venice the jews and europe 1516–2016

Marsilio INDEx

18 venice, the Jews, and Europe: Five Hundred Years Since the Creation of the Ghetto Donatella Calabi

the significance VENICE, THE JEWS, OF the ghetto AND europE. 1516–2016

38 t oday. 70 1 . before the ghetto 152 3 . THE COSMOPOLITAN GHETTO 276 5 . JEWISH CULTURE AND WOMEN 372 7 . tales of the ghetto. 458 9 . the twentieth century Jews and Other introduction by Elisa Bastianello introduction by Ludovica Galeazzo introduction by Cristiana Facchini the shadow of shylock introduction by Simon Levis Sullam Minorities entries by Stefania Meggiato entries by Andrea Pavanello, entries by Valeria Cafà, introduction by Shaul Bassi entries by Elisabetta Barisoni, Amos Luzzatto and Francesca Rizzi, Elisa Gianmario Guidarelli, Angela Tiziana Plebani, Stefania entry by Shaul Bassi Martina Massaro, Stefano Bastianello, Caterina Gottardi, Munari, Elisa Bastianello, Silvestri, Michela Dal Borgo, Zaggia, Martina Carraro, Mirka Dalla Longa Giovanni Caniato, Claudia Marcella Ansaldi, Martina 382 8 . NAPOLEON: The opening of Isabella Brezigar, Simon 48 venice and Europe’s Ghetto Salmini, Ludovica Galeazzo, Massaro the gates and assimilation Levis Sullam, Francesca Rizzi 82 Before the Ghetto Riccardo Calimani Massimo Favilla and Ruggero introduction by Martina Massaro and Stefania Meggiato, Studio Renata Segre 298 Dialogues Rugolo, Michela Dal Borgo, entries by Giovanni Favero, Azzurro Monica Centanni 56 venice: A Symbol 90 Jewish Banks in Mestre Stefano Zaggia, Francesco Ludovica Galeazzo, Roberto 498 the Jews in Venice of Jewish History and on the Venetian Mainland Spagnolo 306 jewish Philosophy in the De Feo, Martina Massaro, in the Twentieth Century: Robert Bonfil in the Late Middle Ages Ghetto: Simone Luzzatto Camillo Tonini, Alessandra 208 the Jewish–Venetian Mode A Cultural and Political Rachele Scuro and Sara Copio Sullam Ferrighi, Stefano Zaggia, Mirka of Speech (and the Languages Profile Giuseppe Veltri Dalla Longa, Giovanni Caniato, of the Ghetto) Simon Levis Sullam 94 2 . COSMOPOLITAN VENICE Gianmario Guidarelli Umberto Fortis 310 Leone Modena, Sara Copio introduction by Gianmario Sullam, and l’Accademia 436 the Impossibility of Being Guidarelli, Martina Massaro, 212 architectural and Urbanistic degli Incogniti Themselves: Venetian Jews 503 bibliography Elisa Bastianello Aspects of the Venice Ghetto Howard Tzvi Adelman in the Early Nineteenth entries by Andrea Bellieni, David Cassuto Century Elisa Bastianello, Martina 314 jewish Female Society: 216 Ghetto Urbanism Michele Gottardi Massaro, Sara Menato, Piero Shared Weakness Dana E. Katz Lucchi, Tiziana Plebani, or Peculiar Autonomy? 442 t he Emancipation Yoel Finkelman 220 synagogues and a City: Paola Lanaro of the Jews in the Veneto Gerrit Berckheyde’s View Gadi Luzzatto Voghera 130 the Jewish Merchants of Amsterdam 318 6 . TRADE IN THE SEVENTEENTH of Venice, the Ottoman 448 Becoming Italian Citizens. Joël J. Cahen, Erik Koopman AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURies Empire, and the Iberian The Role of Jewish Women introduction by Martina Massaro Diaspora 224 Between Lisbon and Venice: in Renewing Education entries by Paolo Delorenzi, Benjamin Ravid Itineraries and Stories Nadia Maria Filippini Ludovica Galeazzo and Martina of Portuguese Sephardim 134 the Place of Venice Massaro, Martino Ferrari Bravo, 454 jewish Patronage During in the Sixteenth Century in the Cultural Formation Alberto Craievich, Piero Lucchi, the Emancipation Process Susana Bastos Mateus of Early Modern Jewry Michela Dal Borgo, Angela Martina Massaro David B. Ruderman Munari, Camillo Tonini, Stefano 228 4 . THE SYNAGOGUES Zaggia, Margherita Stevanato, 138 jewish Publishing in Venice: introduction by Gianmario Livio Vianello Its Glories and Decline Guidarelli and Stefano Zaggia Giulio Busi entries by Carol Sethill, 364 jews and Credit in Early Marcella Ansaldi, Doretta Modern Europe and the 142 Variations on Ham. Davanzo Poli, Michela Zanon, Mediterranean: From Usury Giovanni Bellini’s Alberto Craievich, Martina to International Trade The Mocking of Noah Massaro, Gianmario Guidarelli, Francesca Trivellato Augusto Gentili Stefano Zaggia 368 Family Bankers: The Bonfils 148 I