April 10: The Ghetto

The Venice Ghetto was established on this date in 1516 as the first restricted Jewish residential zone in Europe. The term “ghetto” meant “slag” in Venetian; a copper foundry where slag was stored shared the northern island where the ghetto was sited. Jews had worked in the city since the 10th century and lived there since the 13th; they were forced to wear a yellow badge in 1394, which was changed to a yellow hat in 1496 and to a red hat in 1500; they were prohibited to own land in 1423 and from building synagogues in 1426; they died in blood libel cases in 1480 and 1506. Then came the ghetto, which enabled Sephardim from the Spanish and Portuguese expulsions, and Ashkenazim from Germany, Italy and the Middle East to find refuge in Venice. Their numbers reached a maximum of about 5,000, and their behaviors were highly restricted: Jews were locked into the ghetto at night, were permitted to work only in a narrow range of fields (money trading, medicine, textile dealing, printing), were heavily taxed, and faced regular waves of discrimination. The ghetto gates were torn open by Napoleon’s conquering army in 1797. Long before then, however, Jewish ghettos had been instituted throughout Europe.

“If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die?” —William Shakespeare