Inside Venice’s Jewish ghetto

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2:02In the early 16th century, Venice confined its Jewish population to a restricted quarter on an island in the city. This became known as the first ghetto, a word that would come to define centuries of Jewish segregation and persecution. But why did Venice create it? And what was life like inside its walls? In this episode of the History Extra Podcast, Emily Griffith speaks to historian Alexander Lee, who is a finalist for the 2026 bundle history prize about the origins of the Venetian ghetto, the tensions behind its creation and the vibrant Jewish community that developed within it. It's a real pleasure to have you on today to talk all about your new book, The First Ghetto, Venice and the Jews. What was happening in Venice in the early 16th century that led to the creation of this first Jewish ghetto? Why then? It's a very good question, Emily. Why the first ghetto and why the first ghetto in Venice?

3:03Well, the first thing to say is that it certainly wasn't the first time a Jewish population was confined to a particular quarter of a city. Such things have been going on for literally centuries by the time the Venetians thought of it in their own city. In fact, they'd even imposed confinement on Jewish populations in other Venetian subjects. Such cities ran the Mediterranean long before that. Nevertheless, the ghetto in Venice does represent a turning point in the history of the concept, partly because it was conceptually a lot clearer than any other previous form of Jewish settlement. Secondly, it had a very clear name that was untethered to anything like a street or square by which Jewish quarter-sales were previously known. And thirdly because Venice was such an emblematic city at the time. But the idea of the ghetto, the idea of confining Jews to the particular island in Venice, arose out of a paradox at the heart of Venice's relations with the Jews. On the one hand, Venice was exceedingly welcoming of the Jewish presence.

4:04Venice needed, like most talented, at the time, access to credit, since the Fourth Lateran Council in the 13th century, it had been forbidden for Christians to lend each other money at interest to their practice name as a user. Venice supplied a useful alternative that it was permissible for them to lend at least small sums at reasonable rates of interest to Christians without either side incurring any sin. So that was an attraction. On the other hand, Venice was marred by a tremendous sense of suspicion of the Jewish presence. The city conceived itself from a very early date as a distinctively Christian entity, having people of any other faith, particularly Jews, resident in the city at a given time, was a danger. Indeed, it was described, or Jews were described using language-bord from medicine as a disease, who could quite easily infect Christian neighbours with their non-Christian ideas, tempt people away from the faith. So the ghetto was, in a sense, a way of resolving this apparently irresolvable tension between

5:11need and fear of love and hate, literally, if you like. And in many ways, you can see it as a solution of last resort. Many other alternatives had been explored beforehand, including confining Jews to another city, or making sure that Jews could only visit Venice from a nearby city across the other side of Lagoon, Mistre, or other areas of confinement in the city. And it never worked. This was a solution of last resort. But to understand how this kind of paradox played out, you do have to set the foundation of the ghetto in the context of a longer time frame, unlike many other Italian cities, which had had a Jewish presence since late antiquity. Venice's experience would use reach back only a comparatively short time. Although we have evidence of Jews being on Venetian ships as early as the 10th century, the earliest documented Jew to be present in Venice only crops up in about 1314. And to begin with, many of those who had come to Venice were refugees who had been expelled

6:12or forced to flee from Germany in the mid-40th century as a result of pogrom that had erupted in the wake of the Black Death. They probably didn't remain in Venice for a particularly long time at any given moment. They probably went very large numbers of them, but they were nevertheless present. At this early stage, we see a hesitancy about how to handle Jews. In the early 14th century, we know that this kind of activity is going on, but it's only really permitted for Jews to lend money at interest in the city from about 1382. Now, I should add that this point Jews aren't named. In that particular charter that's granted, it doesn't name any particular religious group. The first charter allowing people to lend money in Venice only says, you know, anybody can do it. So from recent research, all but one of the people who signed up for it were Jews. However, very soon afterwards, Venice starts to get uneasy about this and it says, well, look, it's not really appropriate that you stay in the city. So what you're going to do is we're going to push you out to the nearby city of Messau,

