Alvin H. Rosenfeld, Director of the Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and the Irving M. Glazer Chair in Jewish Studies at Indiana University, pays moving tribute to Primo Levi, the Auschwitz survivor and writer, on the 100th anniversary of his birth. Rosenfeld takes issue with Judith Butler and other neo-diasporists who have used some of Levi’s dissenting remarks against Israel’s military moves in Lebanon to enlist his voice in the cause of ‘anti-Zionism’. Rosenfeld shows that Butler quotes Levi selectively and ignores other things he had to say about Israel, ‘a State founded for those who were with me in the camps’. The author of If This Is A Man, insisted that ‘the idea that Israel might someday be destroyed’ was ‘unacceptable’.
Primo Levi and Israel by Alvin H. Rosenfeld in Fathom
Wednesday, October 2, 2019
The College of Arts