europe throughout the centuries, is quite blatantly...
Jewish Citizens
The National Museum of Italian Judaism and the Shoah opened its third exhibition entitled Beyond the Ghetto. Inside Out curated by Andreina Contessa, Simonetta Della Seta, Carlotta Ferrara degli Uberti, and Sharon Reichel. Image:...
The Time of Love
Italian Jews Between Segregation and Emancipation (1849-1871). The Jewish Museum of Rome opens a magnificent exhibition dedicated to the period that goes from the second Roman Republic to the annexation of Rome to unified Italy:...
Il Rinnegato: The Scandalous Life of a 19th Century Kabbalist
On a November morning in 1840, a young boy discovers the body of David Ajash, an Italian kabbalist rabbi of Algerian origin, under an olive tree, in the outskirts of Nablus. Homicide or suicide? The doubt remains, past the end of Il...
Primo Levi: An Identikit
Over the last seventy years, Primo Levi (1919–87) has been recognized as the foremost literary witness of the extermination of the European Jews. In Primo Levi: An Identikit, a product of twenty years of research, Marco Belpoliti...
The Indecipherable Mess of Human Life
Due vite (Two Lives) by Emanuele Trevi is a luminous, beautifully written wisdom book. It was deservedly awarded the 2021 Premio Strega, Italy’s major literary prize, and awaits the foresight of an American publisher for an English...
A Chemist’s Book Changed John Barnett’s Life.
Chemist and writer Primo Levi’s The Periodic Table—a memoir in the form of short stories about elements—closes with a chapter called “Carbon,” which tracks a single atom through time and space. Graphic designer and illustrator...
… the contrast between the texture of their speech … and the Hebrew interpolation, snatched from the language of the fathers, sacred and solemn… reflects another, the essential one of Diaspora Jews, scattered among Gentiles … trapped in tension between their divine calling and the daily misery of exile… Primo Levi, Argon
I will set down in order the traditions of my fathers, who were brought on a ship over the Pishon, the first river of Eden, […] They came to Oria; they settled there and prospered through remarkable achievements… The Chronicle of Ahimaaz
Not all of them where materially inert, for that was not granted to them. On the contrary, they were, or had to be, quite active; but inert they undoubtedly were in the innermost selves, inclined to disinterested speculation … the events attributed to them …shared a static quality, an attitude of dignified abstention, of deliberate (or accepted) relegation to the margins of the great river of life. Primo Levi, Argon
In order for the wheel to turn, for life to be lived, impurities are needed, and the impurities of impurities in the soil, too, as is known, if it is to be fertile. Dissension, diversity, the grain of salt and mustard are needed… Primo Levi, The Periodic Table
Intolerance is inclined to censor, and censorship promotes ignorance of the arguments of others and thus intolerance itself: a rigid, vicious circle that is hard to break. Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved
[…] to understand why the Jews were less a part of Italian life than they thought they were. Arnaldo Momigliano, The Italian Jews
In order for the wheel to turn, for life to be lived, impurities are needed, and the impurities of impurities in the soil, too, as is known, if it is to be fertile. Dissension, diversity, the grain of salt and mustard are needed… Primo Levi, The Periodic Table
Research & Learning
Primo Levi
Primo Levi’s life and work through archives and research institutions, a short film and an anthology of essays....
The Shoah in Italy
A brief guide to the study of the persecution of the Jews in Italy based on material provided by the Center for Contemporary Jewish Documentation in Milan....
Americordo
Documenting the lives of Italian Jewish exiles in America, their struggles and achievements, through research, oral history and family albums....
Italian Jewish Press
Guided portal to the Italian Jewish press of 19th and 20th centuries. Created in collaboration with the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa. Coming Soon...
From & For the Press
Art After War: Paola and Lorenza Mazzetti
Magazzino.Art A program spotlighting the resilient legacy of the Mazzetti sisters, for the International Holocaust Remembrance Day....
La Voce Di New York: I film di Lorenza Mazzetti a Casa Italiana
By Maria Galeotti Sublimò il massacro della famiglia nel cinema e nella narrativa...
The New York Times: An Artist Shattering Boundaries in Pursuit of Freedom
By Jane L. Levere Corrado Cagli, an artist of the 1920s through the 1970s, is still defying categories like “Italian artist” or “gay artist,” as a show at the Center for Italian Modern Art reveals....
Actor Ronald Guttman Brings Hebrew Poet Immanuel of Rome to Life at Book Launch
By Gianna Pontecorboli “Mine Is the Golden Tongue: The Hebrew Sonnets of Immanuel of Rome” was presented by the Primo Levi Center of NY at NYPL...
Literary Works of Medieval Italian Jewish Poet Immanuel of Rome at the Dorot Jewish Division
By Lyudmila Sholokhova, Curator, Dorot Jewish Division...
USA: Amb. Zappia, a Stella Levi onoreficenze Cavaliere di Gran Croce
Giornale Diplomatico...
A New York Stella Levi diventa Cavaliere di Gran Croce della Repubblica Italiana
La Voce di New York A consegnarle l’onorificenza l’Ambasciatrice Italiana a Washington Mariangela Zappia...
Turning Lead To Air: Music for Cello From Primo Levi, The Brooklyn Rail
By Alessandro Cassin, our Director of Publishing at CPL Editions...
Interview with Valentina Pisanty in HISTORICAL EXPERTISE
Valentina Pisanty: “The more Memory Culture grew and the more institutionalized it became, the more the deniers gained visibility”...
Editors’ picks from our partners and elsewhere
The Primo Levi Archive in Turin
The International Primo Levi Studies Center offers scholars and students access to Primo Levi’s work and to research on different aspects of his writing. The archive collects the editions of his works, translations, critical...
CDEC Digital Library
CDEC Digital Library a web portal dedicated to the history, culture and traditions of the Jews in Italy from the emancipation era the present as well as to the largest collection, library and research body on the history of the...
Archivio Ebraico Terracini
The Archive of the Jewish traditions and customs Benvenuto and Alessandro Terracini collects and preserves objects, documents and books from the Jewish tradition of Piemonte. Established almost forty years ago in Turin by a bequest of...
Jewish Museum of Rome
Discover the Jewish Museum of Rome’s mappoth collection. Traditionally used to cover the sacred text between readings of different portions, these beautifully embroidered textiles are testimony to centuries of Jewish life in Rome. ...
Fondazione Fossoli
The Fossoli Foundation is dedicated to the preservation of the history of the concentration camp of Fossoli (Carpi, Modena) in its various phases (POW camp, national concentration/transit camp for Jews, DP camp and orphanage). The...
Franco Antonicelli Archive
Writer, public intellectual and publisher Franco Antonicelli was among the early opposers of Fascism, an activist of Giustizia e Libertà and later in the Comitato di Liberazione. He was responsible fo the first publication of Primo...