7:15which is just across the lagoon. You can see Venice from Messau. And you can only come to the city to lend money for 15 days at a time and then you have to go. And when you're here, you have to wear a yellow badge, a yellow circle on your outer clothing, etc. And there's a back and forth. So ways around that are quickly found. Many Jewish money lenders come over to the city for 15 days, then go back to Messau and then come straight back to Venice, effectively their permanent residence. And Venice does its absolute best to try and make this to prevent this kind of thing from happening. But by the early 15th century, it's very, very clear that it's just not kind of working. So in a very Venetian way, the government of Venice fudges the issue. It says effectively. We don't really like Jews staying in the city for any length of time. We know there's cheating going on, but we're not going to do anything about it. We're just going to turn a blind eye and hope that this problem just sort of sorts itself out. There were lots of attempts to constrain Jewish activities and to limit the impact of Jewish

8:16life on Venetian communities. So for example, in the early 15th century, there's a lot of legislation which prevents Jews from having sexual relations with Christians. That's a massive worry throughout the history of the ghetto. There's legislation which prevents Jews from giving music lessons. They might think, why is that an issue? Well, there's a fear that if somebody is giving music lessons to a child, they might corrupt them while they're playing music, etc., etc. But essentially you've got this sort of uneasy scenario where Venice knows Jews are present in the city, but they don't want to allow them to live there permanently. They just allow this fudge to go on. So what changes? What is it that happens? That means that this horrible unfortunate compromise breaks down and the answer is simple. It's war. From 1494 onwards, the whole of Northern, in the whole of Italy is consumed by a series of exceedingly brutal conflicts catalyzed by the invasion of the French king Charles VIII who wants to, in 1494, capture the king of the Naples.

9:16And this leads to six decades of near-constant war, well Machiavelli Blames Venice for the whole thing inaccurately. But Venice is bad in this in a very real way. Unfortunately, early in the conflict, it does very, very badly. And it is defeated very viciously at a battle called the Battle of Ania, Dello in 1509. This is such a catastrophic defeat that, as Machiavelli said, in one single afternoon, Venice lost what it had taken its people 800 years to acquire to that point. So why is this significant for Jews? And why does it lead to the creation of the ghetto? Well, quite simply because a little bit early in 1509, as things were getting a little bit hairy on the mainland, where Venice had a lot of land, Venice had reissued a charter and agreement with the Jewish bankers of Mestre. And it had said, look, you have to stay living in Mestre and you've only come to Venice you know, lending money every so often. But if war comes to your doorstep, you can bring your family and all your property to

10:21Venice. So when in 1509, the Battle of Ania, Dello unleashes holy hell on the Venetian Empire, a lot of Jews take advantage of this to take refuge in Venice. And they stay there for a long time. They're not all those who go to Venice at this time have signed up to this charter. They're not all technically allowed to be in the city. But when you've got, you know, military catastrophe, and you really need to understand how severe this was, this is worse than the kind of Britain in the Blitz type scenario. You know, we're waiting for invasion. You know, there are certain moments after the Battle of Ania, Dello when guns can be heard of the invading armies from across the Lagoon. So there's a real sense that any moment now there's going to be an invasion. People can pour across. And the Venetian, I'm sorry, just can't physically sort out who's got the right to be in Venice and who hasn't. So for several years, it just sort of muddled along until this becomes progressively more and more of a problem because under stress, the need, you know, food runs short, cash

11:21runs short, more and more people, particularly at the poor end of the scale, and to say the people who had previously relied most on Jewish credit, borrowed more and more and started to resent this to a greater extent. Clearly, the Venetian government has boxed itself into a corn. They can't push out the Jewish bankers who had come already and nor can it, particularly distinguish between those who have the right and those who don't have the right to be there. But nor can it allow the situation to go on. So how can it deal with this situation? There are lots of ideas. There's one idea to confine them to the island of Marano and that doesn't really go anywhere. There are lots of boring technical problems with that. So eventually, somebody comes up with a bright idea of using an area known as the Get of the Rame in the northwest of the city in an area called Canarendra. It was an island surrounded on all four sides by water and it had been used as a dumping ground for the communal copper foundry in a past and it had since then had a few buildings