nside the Gates: From Jewish 260 Being a Rabbi, Inside and the Querinis of Santa Quarters to Ghettos and Outside the Ghetto Maria Formosa on the Venetian Mainland Scialom Bahbout Angela Munari Stefano Zaggia 264 t he Bimah and the Stage: Synagogue Music and Cultural Production in the Italian Ghettos Francesco Spagnolo 270 Musical Practice in the Venice Ghetto. Reading and Analysis of a Manuscript Witness Piergabriele Mancuso When we place the word Jews next to the word credit, the image of Shylock, the quintessential usurer, almost invariably comes to mind. It is an association rooted in history. Across the Italian peninsula, after the thir- teenth century, the Church and secular governments confined most Jews to moneylending and promoted the Jews and Credit representation of Jews as rapacious speculators intent in Early Modern Europe on exploiting the Christian commonwealth. The Jewish and the Mediterranean: usurer thus became both a historical figure and a meta- From Usury phor. As a metaphor, it stood in for all greedy and illegit- to International Trade imate economic behavior, whether carried out by Jews or by Christians. This dual medieval construction of usury has left a profound mark on the history of Jews and the Francesca Trivellato history of credit in the Western world. But it would be wrong to assume that across early modern Europe and the Mediterranean, all Jews were moneylenders. During the sixteenth century, as the first globalization of Euro- pean commerce ensued, certain segments of the Jewish diaspora participated in far-flung mercantile networks. The Republic of Venice led the way in promoting new economic and social roles for these Jewish merchants and, in so doing, favored the creation of new forms of Christian–Jewish credit relations, which in turn con- tributed to a greater integration of Jewish merchants in Venetian society. The process, however, remained in- complete and did not erase preexisting prejudices. The first inhabitants of the Ghetto established in Ven- ice in 1516, the so-called Italian–German Jews, were al- lowed to carry out only two economic activities: pawn- broking and the retail of secondhand clothes. They could lend money on pawned objects of little value (no more than three ducats) at the official interest rate of 5 percent per year. This service was meant to sup- port poor Christians throughout the city. The retail of secondhand clothes was not a lucrative occupation; moreover, the government demanded that those Jews dealing in used goods furbish the temporary residenc- es of foreign ambassadors without compensation. In 1624 the charter once again prohibited Italian–Ger- man Jews from dealing in any new merchandise.1 In short, the first long-term Jewish residents in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Venice conformed to the me- dieval economic and ethical model for Jewish-Chris-

364 365 tian coexistence and, as a consequence, also remained those Jews who had been forcibly baptized in Spain after Elsewhere, too, the involvement of Iberian Jews in inter- The few surviving portraits of affluent Iberian Jews targets of the most insidious stereotypes. 1492 and in Portugal after 1497. Anyone who had been national trade gave rise to new legal arrangements for living in Venice, Livorno, and Amsterdam painted in But the creation of the Ghetto in 1516 also coincided with baptized but did not live as a faithful Christian could their settlement. From 1551 to 1723, the French crown the eighteenth century show them in poses and attire the beginning of Venice’s commercial decline and the be charged with being an apostate. In defiance of canon welcomed Jews crossing the border with Spain to take that render them virtually indistinguishable from lo- Portuguese expansion in the Indian Ocean. Spices and law and with the goal of protecting the assets of the Ibe- up residence in Bordeaux but only with the status of cal commercial elites. State regulations and the pur- textiles that used to arrive from Egypt and Syria along rian refugees, the Venetian government decided to grant “Portuguese merchants.” The French thus admitted suit of profit both ensured that commercial credit tied caravan routes now also reached Lisbon