Join on Zoom
Meeting ID: 843 4512 2427     Passcode: 939901

After an abbreviated service of song and morning blessings led by Rabbinic Intern Beck beginning at 10 am, all are invited to join special guest Sergio Parussa at 10:30 am for a talk and discussion of "Writing and Judaism in Twentieth-Century Italy: The Garden of the Finzi-Continis." Giorgio Bassani's novel The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (1962), a masterpiece of twentieth-century Italian literature, portrays the life of the Jewish community in Ferrara during the 1920s and 30s. By analyzing both the novel and Vittorio De Sica's Academy Award-winning 1970 film adaptation, Prof. Parussa will explore the relationships between literature and Judaism in Italian culture from the time of the ghettos and emancipation to the discrimination and persecution of the fascist period. The morning will conclude with closing prayers and song, including Mourners Kaddish, at approximately 11:45 am. Kiddush lunch follows services.

Sergio Parussa was born in Turin, lives in Boston, and is a Professor of Italian Studies at Wellesley College. He has published articles and essays on twentieth-century Italian and French literature including Writing as Freedom, Writing as Testimony: Four Italian Writers and Judaism (Syracuse, NY, Syracuse University Press, 2008) – which, in 2009, was awarded the Edinburgh Gadda Prize. Parussa's most recent publications include several essays on Giorgio Bassani's works, both prose and poetry, which are also the result of archival research on the manuscript and typescript of Bassani's novel The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, whose annotated edition he is currently curating.