12:24put up on it and it was a pretty rundown place. And this seems to be an ideal option. It's because of the kind of high rise, low quality building that's been constructed there. It already looked like a fortress. So it was thought that if you could find the entire Jewish population there, it would be fairly easy to isolate them within the city, to create a city within the city, essentially that would be cut off. Or outward facing windows and balconies were blocked up. This was by only a couple of bridges in front of the doors of which heavy iron gates could be placed and closed at night. And the canals around it could be patrolled by boats, manned by Christian guards, paid for by the Jewish population to ensure that after the curfew was enforced, no Jews could escape. Many historians have argued this moment, at the 20th of March 1516, arises as a result of a sudden additional crisis.

13:25But in reality, you can see in the evidence that actually it's the result of years and years of efforts, failed efforts to find a solution to a problem of Venice's own creation, a problem that didn't have a neat solution. Was it intended to be a long-term measure? Not at all. It was intended from the very beginning to be a temporary issue. There was no idea of it being, therefore, nearly 300 more years. It was just intended to be a response to an immediate problem. In a very vanishing way, the reason government at this time likes to fudge things as much as it possibly can, and if it can kick a thorny problem down the road, it will. Is that how it just continued then, just pushing the problem away? Well, yes and no. After the immediate military crisis disappears, or gets a little bit better a few years later, there is a move to kick-tos out of Venice. However, it doesn't end up resulting in anything practical. For the simple reason that Venice realised very quickly that it simply could not do without

14:30a Jewish presence. Now, I should clarify something that I have been in Venetian style fudging up until now. So far, I've been speaking about Jews as moneylenders, but in reality, even at this early phase, the Jewish community contained people who pursued a whole range of different professions, doctors, Jewel cutters, secondhand clothing dealers. That was an exceedingly important source of income for the community. But it was really as moneylenders that they were most important, and again to be absolutely clear, they're lending money, predominantly in small sums. I mean, not gigantic sums. There are work-or-ans for that that can be served by Christians, but for small sums. We've talked about these high walls without windows looking outwards. How porous were these walls? Were communities able to mix? How did they interact? Well, from the very beginning, the Ghetto's walls were far more porous than they were intended to be. When it was founded, there was an idea that it would be an emettically sealed environment.

15:33But within a few months, it was found that was unfeasible. For example, it's the case with Jewish doctors. If you are a Jewish doctor and you have to attend to a patient outside the ghetto at night, what are you going to do? Well, of course, you've got to have an exception. And there are lots of other reasons why you might need to be out of the ghetto. Similarly, there are lots of reasons why Christians might need to be in the ghetto as well to do business, if one complexion or another. How are you going to see people about their business dealings? How are you going to buy secondhand goods? How are you going to discuss the terms of your loan? There's loads and there's reasons it never, it never quite works. And the Venetian government is forever issuing edicts and decreasing. We must, we must put a stop to it. We really must put a stop to it. But it never quite works. What did interactions look like on a day-to-day basis? Were there positive interactions? You've hinted that there's an edge of hostility here. There's extreme hostility. To give you an indication of just how intense the hostility is, let's take a step back before

16:37the foundation of the ghetto to 1475. In 1475 in a time called Trent, which is just a little bit north, north, northwest of Arvenis, there was a very significant case whereby a young Christian boy called Simon was found murdered. And his death was blamed on the Jewish community, who it was alleged had killed him for ritual purposes. And this unleashed a wave of antisemitic persecution, including acts of violence in Venice itself. There are steps taken in Venice to prevent this getting out of hand, and there are also steps taken to prevent it getting out of hand in cities belonging to Venice on the mainland. But it never quite goes away. There are many, many acts of extreme violence which are perpetrated against Jews down the years. Indeed, if we look further ahead down to the early 17th century, one of the ghettos

