The 500th Anniversary of the Venice Ghetto

The project is intent on describing the processes underlying the creation and growth of the world’s first “enclosure” for Jews and at offering a broader vision of the relationships within a much wider context of other Jewish (and non-Jewish) areas in Italy and abroad. The research will highlight the wealth of relationships between the Jews and the city, between Jews and civil society throughout their long residence in the Lagoon, in the Veneto, and in Europe and the Mediterranean. It is not restricted to the specific area of the three ghettos but will address the cultural and linguistic relationships interwoven with the Christian population and the other minorities in the arts and trades practiced in a large commercial center the likes of early modern Venice. The primary assumption is that the Ghetto’s history has to be studied within the framework of how the Republic of Venice managed the presence of national, ethnic, and religious minorities in the capital city of a “world economy” (Braudel). Emphasis will also be placed on explaining how these relationships gradually expanded to a wide geographical area, how they persisted over time, and how they adapted to policy changes over the long term.
The research will address the following issues:
1) The Jews in Venice before the Ghetto (in relation to other European and Mediterranean communities), their location and their activities;
2) The Senate’s decision of March 1516 to establish the Ghetto; the choice of location: the negotiations between the “University of Jews” and the Council of Ten; the area’s enlargement; the Venetian magistracies involved;
3) Jewish ghettos in the Veneto; Jewish settlements and the trade network in Europe;
4) The increase in settlement density (internal fragmentation, increased building heights); the quality of the building stock; Jus Hasakah; the different ways inhabitants settled and used the space;
5) The life of the Jews in Venice inside and outside
the enclosed area (habits, rules, infractions, legal actions); well-known figures (Leon Modena); trade with the Mediterranean area and Northern Europe; the languages spoken;
6) The location of shops, synagogues, yeshivot, welfare services;
7) The model of the campo as a place of community identity; other cases that drew upon this model: Padua, Modena;
8) The guilds; travelers; getting out of the Ghetto: doctors; music and dance performances in aristocratic palazzos; infractions and punishments; the insula and the canal surrounding it;
9) The cemetery at San Nicolò; the opening of the Canale degli Ebrei;
10) Napoleon’s arrival and the opening of the Ghetto’s gates; the decision of some families to leave the Ghetto and purchase major palazzos (Bonfadini-Vivante, Ca’ d’oro, Sullam, Treves de Bonfil, Franchetti);
11) Access to various professions and public offices; entrepreneurial activities in Venice (Giudecca) and elsewhere; art patronage;
12) Restoration projects (public and private) inside the Ghetto and in relation to public works in Venice over the course of the 19th century (bridges);
The final goal is to organize a large exhibition to be mounted at Palazzo Ducale in 2016. The exhibition will rely on the latest visualization technologies (video, touch screen, models) to appeal to wide audience.

(June, 2014)

 

People

Donatella Calabi (team coordinator)
Elisa Bastianello
Valentina Buttolo
Fabio D’Agnano
Isabella Di Lenardo
Ludovica Galeazzo
Gianmario Guidarelli
Martina Massaro
Paolo Vernier