Meeting with the assistant in front of the Hotel Danieli.
The Ghetto (originally a Venetian word meaning foundry) was established in 1516 as a segregated living area for the Jews of Venice. In that year there were approximately 1,300 Jews living in Venice. Over time the ghetto population grew to a maximum of 5,000 in about 1650. During that period there were restaurants, schools, synagogues, shops, banks, and a 24 room hotel in the ghetto. Additionally, the original ghetto (Ghetto Novo) expanded into adjoining areas, as Sephardic and Levantine Jews arrived, which came to be called the Ghetto Vecchio and the Ghetto Novissimo). By the beginning of the Second World War, however, there were fewer than 1,000 Jews living in Venice and not many in the ghetto area.
From 1516 till 1797 (the end of the Venetian Republic) the doors of the Ghetto were locked at midnight and re-opened at daybreak. Jews in the Ghetto spoke various languages: Hebrew, Greek, Italian, Yiddish, Venetian, German, Spanish, and Turkish. If there was a universal language it was a type of Judeo-Italiano which was spoken in other Jewish communities in Italy.
The Jews were a very important economic force in Venice since the 15th century. They were permitted to engage in money-lending, second hand goods dealing, trade and to be physicians. Of course, the Jews did suffer restrictions, especially an excessively high tax rate. Also the moneylenders' interest rates were highly regulated by the Republic. The apogee of cultural and business life in Venice for the Jews was in the early 17th century. Then, there was a vibrant life in the Ghetto, with famous intellectuals such as poet Sara Copio Sullam, "La Bella Ebrea", and Rabbi Leone Modena, Venice's most renowned Jewish figure, an extraordinary man about town, revered in circles Jewish and Christian, religious and secular.
As the plague devastated Venice every three or four decades and as the Venetian Empire slowly but surely imploded, the Jews sought opportunities elsewhere (Amsterdam, London, etc.) and the population of the Hebrew University, as the Jewish community was called, declined. By the time of World War II the Jewish population in Venice was quite integrated into Venice and the Ghetto, still housing the 5 synagogues, had a sparse Jewish population. During the war, 246 Jews were sent to the death camps (a moving memorial by Arbit Blatas can be seen in the Ghetto Novo.). About 250 Jews still live in Venice and only two Jewish families still live in the Ghetto. Today, there is a Jewish Museum in the Ghetto which provides short tours of two or three of the synagogues.
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