From “La Città degli Ebrei”, by Ennio Concina, Ugo Camerino, Donatella Calabi: Albrizzi Editore, 1991
“With the demographic growth and the specialization of the area, a particular occupation spread, that of ‘senseri’ or business agents (brokers)… they undertook the work of mediation related to the type of product sold and to the location in which the store was located, as well as to the reciprocal limitations imposed on cittadini and foreigners, that is, to the nature and to the structure of the spaces in which the exchange was practiced and to the way in which the merchandise was displayed. At the gates of the ghetto, in fact, a multitude of salaried agents carried on a vigorous business as intermediaries, conducting Venetian nobles and cittadini to buy or to sell in the shops of the Jews, representatives of the magistrate to borrow the decorations needed for festivals and ceremonies, or functionaries ready to conduct large transactions beside the unique showcases. This activity took place not only around the campo of the Ghetto Nuovo, in which shops and offices had gradually organized; due to the limits imposed on and to the form of the spaces, there were also open doors and gates along the edge of the surrounding canals, and a multitude of balconies, terraces, and ‘altanelle’ (a kind of dock or porch that opens on to and over the water) constructed on these outer spaces, a sign of the intrusion of the private on the public thoroughfare, both aquatic and pedestrian . These external additions to the enclosure wall are similar in type and material to the analogous construction in other quarters of the city, but existed here in greater numbers, and were not only in fact residential expansions of a living space that was too restrictive; often they came from a need for an opening towards the rest of the city and explicitly for interaction with it.
Rules dictated that these structures be strictly for residential use, but as often happened, what people actually did went against the official rules, and so they would be used as showcases anyway.”
“This leaves us to imagine this as a space of new immigrants, which increasingly assumed the aspect of a variegated Casbah or caravanserai, full of colors, smells, sounds, people, intrigue, subterfuges and deals made ‘under the table’.”
“Some Jews were granted the right to leave the Ghetto at night, to work in Christian printing-houses on the printing of sacred or biblical texts, or the editing of Hebrew texts, or in groups for organizing music and dance shows in the homes of Venetian gentlemen. Others asked for the right, and obtained it, to live permanently outside the Ghetto, due to the danger of manufacturing what they did or the type of inventory they kept (one example was a chemical plant that made paint, run by a Jew outside the Ghetto, and another, Nahman Jehuda levantino who was allowed to move his facility for making vermillion in to the neighborhood of San Geremia where he lived with his wife). From the early decades of the 1600s on complaints were made about Jewish owned shops operating outside the Ghetto: jewelers, tailors, furriers, food vendors.”
“The location around the campo of the Ghetto Nuovo of the stores selling used objects, clothes, furs, tapestries, precious fabrics, all used by individuals and the magistrate for decorating parties, ceremonies, and public feasts, and the location around the same campo of the loan (pawn) banks, that loaned money to poor and not so poor Venetian citizens, necessarily had the consequence that Christians were increasingly induced to cross the gates in to the Ghetto. Here they were tempted to visit the synagogues and the gatherings for biblical exegesis, to attend theatrical or musical shows, to taste the strange foods that could be found there and that they did not have permission to buy.
It rarely happened that a foreigner would leave Venice without having visited the Ghetto; the travelers’ descriptions are often particularly lively, full of curiosity for the richness of the occasions that happened there; religious ceremonies, festivals, theater, music, funerals… or they are sometimes only made of the escort of a long series of common places, in celebrating the welcome that Venetians reserved for strangers, or the ‘will’ with which they attended many different rites.
It was the Englishman Thomas Coryat in 1611 who gave an amazed recounting of his impressions; while furnishing news about the overpopulation and high number of residents, he immediately takes notice of the fact that living together in the area were communities which were very diverse in origins and customs (westerners wore a red cap, while easterners, from Jerusalem, Alexandria and Constantinople wore a turban like the Turks). He was struck in particular by the importance of the seven synagogues, as a place of community meeting for everyone (men, women, children), the organization of their internal spaces, the strong illumination (an enormous number of candles were lit during ceremonies), the alternating movement of the readers of the sacred texts, the seeming irreverence of those who attended (who when entering did not take off their hats, nor genuflect, nor make any other gesture of submission to God), the separation of men and women (who were often beautiful and richly bejeweled, like an English countess – a comparison he makes directly – sitting in the gallery reserved for them), the “sober, distinct and orderly”, but too loud, reading that took place during the religious service, the recitation of the psalms that sounded like the incomprehensible bleat of an animal.
