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February 1: Casa Italiana Zerilli Marimò
February 2: JCC of Manhattan
February 3: Museum of Jewish Heritage
February 16: Italian Academy at Columbia University
The Italian Jewish World 

Explore Italian Jewish studies and culture in Italy, Israel, and the Americas. The weekly and monthly features of CPL include: Printed Matter by Alessandro Cassin, The Centaur by Franco Baldasso, Books, and Academia.  To know more about Primo Levi and his work visit Centro Internazionale di Studi Primo Levi in Turin.

Find on our home page the main institutions in the field.

Memories of the Jews of Rome: Beyond persecution and deportation

Monday, February 1 | 6:00 pm

CONFORTORIO
Directed by Paolo Benvenuti
(Italy, 1992, 90 min. Italian w/English subtitles). Free

NYU Casa Italiana Zeilli Marimò,  24 West 12th Street
Admission: free | program details

A story of trials and forced conversions in papal Rome
Based on a true story, Confortorio narrates the vicissitudes of two young Roman Jews who are imprisoned under the accusation of theft during the pontificate of Clement XII, in 1736. The night before their execution, the fathers of the Confraternita of San Giovanni Decollato try to force them to embrace Christianity.
Tuesday, February 2 | 7:30 pm

UNA STORIA ROMANA (A Roman Story)
A filmed interview with Enrica Sermoneta
by Pupa Garribba, 2009 (Italian w/English subtitles)

JCC of Manhattan | 334 Amsterdam Avenue, NYC | Tickets

The most recent document and probably one of the last testimonies of the round up of the Ghetto of Rome.
Journalist and writer Pupa Garribba interviews Enrica Sermoneta, who, as a young girl, fortuitously escaped deportation amidst generosity and betrayal. Told in a direct and unconventional style, filtered through the lens of 67 years of debate on the "black Saturday," the story raises old dilemmas and new questions on those days and ours. A post-screening discussion with Pupa Garribba will follow.

About the speaker
Pupa Garribba was born in Genoa in 1935. Her experience as a Jewish girl in Fascist Italy is narrated in the book La Goventù Offesa by Chiara Bricarelli and in the documentary Le Non Persone by Roberto Olla. She has been editor in chief of Kamenu and Confronti. She is correspondent for the French Jewish magazine Cahiers Bernard Lazare. She is an interviewer for the Shoah Foundation and collaborates with the Center for Contemporary Jewish Documentation in Milan and the Casa della Memoria e della Storia in Rome. Pupa Garribba is the author and curator of Feste Ebraiche (1999) Simboli ebraici (2000), Donne ebree (2001), and Ebrei sul confine (2003), a collection if stories of men and women who live borders and frontiers as places of encounter and exchange.
Wednesday, February 3 | 6:30 pm

THE GOLD OF ROME
By Carlo Lizzani, 1961 (Italian w/English subtitles)

Museum of Jewish Heritage | 36 Battery Place, NYC, Free

The Gold of Rome is the first film representation of the story of the German blackmail and eventual deportation of the Jews of Rome. Lizzani's rendition of situations and characters and his depiction of rituals and places illuminates the life and spirit of Roman Jewry, setting this semi-fictionalize document apart from other Holocaust films. With a a touch of sentimentality and a genuine understanding of the nuances of the story, The Gold of Rome delves into the dilemmas, conflicts, and cultural assumptions that lead the Jews of Rome to fall in what turned out to be a fatal trap.

Marina Melchionda interviewed the director, Carlo Lizzani for I-Italy
Tuesday, Februar 16 | 5:30 pm

THE JEWISH GHETTO OF ROME

The Italian Academy at Columbia University
1161 Amsterdam Ave. (@118th Street)

Speakers: Prof. Kenneth Stow (University of Haifa, Israel)
"Doing as the Romans Do" . . . But Also Staying Jewish:
The Challenge of Life in the Roman Ghetto, 1555-1870

Dr. Irina Oryshkevich (Columbia University)
Accommodating the Jews in the "New Jerusalem"

Free and open to the public seating is limited and reservations are required: www.italianacademy.columbia.edu