The Rough Guide to Venice and the Veneto

enter or to practise any activity under any pretext whatsoever in this city
. . . on pain of hanging, imprisonment, whipping or pillory”. (This statute is
carved in stone a little way down Calle di Ghetto Vecchio.)
Yet the fact remains that Venice was one of the few states to tolerate the
Jewish religion, and the Ghetto’s population was often swelled by refugees
from more oppressive societies. Jews expelled from Spain and Portugal in the
1490s came here, as did Jews later displaced from the Veneto by the Habsburg
army during the War of the League of Cambrai, and from the eastern Mediterranean
by the Ottoman Turks. Venice’s burdensome protection was entirely
pragmatic, however, as is shown by two conflicting responses to Church
interference; when criticized by the Inquisition for not burning enough Jews
as heretics, Venetian leaders replied that non-Christians logically could not
commit heresy; yet when Pope Julius II ordered the destruction of the Talmud
in 1553, the Signoria obligingly arranged a bonfire of Jewish books in
the Piazza.
Parts of the Ghetto look quite different from the rest of Venice, as a result
of the overcrowding that remained a problem even after the Jewish population
was allowed to spread into the Ghetto Vecchio (1541) and the Ghetto
Nuovissimo (1633), where all accommodation was rented, as in the Ghetto
Nuovo – Jews were not allowed to own their accommodation. (The adjectives
attached to the three parts of the ghetto can be confusing. The Ghetto Nuovo
is nuovo – new – because the foundries spread here from the Ghetto Vecchio
– the old foundry. The Ghetto Nuovissimo, on the other hand, is “most new”
because it was the last part to be settled by the city’s Jews.) As buildings in the
Ghetto were not allowed to be more than one-third higher than in the rest of
Venice, storeys were made as low as possible in order to fit in the maximum
number of floors; seven is the usual number. The gates of the Ghetto were
finally torn down by Napoleon in 1797, but it wasn’t until the city’s unification
with the Kingdom of Italy in 1866 that Jews achieved equal status with
their fellow citizens.
At its peak, in the middle of the seventeenth century, the Ghetto was home to
a little over five thousand people. Today Venice’s Jewish population of around six
hundred (which includes a recent influx of young Italians and North Americans
belonging to the Lubavitch sect) is spread all over the city, but the Ghetto remains
the centre of the community, with a library in Calle Ghetto Vecchio, a nursery,
an old people’s home, a kosher restaurant, and a baker of unleavened bread. There
are currently around thirty students at the small school on the campo, and on
Saturdays the normally serene atmosphere of the Ghetto gives way to something
of a party spirit.
The scole and the campo
Each wave of Jewish immigrants, while enriching the overall cultural environment
of the city (Venetians of all religions frequented the Ghetto’s salons),
also maintained their own synagogues with their distinctive rites: the Scola
Tedesca (for German Jews) was founded in 1528, the Scola al Canton (probably
Jews from Provence) in 1531–32, the Scola Levantina (eastern Mediterranean)
in 1538, the Scola Spagnola (Spanish) at an uncertain date in the later
sixteenth century, and the Scola Italiana in 1575. Since the Jews were disqualified
from the profession of architect and forbidden to use marble in their
buildings, the scole tend to have oddly Christian interiors, thickly adorned
with gilt and stucco. Funded by particularly prosperous trading communities,
the Scola Levantina and the Scola Spagnola are the most lavish of the
Cannaregio The Ghetto
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