Jewish Community of Venice
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The Jewish Community of Venice begins with Jewish settlements in the Veneto which were found even in ancient times.
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[edit] Background
The presence of Jews in the region that was to become the Venetian republic is documented from as early as the first centuries of the vernacular era. According to the tradition they arrived in Venice, a great trading centre between East and West, towards the beginning of the eleventh century.
Little by little, despite alternating moments of "permission" and "prohibition", the number and importance of Jews in Venice grew considerably, so much that on March 29, 1516, the Republic found it necessary to enact a decree to organize their presence.
The Republic obliged the Jews to live in an area of the city where the foundries, known in Venetian as "geti", had been situated in ancient times, to wear a sign of identification and to manage the city's pawnshops at rates established by the Serenissima. Many other onerous regulations were also included, in exchange for which the Community was granted the freedom to practice its faith and protection in the case of war.
The first Jews to comply with the decree were the Ashkenazim from mid-eastern Europe. Their guttural pronunciation mangled the Venetian term "geto" into "ghetto", creating the word still used today to indicate various places of emargination. The "ghetto" was closed during the night, and the boats of the Christian guards scoured the surrounding canals to impede nocturnal violations. This is how Europe's first ghetto was born.
Known as "Scole", the synagogues of the Venetian ghetto were constructed between the early-sixteenth and mid-seventeenth centuries. (The word "scole" can be compared with the Yiddish "shul", the Italian "scuola", or the English "school".) Each represented a different ethnic group that had settled here stably and obtained a guarantee of religious freedom: the German and Canton "Scole" practiced the Ashkenazi rite; the Italian, the Italian rite and the Levantine and Spanish, the Sephardic rite. Despite a few later interventions, these synagogues have remained intact over time and testify the importance of the Venetian ghetto. The unusual tall buildings found here were divided into floors of sub-standard height, demonstrating how the density of the population had increased over the years.
After the fall of the Serenissima in 1797, Napoleon decreed the end of the Jewish segregation and the equalization of the Jews to other citizens. This provision became definitive when Venice was annexed to the Italian Kingdom.
In 1938 the promulgation of the fascist racial laws deprived the Jews of civil rights and the Nazi persecutions began. Two hundred and four Jews were deported from Venice; only 8 returned from the death camps.
What was Europe's first ghetto is now a lively and popular district of the city where the religious and administrative institutions of the Jewish Community and its five synagogues still persist.
[edit] Library
In the heart of the Ghetto of Venice, heir to the ancient traditions of study, the Renato Maestro Library and Archives was opened by the Jewish Community, and thanks to private funding, in 1981.
Its main goal is to make a wide range of resources on Judaism, Jewish civilization and, particularly, the history of Italian and Venetian Jews accessible to a vast public, and to promote knowledge of all these subjects. The library owns a large collection of documents and publications on the Jewish Community dating from the XVII century.
The catalogue of modern books numbers 8.000 titles in Italian, English, French, German, and Hebrew). The Catalogue of Ancient Hebrew Books includes 2500 volumes (XVI to XIX century). The library subscribes to 35 periodicals and several others, totalling a hundred, are available.
[edit] Museum
The Jewish Museum of Venice is situated in the Campo of the Ghetto Novo, between the two most ancient Venetian synagogues. It is a little but very rich museum founded in 1953 by the Jewish Community of Venice.
The precious objects shown to public, important examples of goldsmith and textile manufacture made between the 16th and the 19th centuries are a lively witnessing of the Jewish tradition.
The first room of the museum is dedicated to silver wares reminding the most important Jewish festivities starting from Shabbat (windows 1 and 2).
With the objects displayed in window 3 the Days of Repentance, Rosh Ha Shanà and Yom Kippur, opening the Jewish year, are introduced.
The display of festivities continues with Channukkà (the Inauguration), a festivity during which nine-branch-lamps are lighted at home and in the synagogue (every day a further lamp is lit). In windows 5 and 6 you can admire several examples of these lamps).
The festivity of Purim happens about at the end of winter and it is a feast of joy during which Meghillat Ester is read (the scroll of handwritten manuscript where this story is told is on display on window 8.
Pesach (Passover), feast of unleven bread, of spring and of pilgrimage, is a joyful feast commemorating the liberation from slavery in Ancient Egypt. A big tray for the Seder di Pesach is on display on window 7.
Place of honour, in the first room of the museum, is given to the Sefer Torah (Scroll of Divine Law). It is a manuscript, executed in a ritual way, of Pentateuch. The Scroll of Divine Law is covered with a mantle (Meil), a crown (Atarah), symbol of the royalty of the Lord.
Often a silver dedicatory plaque (Tass)(window 11) is hanged over the Scroll of Divine Law. In many cases the inscription of the Ten Commandments or the title of the passage read in a given solemnity is carved in the plaque.
The Scroll of Divine Law, covered with the Meil and the Atarah is kept inside the synagogue, in the 'Aron Ha Kodesh (Ark of Holiness). To help the reading of the scroll a little decorated silver stick, ending with a little hand is used (Yad). You can admire many examples of this on window 11.
The second room of the museum is instead mostly dedicated to textile manufacture, related of course to Jewish tradition. You can find different examples of Meil and other precious coverings used to decorate the Torah, but you can particularly find beautiful examples of Parokhet, curtains to cover the doors of 'Aron Ha Kodesh.
Besides this room keeps important witnessing about Marriage and Birth: several Ketubboth, the stereotyped form of wedding contract, extremely relevant, above all in the past times, for the protection of woman in case of dissolution of marriage, allowed by Jewish tradition; and a 1779 set of clothes for the circumcision, rite of basic importance that shows the entrance of the new born Jewish boy in the alliance stipulated by the Lord with Abraham and his descendants.
[edit] Cemetery
The Republic of Venice gave the Jews the possibility to create a cemetery of their own in 1386, giving them a non cultivated, piece of land in St. Nicholas of Lido, whose property was however claimed by the monastery of Lido.
At the end of the disputation with the monks the cemetery, starting from 1389, was used with no interruptions and later made bigger reaching its top expansion in 1641.
After this date, the widening of system of fortification of the Lido, wanted by the Serenissima Republic to defend itself from the Turks, brought to a slow but constant reshaping of the cemetery spaces southbound, so that in 1736 the "University of Jews" was forced to buy a piece of land bordering it.
The fall of the Venetian Republic, the foreigner occupations and the consequent vandalistic acts, as well as the atmospheric agents brought to the disappearance of many monuments and to the ruin of the Jewish cemetery.
In the 19th century, because of the project to make the Lido of Venice healthier and competitive, part of the Cemetery (now belonging to the state) was expropriated and bound to other uses.
Later, some attempts to restore it began, without outcome and in 1938 (promulgation of Italian Racial laws) the cemetery was definitely abandoned.
In 1999, thanks to the collaboration of public and private enterprises, both from Italy and abroad, a big work of restoration has begun: many memorials have been saved and classified more than 1000 of them which can be dated between 1550 and the early 18th century.
Now this suggestive place, witness of centuries of Venetian Jewish History, has found again its dignity.
