Cultural Pluralism from the Ghetto: What Might It Have Meant? (original) (raw)
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2011 - The City, the Ghetto and two Books. Venice and Jewish Early Modernity by Cristiana Facchini
In 1638 two books written by two Venitian rabbis were published in Venice. They were both destined successfully to reach wide circulation over the following decades. This article aims at exploring the intimate connection between Venice, a city which deeply influenced the imagination of European culture during the early modern period, and its Jewish ghetto, the first of its kind to be founded within Catholic lands. The author suggests that it was here in Venice, within the liminal space of the ghetto, that the theory of Jews as merchants, marked by undertones of utilitarianism was finally drafted. It also suggests that, in conjunction with this well-known theory, other theories based on religious tolerance were elaborated. The paper also invites the reader to view the ghetto as a space capable of enacting special religious encounters, mainly driven by an interest in religion and rituals. Therefore, the very specific local and tangible conditions of the urban environment – the city and the ghetto – performed a very important undertaking, for example, debates over the place and role of Jews in Christian society.
This article offers new insights into literary exchanges in and around the Venetian ghetto during the first half of the seventeenth century. It relates writings of Jewish thinkers to those of Christians. It shows these literary compositions inscribed into the literary tradition of a group of Venetian accademie, fostered through several decades. The literary impresa and the philosophic discorso as practiced within these academies became the vehicles through which specific Jewish and Christian writers reciprocally offered to each other nuanced concepts of the human soul, the Republic and the Creation, while seeking their self-definitions as Jews or Christians.
The Foundation of the Ghetto: Venice, the Jews, and the War of the League of Cambrai
Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 126/2, 1982
The first part of this essay examines the Venetian religious perception of their military misfortunes in the War of the League of Cambrai (1509-1517) and suggests why no action was taken on a 1515 proposal for segregating the Jews within the city. The second part places the successful 1516 proposal for segregation within a political and religious setting and by an analysis of events around Easter, it seeks to explain why a Jewish quarter was established in Venice at that time.
The Jews of Venice During the XVI Century and the Reformation by Carlos Ramalho
This paper explores the intricate relationship between the Jewish community of Venice and the broader socio-political and religious transformations that took place during the 16th century, particularly in the context of the Protestant Reformation. It examines how the Reformation, while primarily a Christian movement, had significant and lasting impacts on the Jews of Venice, influencing their economic roles, intellectual contributions, and social standing within the city. The formation of the Venetian Ghetto in 1516 and its subsequent influence on Jewish life is analyzed alongside the broader dynamics of religious tolerance, cultural exchange, and economic resilience that characterized Venice during this period. By employing a multidisciplinary approach, this study delves into the unique position of Venice as a crossroads of religious ideas and its pragmatic approach to religious tolerance, which allowed the Jewish community to thrive despite the physical and social constraints imposed by the Ghetto. The paper also highlights the pivotal role of Jewish printers and scholars in preserving and disseminating Hebrew texts, contributing to a cultural renaissance that paralleled the intellectual fervor of the Reformation. Through this exploration, the paper sheds light on the resilience and adaptability of the Venetian Jewish community, offering a nuanced perspective on their contributions to the economic and intellectual life of early modern Europe.
Selective Inclusion: Integration and Isolation of Jews in Medieval Italy
Framing Jewish Culture: Boundaries, Representations, and Exhibitions of Ethnic Difference, Jewish Cultural Studies, Vol 4 , 2014
This essay presents episodes, mostly from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries, that demonstrate how Jews existed within the spatial framework of Rome and elsewhere in medieval Christian Italy, straddling social, economic, and spatial boundaries. Using a variety of sources to physically locate Jews in Italian urban culture allows a better understanding of the civic space available to them in Italian cities in the Middle Ages and the early Renaissance. Stretching from just before the promulgation of anti-Jewish decrees at the Fourth Lateran Council until the creation of the Venetian ghetto in 1516, this was a tumultuous but transformative period of Italian and Jewish history, in which Jewish communities settled and thrived throughout the entire peninsula.
Religious Changes and Cultural Transformations in the Early Modern Western Sephardic Communities, Brill, Studies in Jewish History and Culture, 2019
In recent years, the history of the Jews in Italy in the early modern era has been at the center of many studies that are beginning to painstakingly trace the affairs of this minority group within the major events of the period. Based on sources that have long been overlooked by studies on this subject and on a renewed scientific sensibility, a profile is beginning to emerge of a history built on a range of interactions between Jews and Christians, notwithstanding the centuries-old discrimination to which the second subjected the first. The phenomenon of the ghetto, which was without a doubt the most characteristic and significant experience of the period, is now being investigated “beyond” and “across” the walls.
in: Yosef Kaplan (ed.), Religious Changes and Cultural Transformations in the Early Modern Western Sephardic Communities, Brill: Boston and Leiden, 2019
Based on the analysis of a case study from Ancona, this article proposes to reread the beginning of the ghettoization in the Papal States (1555) within both the Western Sephardic Diasporas and the so-long Italian Wars (1494-1555). The breaking of an engagement that was celebrated in Ancona in the winter of 1555 (and therefore in the months which preceded the birth of the ghettos and the opening of proceedings against Marranos), and the lengthy legal controversy that followed it, which was argued in front of a regular Christian magistracy between 1555 and 1563, offers ideas for an effort to answer important questions.