Venitian Ghetto

At the conclusion of the walking tour through Venice in the morning, we spent some time near the Rialto Bridge, enjoying the view of and from the most famous bridge in Venice. Then we caught a ferry and walked to the Jewish Ghetto. This is the first ghetto in the world, it was established in 1516 and the word ghetto was coined here because the Venetian word geti means foundry, and the foundries we’re located in the area prior to the Jews being confined there.
We decided to pay for a one hour walking tour through the ghetto, led by an older Jewish lady with a very strong accent. She showed us the five synagogues in the confines of the ghetto. Three are closed and two were open for visits and we went into both of these. They were Sephardic synagogues and they still operate today. Those we could no access were the oldest and they are Ashkenazi synagogues.
The memorial for the deportation of the Jews in WW2 was also there. 250 Jews were deported to Auchwitz and only my two women survived and returned to Venice, both of them died relatively recently in their 90s.
There is also a khabad or Jewish rabbinical school in the ghetto and outside that there was a booth built for the Jews to sit inside and eat because it was day four of Sukkot.
Next door to the khabad is an old Jewish bank, Banko Rosso, the red bank with a red door, which was one of the three money lenders banks of the ghetto. The green bank and the black bank, with coloured doors to suit, are no longer to be seen. The Merchant of Venice is written in the context of this ghetto and the Jewish role in Venice as money lenders. The other jobs they were allowed to do was merchants and doctors. So they were allowed only to be bankers, doctors and merchants; no wonder they made money and were hated as a consequence.Read more