17:37leading intellectuals and rabbis, a guy called Leon Modner, CCC son, killed by Christians in a stupid dispute. Similarly, if we look ahead to the late 17th century, you find that a chamele has to be dug or excavated to allow Jewish funeral boats to get to the cemetery, from the ghetto to the cemetery on the Lido, without passing under a bridge by the church of San Pietro. And this was necessary because boys would stand on that bridge and herl abuse and stones and things that Jewish funeral courtesans use. So, when we talk about hostility, sometimes it's fairly low grade stuff, but it's occasionally very violent stuff. There are nonetheless exceedingly positive forms of interaction. There's a lot of cultural interaction to give one very good case in point. We could look at printing. Venice in the Renaissance is one of Europe's foremost centres of printing. And it very quickly becomes the European leader in Hebrew printing.

18:42The most important figure in this is a guy called Daniel Bomber. Now, Daniel Bomber is a Christian. He comes from Antwerp. However, very soon after he appears in Venice in the early 16th century, he realises that there is a market for Hebrew books. Now, that doesn't mean just Hebrew books for a Jewish market. It also means Hebrew books for a Christian humanist market. Humanists, that's to say, people who are interested in the recovery and emulation of the ancient classics, had a profound interest in Hebrew. Many leading humanists today were very keen on learning Hebrew and wanted Hebrew texts. So Bomber sets himself up in business, draws on the help of a Jewish convert Christianity called Felipe de Prato and begins turning out books properly in Hebrew. The most remarkable example, which is the rabbinical Bible, the Micra El D'Agarat, and this is a remarkable work of printing and typography, a landmark of both in the history of the

19:43Jewish community and in the broader history of the Jewish diaspora. But it's just one of many works of Jewish devotional texts and their touchical texts that he produces down the years and after he eventually dies, his place is taken up by other printing houses run by Christians, tailoring to a Jewish market and to a Christian market of humanists who are interested in Hebrew as well. We can see even at the level of personal interaction as a great deal of very human exchange. This is an advertisement from Surfshark. From the Trojan Horse to undercover wartime agents, history teaches us that threats can emerge from unlikely sources. And now, with our lives increasingly playing out online, those dangers are virtual, but no less real. That's where Surfshark comes in. It's an all-in-one cyber security suite that protects every aspect of your online life. Its VPN ensures your data is encrypted, making your online activity much harder to track,

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22:09Cool. Enjoy. It's Kenan Thompson. Buy your car online on Auto Trainer. Really. One of the things that really fascinated me in your book is how you describe the ghetto as this microcosm of the Jewish world. Could you tell us what you mean by that? From the very beginning, the ghetto in Venice was people populated by Jews from elsewhere. Many Jews in the first part of the ghetto, because they had three components over the years. Many of the inhabitants of the ghetto in Volvo, the first part, had come either from the Italian mainland or in many cases from Germany, as I said yesterday, were German refugees of persecution after the Black Death. But they were just the first of many groups that made it to Venice after fleeing somewhere else. The most important of these groups came from the Iberian land, Spain and Portugal. After the reconquista was completed in 1492, the King Queen of Spain, Fernandes de Bella, issued a decree forcing Jews either to leave the peninsula or to convert to Christianity.

23:15Now many Jews did flee, but a great many more did take the opportunity to convert. And although some did so, how heartedly a larger number maintained a Christian outer life as it were and continued to practice Judaism inwardly, at home, privately, secretly. However, after the establishment of the Spanish and then Portuguese inquisitions, persecution of these so-called new Christians or maranas became more intense and many were forced to flee in the hope of being able to practice Judaism more openly elsewhere. Now, here was a problem. Obviously, a great number of wanted to come to Italy and some did come directly to Italy, but the problem was that if they did come to Italy and resumed life as Jews openly, they would be at risk of being accused of apostasy, that is, say, renouncing their Christian baptism, the Christian baptism they were forced to accept. So many of them chose to come via the Ottoman Empire. They would go from

