History of the Jews in Venice

The heyday of the Jewish community of Venice is both comparatively late and short, comprising the greater parts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. However, during this time, Venice attracted some of the most vivid personalities in the whole range of Jewish history. It also became for a while an important place of meeting between Jews of the east and west and a significant center of Hebrew printing. At the same time, within the ghetto walls -- the word "ghetto" itself being of Venetian origin -- there developed a social life of extraordinary warmth and interest, which it is possible to reconstruct in unusual detail. In this work, Cecil Roth focuses on the day-to-day life of the Jews and their institutions. He tells of the role Jews played in Venetian life generally, but for the most part describes their organizational and institutional life and portrays many fascinating people -- merchants and scholars -- who were associated with the ghetto. It is in this respect -- as a social history of a Jewish community sharing much in common with other Jewish communities -- that History of the Jews in Venice is a work of great importance for the student of Jewish history, as well as for the casual reader who will find in its pages many absorbing narratives of Jewish-Italian life, brought to light by the historical researches that went into making this book.