and Antwerp all New Christians immunity from the Inquisition as tacitly that a good many of these merchants secretly the interests of merchants from all different groups. on board ships sailing around the Cape of Good Hope. long as they lived within the confines of the Ghetto as practiced Judaism. The rulers of Amsterdam, by con- Yet Europe’s commercial society never became in- Meanwhile, Venice had to fend off the rise of the Ot- Jews. In addition, in case of war, Venice pledged to hold trast, devised the most tolerant policies of the period: sensitive to religious prejudice. Christian travelers to toman Empire and northern European powers like the neither Jews nor their belongings hostage.3 This time, Jews were allowed to build majestic synagogues but, the Levant repeatedly accused Jewish merchants of English and the Dutch in the eastern Mediterranean. no explicit prohibition was made against Jews becom- like all other merchants, were required to use the city’s overcharging their French and English counterparts. One of the measures taken by the Republic to counter ing involved in petty loans or secondhand retail trade, many public services and institutions devised to pro- When in 1720 the stocks of the South Sea Company in its rivals consisted in extending new privileges to Jew- but the context made clear that the 1589 charter’s goal mote as impersonal a credit market as possible. Barred London burst into thin air, causing one of the earliest ish traders from the Iberian Peninsula (where Jews had was to woo merchants of high social rank who would from most craft guilds, they nonetheless acquired con- stock market crashes with international ramifications, been forced to convert to Catholicism during the 1490s), revamp Venice’s commercial prowess and not meddle in siderable influence in the Dutch and Atlantic trade satirical engravings and pamphlets blamed Jews as one many of whom had found refuge in the Ottoman Em- low-level credit transactions. and came to own sugar and tobacco plantations. of the main causes of the financial collapse. These ac- pire. These were the Jews most involved in trade across The Medici grand dukes of Tuscany followed Venice’s All these provisions had an impact on the daily trans- cusations had no foundation. Rather, they resurrected the Mediterranean, the Balkans, and, increasingly, the example when, in 1591–1593, they issued special invita- actions between Jewish and Christian merchants be- deep-seated medieval stereotypes now adapted to the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. Some of them owned a few tions to Jews fleeing Spain and Portugal, but stated cause long-distance trade was inseparable from credit. new reality of international trade: thus the medieval large merchant houses, and others oversaw small family that, in order to become full-fledged members of the To make funds available to their agents abroad, mer- usurer became the modern reckless speculator. The firms. In the eyes of Christian authorities and popula- Jewish Nation of Livorno, they had to “tend to whole- chants could in theory put coins or silver bars on the two figures represented two sides of the same coin: tions alike, Jews exerted a dominant position in interna- sale trade” and “to any type of economic activity ex- back of a donkey or on board a ship. But to do so meant both depicted Jews as possessing unique commercial tional trade—hyperbole that Jewish leaders did not cor- cept secondhand cloth dealing.”4 Several other pro- to risk that their silver might be seized by brigands or know-how and power, which they deployed solely to rect when it could help them to gain favors for the entire visions were tailored to enhance the socioeconomic washed away in a storm. It was far safer to resort to bills the detriment of Christian society. In the end, remark- community. In fact, only in Salonica (modern-day Thes- status of the refugees. Jews in Livorno were exempted of exchange, financial instruments thanks to which able changes and equally notable continuities charac- saloniki), the sole city with a predominantly Jewish pop- from wearing a distinctive sign (in defiance of an is- merchants could remit funds in most corners of the terized the