24:19the Iberian peninsula to the Ottoman Empire, and basically mostly what is now Turkey, but also extending both into Balkans and down into to what Egypt, where they would throw off their Christian garb and resume their Jewish identity. Then from the Ottoman Empire, go to Venice as Jews, but as Jews who were notionally subject of the Ottoman sultan. So no problem. So by the time we get to the mid-16th century, you've all de-got Jews from many parts of the European Germany and Spain who have come via the Ottoman Empire, living there altogether. I should add that by that point, you do have also some new Christians living as notionally Christians, but in public, but Jews in private in Venice as well, which itself is a massive problem for Venice at the time. Later on, we have other communities as well. In the later centuries, there's a massive wave of persecution in what is now Ukraine, leading to many refugees coming from there. Indeed, funds were specially set up to provide

25:24for people who were coming from there, or who along the way had been sold into slavery and needed to be ransomed out of slavery. So really, Venice is home to Jewish refugees from all around Europe. Essentially, anybody who has had to flee as a Jew because of their faith in Europe has at least some connection with Venice itself. But there are several other reasons why we can talk to a religious mic, as well, precisely because many Jews, particularly from about 1541 onwards, when the second part of the ghetto, the ghetto, the Gevdevaccio is established. We have a lot more formally Iberian merchants present in the city. They have great trading connections with Jews elsewhere in Europe. They've on their travels, they have established links with places from in a bay route, an exager, etc. and maintain those links. It's slightly later that they're ties with Amsterdam. Books written by Jews in Venice are circulated very widely throughout Europe. For example, one

26:30particularly influential book, Discourse or Written by a guy called Simone Razzardo, is read by leading rabbis and Christians in Britain after the Civil War and contributes significantly to the raid mission of Jews to England. So both at the level of residence and at the level of broader cultural and economic contacts, the ghetto is in a real sense a microcosm of the world. Did the mix of cultural linguistic differences create tension within the ghetto or did it enrich cultural communal life? Well, both. Because there were so many different communities, some of whom were, you know, Ashkenazi, some of whom were Sephardim, there was a need for a variety of different synagogues, for example. So the ghetto, by the mid-17th century, boasts eight synagogues, five major, three minor, catering to different liturgical

27:35editions of Sephardim and Ashkenazi and also different linguistic national groups as well. There is necessarily a high level of contact between these communities, although each ghetto is set up with a particular community in mind. There's a lot of mixing, a great deal of mixing. It isn't always harmonious. There is a great deal of beckoning that goes on. And, you know, that we do have plenty of testimony of fights breaking out between different communities at one time or another. Could you tell us more about what daily life may have looked like within the ghetto? Well, to some extent, it depends slightly when we're talking about. If we take, say, what we might call the ghetto's gold age in the early 17th century just before the plague of the 1630s, it is at its most vibrant. It's very populous. There's several thousands of people living there at the time. It's not luxurious by any stretch of the imagination. Accommodation is limited by necessity. So apartments

28:41are very small. They're often subdivided many, many times. They're very cramped. They are not, in any sense, is ideal. In order to gain more space, families very frequently undertake unauthorized DIY projects to enlarge the available space. You know, they try to extend balconies out as far as they can. They try to extend in whatever direction is possible, rarely with much effect on the quality of life, I should say. There is not a very large amount of fresh water available. There are only a few wells in the ghetto itself. In the ghetto, no over, there are only three wells, which for large population is not large. There are problems with waste disposal. It is, however, very, very busy. There is a great deal of music being performed, particularly in the synagogues. There are plays that are put on very frequently, some of which are

