Summary Levi gli Ostjuden e l'erranza ebraica. PDF

Socio-Historical Examination of Religion and Ministry, 2022

READ FULL ARTICLE https://doi.org/10.33929/sherm.2022.vol4.no1.07 While religious belief is not a dominant theme in Levi's Holocaust writing, over the course of a forty-year writing career this longstanding nonbeliever offers a number of thoughtful reflections on God, faith, and the Holocaust. The first half of my paper examines the Jewish identity of the young Levi, as well as the isolated thoughts on God, faith, and religion found in Survival in Auschwitz (1947). While that early work deliberately focuses on day-today exigencies amidst the unrelenting struggle for existence at Auschwitz-Monovitz, it still raises provocative questions about prayer and belief in the context of the Holocaust. In his later writing and interviews, Levi digs deeper and with greater frequency into matters concerning God and the Holocaust. From the recurring charge of "blasphemy" to his career-long characterization of his unlikely survival as a matter of simple luck rather than Divine Providence, my paper goes on to examine the later Levi's increasingly subtle reflections on matters related to God and the Holocaust. Finally, I look at the later Levi's repeated insistence that the years of persecution brought with them a newfound understanding of himself as a Jew. By examining his thoughts on how his Auschwitz imprisonment simultaneously confirmed his nonbelief and inaugurated his self-conception as a Jew, my paper demonstrates that Levi's scattered reflections on God, faith, and the Holocaust are both challenging and well worth our careful, continued study.

Journal of Jewish Identities, 2022

2017

How did Primo Levi come to terms with what the historian Enzo Traverso has called ‘the end of the Jewish modernity’? How did he react to the fading out of that tradition which, between the Enlightenment and the Second World War, saw the European Jews playing a central role in the critical consciousness of the Western world? What was his opinion of Zionism? How did his multifaceted identity (Italian, Jewish, Holocaust survivor) shape his troubled relationship with Israel? And how did his public statements on the Jewish State influence the position of the Italian Jewry? To address these questions, I will give a chronological account of Levi’s tormented and passionate relationship with Israel and discuss what the latter reveals about Levi himself and the Italian Jewish community at large. My contention is that Levi’s preoccupation with the orientation and fate of the State of Israel, and its repercussions on world Jewry, can be best understood if located at the intersection of the interrelated spheres of Auschwitz (and Holocaust commemoration), Turin (and his local circle of influences), and the Diaspora (the alternative “centre” of Judaism). By analysing the interplay between Levi’s Jewish and Italian identities through the lens of Israel, my paper aims to discuss how one of the most representative figures of Italian Jewry engaged with other forms of Jewish culture. This will in turn offer the opportunity to examine the tensions and ambiguities of Italian Jewish identity, which I will do by drawing on the work of researchers like Stefano Levi Della Torre, Carlotta Ferrara Degli Uberti, Nancy Harrowitz, and Judith Butler.

1994

This paper discusses Primo Levi’s memoir If This is a Man, and his use of Dante’s Inferno as representative of the Holocaust ordeal; including the deconstruction of identity in Auschwitz. ‘The Canto of Ulysses’ represents Levi’s experience: the journey to, and imagery of the Inferno as Levi’s own hell. This chapter also represents Levi’s Italian identity and the communication crisis it presented in camp. The literature of Dante not only reminds Levi of home, and an identity taken from him in the Lager, it also represents Auschwitz; it is the link which holds the two parts of his life together.

Nemla Italian Studies, Journal of Italian Studies, Italian Section, Northeast Modern Language Association Special Issue: The Jewish Experience in Contemporary Italy, Balma Philip, Simona Wright, eds. Pp. 196 - 199, 2015

2007

was the author of a rich body of work, including memoirs and reflections on the Holocaust, poetry, science-fiction, historical fiction and essays. His lucid and direct accounts of his time at Auschwitz, begun immediately after liberation in 1945 and sustained until weeks before his suicide in 1987, have made him one of the most admired of all Holocaust writer-survivors and one of the best guides we have for the interrogation of that horrific event. But there is also more to Levi than the voice of the witness. He has increasingly come to be recognized as one of the major literary voices of the twentieth century. This Companion brings together leading specialists on Levi and scholars in the fields of Holocaust studies, Italian literature and language, and literature and science, to offer a stimulating introduction to all aspects of the work of this extraordinary writer.

This article offers a preliminary presentation of the unpublished comedy Il Mistero delle Tre

In The New Italy and the Jews: From Massimo D’Azeglio to Primo Levi , 2018

Although brutal, the definitive 1958 edition of Primo Levi's canonical Holocaust memoir, Se questo è un uomo, is less uniformly bleak than the story told in the first edition, published in 1947. This article argues that the later version's most significant additions introduce notes of optimism which affect how this essential book has been interpreted. Furthermore, the 1958 edition registers a shift in Levi's previous focus, from a nearly exclusive interest in documenting Nazi crimes against humanity, to a bifurcated approach that incorporates more autobiographical elements and commemorations of individual victims. The added passages, amounting to thousands of words, include several humane encounters and instances of altruistic friendship that stand in marked contrast to the Darwinian aspects of Auschwitz strongly emphasized in the 1947 edition. These positive elements, each resulting from empathy and successful acts of communication, constitute important exceptions to the rules governing human behavior in the camps, which Levi himself described.