He also noticed that Jews did not use images, and that their adherence to the Shabbat was such that on that day they would not buy or sell anything nor do any secular or profane activity. He noticed that circumcision was not just a religious but also a sanitary practice, and a stone knife was used.”
“In the 1660s (approx.) the French Consul seems to have been fascinated by a splendid marriage party; alongside the Jewish guests, sumptuously dressed Venetian noblewomen also participated in ‘maschera’ so they would not be too recognizable. Great admiration is also shown in the recounting of the marriage of one of the daughters of the wealthy Levi dal Banco, which saw a great concourse of people, as well as the attendance of some foreign ministers.
Some foreign visitors remarked what became a universally shared opinion: there was no place in Italy where Jews were treated better than Venice. Alexandre Toussaint Limojon di Saint Didier, secretary and trusted adviser of the ambassador of Louis XIV to Venice, described in 1680 how the lack of space had created a great density of buildings. He also noted that the proverbial tolerance of the Venetians was such that every Noble house had a friend of affection and complete trust from among the Jews. The aristocrats, well aware of the Jews’ discretion, became their protectors, and, at the same time, the Jews served them in more than one way.”
“…gradually over the course of the 1700s the process of assimilation becomes social as well as physical. While in a sense still contradictory, it indicates the ratification of an accepted presence and a liberty that sometimes was defended anew… That Jews rented property outside the area of Cannaregio in order to run their shops was an already known fact, about which the Ufficiali al Cattaver could do nothing but ‘monitor’, addressing it ‘with prudence’, and seeking to avoid the scandals (and this would have qualified as such) that may come with such cohabitation. Attempts to add more property to the Ghetto Nuovissimo, in Calle della Macina at the beginning of the century… were accepted with caution by the magistrates….”
“The biggest problems were the buildings – which were out of level, with curving walls, curving beams, inclination of doors and window frames, dangerous walkways and poorly constructed stairs: in sum, the degradation of construction that had over the years undergone a series of modifications for which it was not originally designed, that had perhaps seen very little maintenance, and which was managed with a view to maximum savings. The great weight of the buildings, sitting on top of basically empty ground floors (for stores) created the need for immediate and particular types of interventions…. In short, over the course of the 1700s the work of construction and fragmentation of the buildings in the ghetto, and therefore of remodeling and renewing certainly did not cease. In the course of a century the passage of property, hereditary transmission, division between brothers, donations, intrusions, the signing of new rental contracts and the internal and external transformations simply continued to happen… constant adjustments to need or dangers, always looking to contain expenses….”
“It seems that old prohibitions and new processes grew less and less effective at discouraging a meeting, a party, or a dance in which, in a home in the ghetto which had long remained empty, one could see Christians and men with black hats, and women of one and the other faith singing, playing or dancing together.
Shows, games of dice, the sermon of a Rabbi known as a grand orator, which everyone wants to attend, all enliven this restricted space on days of ceremony; shops with workers, Christian and non-Christian (booksellers, printers, goldsmiths), bedrooms and attics sold as sublets, the ghetto’s need for a veritable crowd of part time workers (porters, scavengers, water carriers, ferrymen, bank staff, wandering salesmen, orderlies of the magistrate) constitute, then, the occasions and the pretexts for living together, often elbow to elbow. In a case brought to the Ufficiali al Cattaver in 1699 against some Jews, it was asserted that a certain Israel Tedesco, a tailor, after the demolition of a building in Calle della Macina, created a scandal by building two small houses contiguous with the one he lived in, in so doing expanding the boundaries of the Ghetto Nuovissimo without license to do so; the extant testimony concerning the case demonstrates that on the single floors of the new construction lived people of diverse provenance, that there was a frequent turnover of Christian and Jewish renters… mundane relations that denote that the situation was dynamic and moving towards a social assimilation already in action.”
Monterosa Traduzioni 