29:42attended by Christians and visiting dignitaries. On occasions, rabbis also preach to congregations, which even include visiting nobles from abroad. One English visitor recalled going to visit the synagogue and never having seen so much rich clothing and fine jewelry in evidence. There are shops which cater to different communities. Sometimes all communities. There is one that also caters to Christians as well. There is every type of economic activity you can think of. There are schools. By that point, there is also a form of Jewish self-government as well. It is quite sophisticated. It has its own rules and regulations. It has forms of elections, etc. It is responsible for gathering the heavy taxes that are owed to the Phoenician government and for renegotiating the charters which allow Jews to go on living in the city. It is not

30:44just that people are allowed to live there tacitly. It has to be negotiated and renegotiated for defined periods of time. Life is very rich, very busy, never easy, often turbulent. There is a surprisingly high degree of autonomy, although people within the ghetto are not notionally bound by the laws of Venice. The Jewish communities do go to great effort to resolve disputes themselves and to avoid involving the Phoenician court. The fact which itself is a source of immense controversy at a certain moment. It is described as the city of the Jews, a city within a city. Very much not ideal though. As time moved on, how did attitudes towards the purpose of and life within the ghetto change? There are several moments of transformation really. One important point of inflection concerned Venice's relationship with the church. In 1547,

31:46an inquisition was set up in Venice and this was from the beginning extremely concerned with the issue of new Christians, that is to say. Jews who in Iberia had been forced to convert Christianity, but who were on many occasions suspected of Judeoizing, that is, they reverting to Judaism. The Phoenician inquisition set up with the complicity of the Phoenician state seeks to prosecute any Jews that it thinks have previously been baptized. When it set up Venice is reasonably happy with this. However, very soon, Venice realizes that this is slightly problematic because by the mid-16th century, Venice not only needs credit, it also needs merchants. Having once been a very dynamic and vibrant mercantile empire, by that point, Venice is seeing its commercial empire of commercial dominance, wane dramatically, partially because of the discovery of new trade routes

32:47around the capes, partially because of competition from other Italian cities and states. So it really needs merchants. It really is very keen to have merchants from the Iberian peninsula. So it definitely doesn't want to prosecute people who it needs. Venice, as I said earlier, is always happy to fudge an issue if it proves advantageous, but it can't for a long time quite manage its relationship with the church. However, a breaking point comes in 1606 when as a result of tension over the prosecution of two very naughty priests under an issue over land, Venice is placed under interdict and then kind of separate itself slightly from what sets more independence from the church, and so far as matters such as this are concerned. And Venice is after 1606, 1607 very much happier to let issues like this slide, very much happier to let Jews come to the city,

33:51even if there's a suspicion they may have been Christians before. It just excises, don't tell policy, basically. So that allows it for time to become a lot more welcoming. However, very soon after that, and a few decades after that, we see a great cooling in attitudes towards Jews. And as the 17th century wears on, as Venice's commercial dependence on Jews grows, as its own economic affairs decline, you see a degree of, as I said, of real coolness coming in. The ghetto endures in one form or another until 1797 when as a result of the French invasion under Napoleon, it is finally opened, the gates are burned and the ghetto is formally abolished. This notionally grants Jews a great many more rights, it grants them pretty much the same rights any other citizen so you would think that that would lead to a great deal of improvement. But

34:51after that, it's a sea-saw-like situation. Venice changes hand several times, it goes from being French to being Austrian. When the Austrians come in, a more conservative approach takes hold, Jewish civil rights are restricted. In 1848, when revolutions come along, there is another attempt to kind of open up civil rights for Jews again, it short-lived, and things progress very slowly by the late 19th century. You do have many more Jewish figures playing a very much more prominent role in the first in Venice and then in what became the Kingdom of Italy. However, it's important to do a distinction between Jews who, by this stage, were allowed to live outside the ghetto and the Jews within the ghetto. Although the ghetto didn't formally exist as a separate legal entity by the mid-late 19th century, it did exist in an unofficial form. The majority of poor Jews still lived there

