RSSSalute Primo Levi, My Favorite Rabbi
I’ve been slowly at work, for weeks now, on a project spawned by Newsweek’s decision idiotic to publicize a rather silly list of America’s 50 most influential rabbis according to a couple of corporate executive types. (Sorry, Gary, but it’s true!) I’m compiling a list of my own most influential rabbis, which I want to do in conversation with readers, but my definition of a “rabbi” is someone whose life story, moral example or work has taught me something profound or inspiring about being a Jew in the world.
Because today is the 20th anniversary of his death, possibly by suicide, in his apartment building in Turin, I’ve decided to roll out my number one entry. More to come soon. But tonight we salute Primo Levi.
1. Primo Levi
I think I wept with joy when I first read Primo Levi (The Periodic Table, on a flight from Johannesburg to London in 1989). His was, for me, a matchlessly inspiring example of being Jewish in the world rather than separately from it. A man of science and ethics, fully integrated into Italian society and its most progressive elements, he found himself in Auschwitz not as a result of a Nazi roundup of Italian Jews, but because he was a captured in the course of his work as an anti-Fascist partisan fighter. When the Germans occupied Italy in 1942, he responded as a Jew — not in any narrow, tribal sense (indeed, he didn’t identified as such) but in the expansive, moral sense; in other words, he responded as any decent person with a love of justice and freedom, by joining the partisan underground. Not any separate Jewish organization, but the partisans bound by a common, universal ideology of justice and freedom, in which any Jew should feel comfortable. As did a lot of Italian Jews of his generation: The filmmaker Gillo Pontecorvo, most famous for The Battle of Algiers, and also a partisan, was once quoted as saying “I am not an out-and-out revolutionary. I am merely a man of the Left, like a lot of Italian Jews.” Yet, once captured as a leftist partisan, it was the Nazis who reduced Primo Levi’s identity to that of a Jew, in a “racial” sense. His writing — by far the most compelling tales of life and death in Auschwitz — chronicles the Holocaust experience with both scouring emotion and the cool eye of reason, always seeking its universal meanings and implications. His audience, always, is a global community of likeminded rather than one defined on any narrow nationalist basis — Zionism had little use for Primo Levi; his work was only translated into Hebrew after his death.
Indeed, he seems to resist the temptations of nationalism — of allowing the Nazis to succeed in defining him against his own instincts — remaining intensely universalist in his outlook, although deeply rooted in its specificity: He loved Italian Jewry and its unique history, of which he was an exemplary product. Also, while he writes what for me are the most profound and compelling first-hand accounts of — and meditations oni — life in the camps, he is at once the quintessential Holocaust writer but never simply a Holocaust writer. He returns continually to explore the magic of science and humanity in everyday life and work, the ethics and values that took him, as an Italian Jew, into the mountains with the anti-Fascist partisan resistance. The profound effect of the Holocaust on Primo Levi’s life was central to his work, but his life continued after the Holocaust. It did not end his life, literally or figuratively — he went on exploring the universal human condition, a vital presence in the wider world for whom he saw the Holocaust, and his own experience of it, as a teaching moment whose meanings were universal.
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62 Responses to “Salute Primo Levi, My Favorite Rabbi”
Good choice Tony - and what an odd assigment.
I would add that the title of Levi’s fictionalized account of Eastern European partisans - “If Not Now, Then When?” is taken from the Hillel’s aphorism underlining Judaism’s emphasis on the intersection of the universal and particular:
“If I am not for myself, then who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, then what am I? And if not now, when?”. I would agree too that Levi’s writing offers a stark contrast to other lauded Shoah writers, both in terms of understanding it as a human tragedy and not succumbing to the easy explanation of what sustained it.
My suggestions would be Louis Jacobs (founder of the Conservative movement), Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Adin Steinsaltz, Emmanuel Levinas, Reb Joseph Soloveitchik (who after the absence of several centuries revived the learning of science is yeshivot) and Isadore Twersky. Gershom Scholem is another candidate simply on the basis his intellectual stamina, although unfortunately much of his scholarship is now under a cloud, thanks to his own students.
