Foreword to Writings in Memory of Daniele Levi

I don’t know who was the author of the consolatory but cruel expression “whom the gods love die young.” The death of a young person, and especially a lively, pious life-loving scholar like Daniele Levi, is not an event that we can be consoled for, much less be cheered by. The devout and just man (and just among the just is his father, Isacco, to whom we Jews of Turin owe so much) is not consoled—that is, his sorrow is not erased—but it abates, with the sorrow of others; he draws from his faith the strength to resign himself to a Will that transcends us, because its designs are unknown to us.

We would like this collection of writings and testimonials concerning a short, difficult life to be read not only as an homage to the dead man but also as a collective act of thanks to the father, who is left to mourn him in solitude, desolate but undefeated.

Foreword to Scritti in memoria di Daniele Levi (Writings
in Memory of Daniele Levi) (Turin: privately printed, 1993);
Levi’s foreword was written in 1986–87