35:52and conditions there were getting worse by the day. Indeed, by the late 19th century, many of the buildings were so decrepit that the only way of dealing with them was to have some of them knocked down. So relations between Venice and the Jews and then came with the Kingdom of Italy and the Jews does change gradually over time depending on external circumstances. Better for some, worse for others. There is no general case. It is one of constant evolution. How careful should we be about perhaps drawing comparisons between the idea of ghetto in the 20th century with the earlier use of the word ghetto? Well, perhaps the best way of thinking about this is to consider how ghettos moved beyond Venice. One thing that is striking is how quickly the word ghetto migrates within 50 years of the foundation of the ghetto in Venice. We find other sites of Jewish segregation being referred to by the same term. In 1562, a Jewish ghetto is explicitly set up in Rome with that name

37:00and then very soon afterwards another one is found in Florence and then we find a sequence cropping up in the early 17th century in place like Padua and Manchu and Ferrala. However, even at this early date, the word ghetto is kind of a grab bag for a whole raft of different concepts. Although the reason it spreads is because it is a way a term that describes Jewish segregation without being tied to any particular geographical description, a street, a square, or whatever, as had been the case before 1516. It can also accommodate a variety of different meanings from from an early date. In every place where a ghetto is set up in Italy in the early modern period, it entails a slightly different relationship between different sources of power, between the intersection between faith and finance and issues of that variety. Things get even more complicated, the further on we go, really. After the Jewish ghettos in Venice are abolished from 1797 onwards,

38:07they spread beyond Italy. They move first to Germany and as they move, the word ghetto starts to acquire subtly different meanings. In Germany, it doesn't just mean sites of Jewish containment. It also comes to be used to describe Jewish particularism and it can indeed be seen as or used as where describing the resistance of a community to the totalising mission of emerging nation-states or as an affirmation of identity. Then a few decades after that, we find the word ghetto cropping up in the United States where the term loses its connection, its explicit connection with Judaism and starts to be applied to any migrant or vulnerable group on the periphery of society and serves as counterpoint, spatial and demographic counterpoint to the immense privileges that we see in certain parts of American city during the Guilty Age. Then of course later on in the 20th

39:12century, it is reappropriated by Nazis to describe the ghettos of Warsaw and London places like that. In this later stage, sites of confinement are used to prepare people for genocide. Each of these iterations of ghettos are very different from the last. There is no direct line which leads from Venice to the Holocaust at all and it would be foolish to assume that there was any direct continuity. Clearly that there is nothing in common between any of these except the word really. And if we are to write the history of ghetto as a concept, it is a history which is marked by variation. However, despite this qualification, it's still impossible to conceive of any of these forms of ghetto except as branches stemming from the same trunk. Really, they each trace back ultimately to the decisions of the Venetian government in the dark days of 1516.

40:16This is a story with so many personalities in it. Could you perhaps share with us just one of these personalities that you really feel shape the story of the ghetto? Absolutely, I think one person who captures the ghetto in its gold age perfectly is a woman called Sada Kopia Sulaum. Sada was fairly well to do Jewish women. She was married to a prominent figure in the Jewish community. She was very learned. She spoke many languages including obviously Italian and Hebrew, but as well Latin and several other languages as well. She enjoyed exchanging with literary figures. She enjoyed friendships with artists and poets and she wrote poetry herself. But she had a very eventful life. In 1618, while we're having a Mishka, she wrote a work called La Reina Esther by a priest called Anseldo Cheba and she loved it. She loved it so much in fact that she wrote to Cheba and the two sparked a very lively and affectionate correspondence both in prose and in poetry.

41:17They exchanged verses, they exchanged little gifts, they exchanged each other's pictures and they spoke very lovingly to one another. It was very chaste. She also gathered about a salon. She regularly held gatherings for poets and artists, et cetera, out her home and was tour intense and purposes an equivalent of the many notable salonier of the day. However, she suffered precisely because of her Jewish identity. Her Jewishness in Masones made her more vulnerable to abuse from those upon whom she shouled her large s. Relatively early on, one of her regular attendees, a guy called Baldissari Bonni Fatt shall, for somewhat obscure reasons wrote a pamphlet accusing of denying the immortality of the soul. You might think to yourself, well, so what? Who cares about that? But in the 17th century, this was a big deal. If it were the case that Sarah had denied the immortality of