Thanks Tony. I never really thought my bar mitzvah really meant much, as when I was going through it, I would rather not have even had to bother. But maybe it wasn’t so silly. I don’t remember having to learn anything that I disagreed with in terms of the universalistic ethical approach towards human beings that you describe here. It’s an approach endorsed also by Baruch de Spinoza, and one that remembers not to make too much of the artificial constructs and misleading prejudices we so often encounter.
I read and re-read Levi’s “Se Questo e Un Uomo” (English?), the story of his time at Auschwitz, as an exercise to try to become more Italian. I was concerned about that when I was a teen ager, not being Italian enough. My Italian father died when i was too young, thus inculcating the life long (at least so far) quest to be him. Strange that Levi’s being Jewish was a minor point to me at that time. He was Italian to me. Years later I picked up a Manic Street Preachers CD, and Levi’s poem “For Those Who Died in Vain” was printed on the back. This poem is remarkable. Another round of Levi reading ensued (this time including The Periodic Table…mamma mia!!). Then Levi finally came into my consciousness as a Jew as a result of coversations with Steve (noodnik). To see Levi as only Italian now is difficult.
off topic.
About Virginia, do you think that it’s in part consequence of violence on tv. and video games?
I was deeply impressed by the way Levi’s contrasted carbon with the so-called noble gases in The Periodic Table. Carbon, in his view, was a very messy element since it could enter into bonds with all sorts of other elements, including itself. The Noble gases, of course, do not.
And in that observation, he created a beautiful metaphor. Messy, unpredictable carbon is, of course, the foundation of all life on Earth. But the noble elements–too pure for bonding–do not.
Anyone who demanded purity of life or race–as the Nazis did–just didn’t understand chemistry very well.
Good choice! Levi was a quiet writer, in a world of Holocaust bombast. A still small voice, that cut through the rodomontade of Shoah business. He will be the last one forgotten.
In his quiet power, he reminds me of nobody as much as Orwell. And unlike Orwell, he had an eye for the human particular.
Whether Primo Levi took his own life or that it was indeed accidental is of no importance. What fascinates me is that he passed away whithout declaring whether he had forgiven the German people for the Holocaust. We will never know. So he has in fact kept the debate open - forgive and forget or forget to forgive. Yup Tony he would rank at the top of my list of ‘old souls’ - Ian.
Hi Tony,
I often read your blog and enjoy it.
What is happening with this interesting project?
I’d like to suggest Marcel Liebman for consideration to your list. Liebman is most famous for his books on Lenin and the Russian Revolution, but recently two books have been published in his name that show him as an example of Jewish dignity. The first, ‘The Israeli Dilemma’, is a set of correspondences between him and his friend Ralph Milliband in and around June 1967 in which they, particularly Liebman, presciently foresee all the brutal outcomes of the war. The second in entitled ‘Born Jewish: A childhood in occupied Europe’ and it is an amazing childhood-biography which shows firstly capitalism complicity in the war, secondly the complicity of jewish capitalism, and thirdly how class differences were as important as racial ones in orientating prejudies during that time. As Jacqueline Rose suggests in the introduction, all of Liebman’s work can be reinterpreted as a response to this Jewish childhood, particularly his brother’s death. His early ground-breaking efforts at israeli-palestinian dialogue, his anti-zionism and his participation in the belgian socialist and international socialist discussion can be understood in this context. He would be a worthy addition to your list.
Other suggestions are: Martin Buber, Albert Einstein, Leo Baeck, Yeshayahu Leibowitz, Judah Leib Magnes, Hannah Arendt and David Grossman.
Be well
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I have read two of Primo Levi’s books, “Se questo è un uomo” and “Il sistema periodico” (”If this is a man” and “the periodic table” i think, in english..im not sure ive read them in italian) and they are two of the best books (if not the two best books) i have ever read. thanks for this post, i really liked it.
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