"Every time I go back home, I am so sad to see the community is dying."

March 28, 2016 6:58 AM

The original Jewish ghetto is turning 500 years old this year. Venice will be commemorating the anniversary with nine months of events, including a mock trial featuring the main characters from The Merchant of Venice arguing their case before U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

But not everyone is happy at what they see as a celebration of segregation.

[Riccardo] Calimani, the historian, fears that celebrating the ghetto, a symbol of segregation, is particularly inappropriate at a time when Europe is struggling with making minorities feel included, and when Venice’s Jewish community is growing smaller and more exclusive: “We should fight for openness and inclusivity, which is the opposite of what the ghetto represented.”

He also warned that, albeit less explicit than in the past, geographical segregation is still an issue in Europe.

The ghetto itself is virtually a ghost town, with no active synagogues and most of Venice's 450 Jews living elsewhere in the city, but remains as a symbol of a once-thriving destination for Jews who came from even worse circumstances.

Etymologists are divided as to whether the original "ghetto" derived its name from the abandoned foundries (getto) into which the Jews of Venice were moved.

posted by Etrigan (18 comments total)

Thanks for this post. I didn't realize that Venice is considered the first Jewish ghetto.

500 years. Well, that's depressing as hell.

Pathetically, the ghettos of the 15th - 18th centuries were actually an improvement upon Church-sponsored and encouraged antisemitism towards us during the Middle Ages. Highlights included torture, persecutions and formal expulsions. Expulsions usually included confiscation of property (then ransoms of said property in some cases,) among other things.

After the Renaissance, we were allowed to keep our lives in Italy and were merely shunned and locked away.

James Carroll's history of Roman Catholic antisemitism and the Church's treatment of Jews: Constantine's Sword: The Church and the Jews is worth reading.
posted by zarq at 7:48 AM on March 28, 2016 [5 favorites]

The mock trial link gives very little information on how it's going to be conducted. I wonder if they're going to use the actual laws and procedures that existed in Venice at that time.
posted by Sangermaine at 7:53 AM on March 28, 2016

Ghettos at the time also weren't only a matter of shutting off the Jews. As the cities grew, the common arrangement was that each resident of the city had to sleep among his own after curfew, for the sake of preserving order. (e.g. Lombard Street in London, granted to incoming Lombards.) So the oppressiveness of the arrangement depended on how restrictively "your own" were defined, and whether the space they had matched their numbers.

Which for Jews, very quickly came to mean things getting very, very cozy.
posted by ocschwar at 8:20 AM on March 28, 2016 [2 favorites]

Sangermaine, I'm guessing it'll be like the mock trials performed annually at the Shakespeare Theatre in DC. RBG regularly presides over these, and last year Merrick Garland was also on the bench.

They're not taken all that seriously, and are more a delivery vehicle for jokes and puns than anything else. They do make a nod towards the laws of the time, but that's about it. Still, they're pretty entertaining.
posted by me & my monkey at 8:45 AM on March 28, 2016 [1 favorite]

Though I suspect that this mock trial might be a little less lighthearted, given the context.
posted by tavella at 9:15 AM on March 28, 2016

9 months of events seems a bit excessive, even for a town so focused upon tourism. One redeeming thing about the ghetto in Venice: the gates were locked at night and that secured the Jews within from possible harm. Later variations on the ghetto by the Nazis were to kill off inhabitants and keep them in a holding cell pending shipment to death camps. Today's use of the word ghetto of course signifies an economic and racial grouping, without the need for physical walls and locks.
posted by Postroad at 9:39 AM on March 28, 2016 [1 favorite]

Locks, which keep a community in and separate, are not redeeming.
posted by ChuraChura at 9:52 AM on March 28, 2016

arguing their case before U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Reminds me, there are currently no WASPs on the Supreme Court (no Protestants in fact) -- Rehnquist was the last I think. I had thought Merrick Garland might have been chosen to fill this obvious gap, but it turns out that -- name and Harvard Club wedding notwithstanding -- he is Jewish.
posted by grobstein at 10:07 AM on March 28, 2016

Wow, no WASP's on the Supreme Court. Never thought I'd live to see the day. I gotta say though, some of the Supremes certainly seem to make decisions like Evangelical Protestants.
posted by evilDoug at 10:49 AM on March 28, 2016

Were the ghettos of various cities a forced living arrangement? Or partly by choice?