42:20the soul, she could be tried for heresy, not just by Jewish authorities, but also by Christian authorities as well. So she wrote a hasty manifesto defending herself against that charge. And it was very well written. Her piece was very funny, it really attacked her accuser in a brilliant way. It's very entertaining. It's a good rubattle. However, her trouble didn't stop there. In fact, it was in the beginning. Not long after, another one of her hangars on, someone who she'd helped more than many, in fact, a chap called Paloitzi, who had contracted syphilis and she had to send to a spa or whatever to help. He cooked up a plot with one of her servants to convince her that foreign prince was chasing after her and wanted to correspond with her. And they were going to use this as a tool to persuade her to send valuable gifts to the prince, which of course he did of course exist and which they would of course then pocket. When this plot was exposed, Paloitzi then wrote a very, very angry, invective against her, in which she accused her of plagiarizing

43:26her verses. And she was of course furious with this so poor Sarah has to go to fight back again in print and she writes a very funny book in which Paloitzi is tried on panassas by the muses and the guards and all that lots and he's revealed just to be an idiot basically. And of course, nobody who had read Sarah's works either her poems or this controversy kind of possibly believed that her verses were by anybody else and nobody would have doubted anybody in their right mind, at least would have doubted that she was a very clever woman. But the fact that she'd had to go through these controversies and fight off these stupid accusations and rather, tojury people, to whom she had been kind, I think kind of sapt her enthusiasm and after she dealt with this last controversy, she sort of turned her back on literary interests and was forced to live in a rather quiet way. So in a sense, she is an example of the vulnerability of Jewish cultural figures who sort of reach

44:28beyond the Gettys' walls but at the same time, like many other figures in the Gettys history, I think the very fact that she was so creative, so original and so willing to reach out is a testament to its life, its cultural vibrancy as well. For those people who perhaps go to Venice or even just for those people listening at home thinking about this, is there anything in particular that they should remember, bear in mind, think about a message that you think they should be left with? If you visit the Gettys today, even for a short time as a visitor, you can't help but see around you remains of the Gettys' checkered past. You'll see the synagogues that were founded from the 16th century onwards. You'll see at least one surviving bank. You'll see a monument on the wall of the Jewish retirement home in the square of the Getton-Wolfo commemorating a guy called Giuseppe Johnna, a doctor and head of the Jewish community during the Second World War who saved the lives of

45:30hundreds of members of the community by committing suicide to prevent the names of the Jewish inhabitants from falling into Nazi hands. So it's impossible to escape the past. However, one thing that will strike you as you walk around the Gettys' Venice is the sense of life. Life continues there. It's vibrant, it's growing, the community is growing, it continues to grow day by day. Even though it still suffers from anti-Semitic attacks on a daily basis, in fact on an increasing basis of the past three or four years, it continues to go on. Every moment that it continues to live is an expression of defiance, a will to live and a sense of hope. So I think to be quite honest, that is what I always take from the ghetto when I go there. Even after having studied it for many, many years, I am always struck both by the memories of past sufferings and the presence of endurance

46:35and the sense of hope that one finds there. That's a wonderful message, Shalima. So thank you very much for your time today, Alex. Thank you. That was Alexander Lee, honour a fellow at the University of Warwick, speaking to Emily Breffett. Alexander's book, The First Ghetto, Venice and the Jews, is among the finalists for the 2026 Cundle History Prize. When Fall comes back around, there's a sense of a reset. And new pieces from Lululemon's Fall Drop are an inspiration to push your goals and elevate your routines. As your calendar fills, easy to layer styles meet the demands of your day, and as you challenge yourself to try even more, versatile sets transition with you. The Lululemon Fall lineup brings new levels of comfort and confidence, whether you're starting something fresh or starting something over. Check out the latest arrivals in store and on Lululemon.com now. At Farmers, our honesty is contagious. Wait,

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