(Jewish Group) In Venice, why the oldest Jewish ghetto in the world still matters

A new book on the Venetian Ghetto, formed by the municipal government of Venice in the early 1500s to confine Italian Jews, explores the ongoing cultural impact of this first-ever such space. Initially intended to segregate and control Jewish people, centuries later during the Second World War, over 1,000 Nazi ghettos were established across Europe to facilitate deportation and murder. Recently, Benjamin Ivry spoke with Katharine Trostel, one of the book’s coauthors, who teaches English at Ursuline College, Ohio, about inspiration and grief from the Venetian Ghetto legacy.

Benjamin Ivry: Did admiration inspire Venice’s leaders to lock Jews down rather than expel them, as other European powers did? In 1516, a local notable announced that Jewish skills and income were better exploited to benefit Venice, than sent outside to assist a foreign power.

Katharine Trostel: The Venetian Ghetto was arguably both a refuge and a place of cultural exchange. Initially it was a mode of containment transformed by the people who lived within it. We tend to think of the word “ghetto” now as having a negative connotation and that might have always been the case. But it offered a level of protection to be all together in one spot. It offered self-determination, a way of creating community. Arguably, throughout history, the two models of Jewish experience have been Diaspora and ghettoization.

The Jewish population of the Venetian Ghetto has rarely exceeded a few hundred people. Why so much interpretive focus on this tiny group?

It was a place of cultural production. Hebrew printing flourished in Venice. Famous scholars and poets were there, like Sarra Copia Sullam, who held a literary salon in the Ghetto, but also crossed literary boundaries. Her literary salon was shut down halfway during her career because she was accused of challenging the immortality of the soul. The hope is that the symbolic resonance of the way the word Ghetto resonates can be used as a touchstone for cultural memory.

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