I was recently learning of the situation in Ancient Rome by Jews people were granted a kind of privilege of non-participation in the rituals of the city gods. (which the burgeoning cult of followers of Jesus were not granted). But it seems like, in ancient Rome at least, it was motivated by a kind of separatism of jewish culture generally. The jewish religion is not as universalist as the jesus sect would become as far as I know and the ritual requirements are a real impediment to any kind of "assimilation". (ie dietary requirements, working schedules etc).
posted by mary8nne at 11:13 AM on March 28, 2016 [2 favorites]

Locks, which keep a community in and separate, are not redeeming.

But what if the community itself installed many of these locks? If the community's existence as a community, requires a separation from the majority of the populace in various respects.
posted by mary8nne at 11:15 AM on March 28, 2016

But what if the community itself installed many of these locks?

In the case of the ghetto in Venice, the community itself didn't.
posted by Etrigan at 11:19 AM on March 28, 2016 [1 favorite]

Thanks for your link, zarq, I found there was a documentary too, and I've been watching it for the past 1 1/2 hours. It was very appropriate, since just a couple of days ago I had the task of explaining to a really brainy half-Jewish 9yo what a ghetto was/is. I don't think I did too bad, but I also thought I needed to read up. Carroll connects the introduction of violence into Christianity with the introduction of racism, and it makes a lot of sense.
Incidentally - while looking for the documentary, I came across a ton of Catholic apology/"discussion" - Caroll's book has hit hard there. But Evangelists should be equally worried, and I didn't see a lot of them engaging. They are probably happy in their bubble.

The paradox that the Italian ghettos were an improvement over the situations in Spain and Central Europe is just depressing.
posted by mumimor at 11:58 AM on March 28, 2016

Were the ghettos of various cities a forced living arrangement? Or partly by choice?

Forced.

Before the Enlightenment and the advent of modern liberalism, arbitrary restrictions on what one could or could not do by virtue/fault of one's birth were the norm rather; witness sumptuary laws (restricting the wearing of clothes of specific colours or materials to particular sectors of society), segregated ethnic districts like Lombard Street, restrictions on who could live within city walls, and the restriction on Christian Europe's Jewish populations (who were, other than being confined to ghettos, prohibited from most professions and trades). Such things would have been the norm in the pre-Enlightenment mindset.
posted by acb at 3:04 PM on March 28, 2016

But it seems like, in ancient Rome at least, it was motivated by a kind of separatism of jewish culture generally.

There were a couple of factors. Romans deeply respected ancient national religions, and Jews having a pedigree of 1000+ years was pretty impressive. Christians as a brand-new sect couldn't make that kind of claim.

Jews also tended to freak the hell out when the Greeks or Romans tried to mess with their temple, up to and included mass armed resistance that had to be put down with military force. Eventually the Empire decided it was easier to give them a religious exemption and keep collecting the taxes.
posted by EarBucket at 5:33 PM on March 28, 2016

Such things would have been the norm in the pre-Enlightenment mindset.

The Enlightenment came pretty late to some places: I have a Hungarian report of a city council meeting discussing whether my Jewish ancestors would be allowed to live within the city limits. It's from around 1855.
posted by Joe in Australia at 4:14 AM on March 29, 2016

I was in Italy about two years ago, and since we happened to be in Venice over the weekend we decided to check out what shabbat was like there. I hadn't spent much time in Jewish areas of other European cities then so I was pretty startled by how difficult it was to find the entrance to the synagogue that was open on Friday night. A man asked us in (IIRC) Hebrew a couple of Jewish 'verification' questions before letting us in.

Anyway, I heard a bit of grumbling while I was there about how prevalent Chabad's presence was, especially as Italian and Chabad custom are very different, and the Italians didn't like how local practice was getting so Chabad-y.
posted by lullaby at 8:24 AM on March 29, 2016 [1 favorite]

Anyway, I heard a bit of grumbling while I was there about how prevalent Chabad's presence was, especially as Italian and Chabad custom are very different, and the Italians didn't like how local practice was getting so Chabad-y.

Italian practice is neither Ashkenazi nor Sephardic, but its own, ancient tradition.

There is a major problem with the imposition of Ashkenazi practice as the "proper" way of doing things. It's not just Chabad, there is an organisation called Kulanu which supports isolated Jewish communities - but also works to bring them back into normative Jewish practice (read: Ashkenazi/Sephardic).

There is a rich diversity of Jewish practice that we will lose if things continue as they are.
posted by jb at 6:33 AM on March 30, 2016