The Jewish Ghetto and Museo Ebraico ★

The world's first ghetto was the walled quarter Venice created for its Jews in the 16th century

As centers of trade and the meeting places of disparate peoples interested more in conducting commerce than examining cultural differences, the major mercantile and maritime powers of the Middle Ages generally operated as fairly open-minded and tolerant societies (at least relative to most other city-states of the era).

The Republic of Venice was no exception, but what was seen as remarkably open and welcoming to their eyes looks, to our modern sensibilities, to be outrageously prejudiced.

How the Jews got to Venice

To summarize and oversimplify a complex story: Most of Europe wasn't particularly welcoming of Jews in the early 16th century. (You could argue the same about nearly every century, really, but I digress.)

After their expulsion from Spain following the culmination of the Reconquista in 1492, many Jews wandered Europe searching for new homes.

Great trading centers like Venice were a natural magnet, since most careers in the late medieval European economy were closed to Jews but there was one major one that was not.

In fact, Jews could perform one vital mercantile task that was forbidden to observant Christians in the late Middle Ages.

They could lend money.

The church called this usury (which was not merely bad; it was a cardinal sin).

The Jews called it banking.

Jews had done business in Venice since at least the 10th century, but for centuries the Republic went back and forth on whether it actually wanted to allow them to settle in the city.

Jews were invited in and expelled with regularity until 1516, when—in what was, believe it or not, quite the liberal move for its day—Venice gave its Jewish residents permission to settle permanently on an island tucked into the northern corner of Cannaregio.

There were a few catches, however.

With few exceptions, the Jews could leave their neighborhood only by day and only for work, and—until Napoleon brought an end to the Republic in 1797—the Jews were forbidden to reside anywhere else in Venice. Jews also had to wear identification badges when they were out and about in the rest of Venice.

In this era of general intolerance, other closed-minded cities throughout Europe thought the concept of herding all the Jews into one corner of town was a capital idea, and the practice of walling off the Jews in their own little sub-city spread rapidly...as did the Venetian term for such an area.

Since the city's foundry had previously long been located in that part of town, Venetians began referring to the Jewish neighborhood using the local dialect word for "foundry:" geto—which in the guttural pronunciation of the founding Ashkenazim population became ghetto.

Life in the Venice Jewish Ghetto

The Jews lived in their new miniature neighborhood of Ghetto Nuovo in semi–self-governed isolation, cut off from many opportunities in the rest of Venice and confined to working mostly in banking, textiles, medicine, and entertainment.

Their movements were greatly restricted. There were only two bridges onto the island, and Christian guards closed them an hour after sunset in summer, two hours after in winter.

Until dawn, the only Jews allowed out of the Ghetto were doctors summoned for house calls and musicians hired out for parties.

Still, they prospered, built five synagogues (in Venetian: Scola), and the population eventually swelled to an estimated 5,000. With no room to sprawl, this tenament-within-a-city had no place to grow but up, resulting in the only part of Venice where the medieval buildings teeter up to six and even seven stories: Europe's first high-rises.

The original core of Ashkenazim from Germany were later joined by Sephardim from Spain and Portugal. By 1541, a huge influx of Levantine Jews had the neighborhood bursting at the seams, so the city allowed the Jews to expand onto a neighboring island, confusingly named Ghetto Vecchio.

(Got that? The original island was Ghetto Nuovo, or "New Ghetto;" the second island was called Ghetto Vecchio, or "Old Ghetto," since that's where an even older foundry had been. Yes, confusing.)

In 1633, the neighborhood grew yet again to encompass the Ghetto Novissimo ("Really New Ghetto").

There was a short-lived second Republic of Venice in 1848–49 headed by local hero Danieli Manin, who had Jewish roots.As I said, the invasion of Napoleon brought Enlightenment ideals, full citizenship for Jews, and the abolishment of the Ghetto in 1797, but the Hapsburgs who swooped in after him demoted the Jews back to restricted status (though the full Ghetto lifestyle was not reinstated).

Venice's Jewish population didn't gain final freedom of the city until the unification movement that created the modern state of Italy swept through in 1866.

Even then, the Fascist era returned Jews one again to the status second-class citizens from 1938 until after World War II.

For more information on Jewish life and happenings in Venice, visit www.jvenice.org, moked.it/veneziaebraica, and www.ghetto.it.Relatively speaking, Italy's Jews fared the war better than those in Central and Northern Europe, but still: of the 204 Venetian Jews deported to Nazi death camps, only eight returned.

The post-war Jewish population of Venice dwindled rapidly. In 1945 there were around 1,500 Jews in Venice. Two decades later, there were only 844.

Visiting the Venice Jewish Ghetto today

These days, Venice is home only to an estimated 500–600 Jews, of which only 30 or so still live in the historic Ghetto.

The ghetto remains, however, the focal point of Jewish life in Venice, with two operating synagogues, a Jewish library, day school, kosher food shops, a Jewish bakery, and—this being Venice, after all—a glass shop selling tiny glass rabbis and glass Hanukkah lamps.

There's also the small Museo Ebraico, or Jewish Museum (a.k.a. the Museo della Comunità Ebraica, or Museo of the Jewish Community), with a collection of 16th– to 19th-century artifacts (tel. +39-041-715-359
www.museoebraico.it). It is open Sun-Fri: June-Sept 10am–7pm, Oct-May 10am–5:30pm.

The museum offers excellent guided tours, in Italian and English, of the neighborhood and several of its synagogues, usually the following three: Scola Canton (Ashkenazi), Scola Levantina (Sephardic), and Scola Italiana (Italian)—though some tours (and special visits) also take you into the beautiful Scola Ponentina or Scola Spagnola (Spanish).

Tours depart hourly Sun-Fri from 10:30am to 5:30pm (Oct-May, the last tour is at 4:30pm); on Friday, the last tour of the day may be shortened or eliminated.

Venice Jewish Ghetto tours

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