Five hundred and ten years ago this March, the Venice Ghetto was established. We may, of course, think we know everything we need to know about this official corralling of Jews by the authorities of the Venetian Republic, but as Alexander Lee makes clear in this remarkable history of the ghetto and its Jewish inhabitants, that is very far from the case.
Lee, a fellow at the University of Warwick’s Centre for the Study of the Renaissance, presents us with a rollercoaster history of the ghetto, from its foundation in 1516 to the present day. It’s a convulsive story of wars and plagues: the latter almost wiping out the Jewish population.
Lee revives familiar stories, such as that of the extraordinary literary salon heroine Sara Copia Sullam, a comparatively wealthy young wife who suffered a miscarriage in 1618, and while recuperating, read Ansaldo Ceba’s poem, La Reine Esther, or Queen Esther.
Though she and Ceba never met in person, they struck up a friendship by letter, during which he tried to convert her to Christianity and she dug in her heels about being Jewish. The correspondence, first innocent and admiring, ended in tears and eventually Sara closed down her salon, never to write a public word again. But he also embraces the less familiar, such as the story of Giuseppe Jona.
He was president of the Venice Jewish community as the Second World War and the Holocaust overwhelmed the Jews of Italy.
On September 17, 1943, writes Lee, “a visitor appeared at Jona’s door. Nothing is known about his identity, or even exactly what he said. At the very least, he must have asked for the names of everyone linked with the Jewish community”.
Giuseppe Jona asked for more time. As soon as his dangerous visitor had departed, promising another appearance, Jona systematically collected every single scrap of material relating to who was who in Jewish Venice.
He burnt it all, ensuring that “the only complete information about the community was now in his head”. And then he killed himself. It’s a sacrifice with which we can barely come to terms.
Today, Lee tells us, the Venice ghetto – or more properly, ghettoes, for there were three – has become a place of memorial, but also a place of revival.
Once more Jews are moving into the area where their ancestors were bullied and subjected to antisemitic laws, forced to submit to horrendous taxes and also to provide the mainstay of La Serenissima’s endless battles against external enemies.
It’s a story of abuse and humiliation – except for the unmistakeable fact that we are still here, and the Venice Republic is no more.
The First Ghetto: Venice and the Jews, by Alexander Lee
Picador
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