relationship between Jews and credit dur- ulation in the mid-sixteenth century, did Jews control sue ordered by the Lateran Council in 1215 and uni- globe without fearing that those funds would be lost ing the medieval and early modern periods. much of the manufacturing and export of textiles. versally applied throughout the Catholic world); they or confiscated. In the hands of the most expert among 1 When, in 1541, the Senate invited “Levantine Jewish mer- were permitted to own real estate (with full property these traders, bills of exchange could also become The original charter can be read in B. Ravid, Economics and Toleration in Seventeenth-Century Venice. The Background and Context of chants” (that is, those residing in the Ottoman Empire) rights they did not enjoy in Venice), forgiven all debts purely speculative instruments and thus gave rise to the Discorso of Simone Luzzatto (Jerusalem, 1978), 106–113 (cit. 112). 2 to settle in the Ghetto, it ruled that “they may not engage incurred abroad as long as they did not involve crimi- an early separation between commerce and finance. The Senate decree appears in B. Ravid, “The Religious, Economic and Social Background of the Context of the Estab- in banking [that is, pawnbroking] or the secondhand nal activity, allowed to travel freely, and granted the Bills of exchange, like marine insurance, were credit lishment of the Ghetti of Venice,” in Gli Ebrei e Venezia. Secoli trades or in any employment other than pure mercan- right to own slaves and employ Christians as domestic contracts that differed radically from pawnbroking be- XIV–XVIII, ed. G, Cozzi (Venice, 1987), 211–260 (cit. 251). A par- tial English translation is in Venice: A Documentary History, eds. tile activity.”2 In other words, the Venetian government servants and wet-nurses. Furthermore, all their com- cause they did not require any collateral. Instead, a mer- D. Chambers, and B. Pullan (Oxford, 1992), 344. 3 not only conferred upon them commercial privileges mercial papers—account books, letters, contracts, and chant’s reputation rather than goods stood in for collat- The 1589 petition and ratification are published in the ap- pendix to B. Ravid, “The First Charter of the Jewish Merchants that until then had been the prerogative of its patrician the like—were admitted as proof in court. Finally, eral. After the sixteenth century, Jewish merchants—and of Venice, 1589,” in Association for Jewish Studies Review, 1 (1976), and citizen classes, but also assigned to them economic in Livorno, no walled ghetto was ever built and Jews those of Iberian descent most particularly—became ever 187–222. Excerpts in English are in Venice, 346–349. 4 The privileges issued in 1591–1593 are reproduced in R. roles that distinguished them from the Italian–German mingled with non-Jews even more than elsewhere: The more entangled in webs of commercial credit not only Toaff, La Nazione Ebrea a Livorno e a Pisa (1591–1700) (Florence, Jews. In 1589, the Venetian authorities went even further. wealthiest among them owned houses next to those of with each other but also with non-Jews. When choosing 1990), 419–431 (cit. 428). My translation. 5 F. Trivellato, The Familiarity of Strangers: The Sephardic Dias- Answering a petition from “Levantine, Spanish, and local Christian notables along the main street, where an agent with whom to trade from one region or one pora, Livorno, and Cross-Cultural Trade in the Early Modern Period other Jewish merchants living in Venice with their fami- civic and religious ceremonies were held; several Jew- continent to the other, they often resorted to relatives or (New Haven, 2009). lies,” the Republic issued a new charter whose intended ish landlords, then, rented portions of their homes to coreligionists, but they also did not shy away from hir- page 365 [cat. 100.] Nobile al banco, from G. Grevembroch, Gli abiti de’ veneziani, di quasi ogni età, con diligenza raccolti e dipinti beneficiaries were the so-called New Christians—that is, poor Christians and even to free Muslims. ing non-Jews whenever it was useful or necessary.5 nel secolo XVIII, second half of the eighteenth century, detail

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