Yiddish in Contemporary Italian Literature

• In Event: Jewish Italian Literary Continuities and Contiguities

Abstract

Sander L. Gilman analyzed in detail Primo Levi’s description of two Russian Jewish women telling Levi that “Redest keyn jiddisch, bist nit kejn jid” (“If you don't speak Yiddish, you’re not a Jew”) in LA TREGUA (THE TRUCE or THE REAWAKENING). In the less discussed part of this episode, finally convinced that Levi is Jewish after he recites the Shema, the women are confused about what, if anything, differentiates Levi from the many non-Jewish Italians also present in the room, since they all have “The same language, same faces, the same clothing.” In their country, things are simpler, “a Jew was a Jew, and a Russian was a Russian.” This anecdote encapsulates many of the issues around the study of Jewish Italian literature: its language may prevent it from being easily accepted into Jewish literary spaces and, in Italian Studies, that there is often no reason to call attention to the Jewish identity of an Italian author.

Instead of questioning either the Italian or Jewish nature of Jewish Italian writing, this paper explores Yiddish presences in Italian literature. Building on work done on Levi, it analyzes recent works by authors such as Helena Janeczek, a Polish-German-Jewish author who moves to Italy, as well as Stefano Massini, who is not Jewish and whose QUALCOSA SUI LEHMAN (THE LEHMAN TRILOGY) was adapted into a prize-winning Broadway play. While Yiddish has a very different history in Italian than in German, Russian, and English, Giorgio Pressburger argued that Yiddish must be in the background of a certain amount of Italian literature, given the number of Jewish Italian authors. Benjamin Hrushovski notes that the first time Yiddish poetry moved to a non-Germanic country was into Italy, where it flourished in the early 16th century. The Yiddish presences in Italian literature are often due to descriptions of other locations, in German or Russian areas or the United States, revealing Italian literature’s own consistent openness to a sustained contact between Italian and Yiddish areas. This paper shows Italian literature represents an interesting example of how Yiddish appears in a language not usually associated with it.

Author

• Saskia Ziolkowski, Duke University