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 out more on our homepage.
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Centro Primo Levi Thanks:
The Viterbi Family Foundation,
and the Cahnman Foundation,
Travel for the speakers is provided by Alitalia USA.
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November 15 at 6 pm | Kenneth Stow
Anna del Monte and the Origins of Jewish Emancipation
Center for Jewish History | 15 West 16th Street
Admission: $10, $ 5 for students and seniors
Box office: 212-868-4444 www.smarttix.com Purchase your ticket in advance. There is no extra fee
A century before the infamous "Mortara case," a young Roman Jew, Anna Del Monte, the daughter of a well to do family of the Ghetto, is kidnapped from her family home and imprisoned in the Casa dei Catecumeni. The aim of the action is to convert her to Catholicism. A well educated and articulate woman, Anna left a diary in which she recollects the days in which men and women of the Church tried all ways to "steal her soul".
Little is known about Anna Del Monte, her diary being surrounded by mystery. It is believed that her courage and ability to rebut the arguments of her kidnappers, won her back to her family and community. The rare testimony she left opens a window not only on the complex history of Jewish-Christian relations, but also on the clash between modern civil conscience and ruling authority at the dawn of the Emancipation Era.
Kenneth Stow has devoted over forty years to studying the relations between the Church and the Jews in the Middle Ages and into early modern times. His books Theater of Acculturation: The Roman Ghetto in the Sixteenth Century, Jewish Dogs, An Image and Its Interpreters: Continuity in the Jewish-Catholic Encounter, and The Jews in Rome are among the most important studies on the Jews of Rome available to international audiences. Prof. Stow is professor of Jewish History at the University of Haifa and is currently a fellow at the Italian Academy at Columbia University. He is the founder and editor of the periodical Jewish History. In all his studies, he has emphasized the role of law, canon law and ius commune, in particular, in shaping first thinking and then action with respect to the Jews.
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Symposium on the Racial Laws
in the New York Times
The two faces Italy displayed toward Jewish citizens and refugees just before and during World War II have become the focus of recent historical research that both undermines that country's wartime image as a nation of benign captors, and rekindles memories of heroic Italian individuals.
The new findings contradict the conventional belief that Italians began to enforce anti-Semitic laws only after German troops occupied the country in 1943, and then reluctantly. In a spate of studies, many of them based on a little-publicized Italian government report commissioned in 1999, researchers have uncovered a vast wartime record detailing a systematic disenfranchisement of Italy's Jews, beginning in the summer of 1938, shortly before the Kristallnacht attacks in November. That year, Mussolini's Fascist government forbade Jewish children to attend public or private schools, ordered the dismissal of Jews from professorships in all universities, and banned Jews from the civil service and military as well as the banking and insurance industries.
Ilaria Pavan, a scholar at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, said a series of incrementally more onerous laws in 1939 and 1940 revoked peddlers' permits and shopkeepers' licenses, and required Jewish owners of businesses - as well as stock or bond holders - to sell those assets to "Aryans." Bank accounts were ordered turned over to government authorities, ostensibly to prevent the transfer of money out of the country. (Article by Paul Vitello, The New York Times, November 5th 2010). Read
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November 11 | Turin
Second Primo Levi Lecure "The Auschwitz Experiment"
Massimo Bucciantini, Professor of History of Science at the University of Siena-Arezzo. Great Hall of the School of Natural Sciences, Physics, and Mathematics of the University of Turin.
Every fall, the Primo Levi Lecture proposes a discussion on themes of Levi's works that are relevant to current cultural and political debates.
Yesterday, Massimo Bucciantini presented The Auschwitz Experiment, analyzing Levi's appraisal of the Lager as horrific experiment conducted by men on other men.
While the lecture is conceived for the general public, the organizers seek to engage younger generations and continue the dialogue that Levi conducted throughout his life.
Three classes of the Liceo Galileo Ferraris - scientific high school in Turin - participated in the lecture and met with Prof. Bucciantini afterward to discuss the presentation. Review in La Stampa
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