NEH Institute: Venice, the Jews, and Italian Culture

This section is organized according to the schedule of the institute. Each week has its own page with a list of all sessions with links to recorders’ and respondents’ reports, the audio recording of the lecture, and additional resources which include photos, related links, and any additional material provided by the presenter. Just click on the session you want!


Week 1: June 20-22: Founding Era: Toleration, Exclusion, and the Ghetto

Renata Segre: Beginnings of the Venetian Jewish Community, 13th-14th Centuries

The lecture focuses on exploring the pre-ghetto presence of Jews in Venice during the 13th and 14th centuries. No doubt there were people present in Venice in the 150 years before the ghetto who were Jews but were not known as Jews. Through an examination of the lives of a few notable Jewish physicians, a broad picture of Jewish presence begins to emerge.
Paul Skenazy's Report / Russell Valentino's Response / Cynthia Baker's Response /Audio

Donatella Calabi: City of the Jews

While the word "ghetto" has come to be associated with exclusion and segregation, it actually originated as a toponym designating the place where the detritus from the copper works was thrown away (gettare: "to throw away"). The Ashkenzic Jewish immigrants to Venice read and pronounced the "g" as a hard sound, leading to the Italian spelling of "gh." The lecture contextualizes the presence of the Jews in Venice during the 15th and 16th centuries along with other important foreign communities such as the Germans, Turks, Persians, Greeks, Armenians, and Lucchesi (those from Lucca). Anticipating that differences might lead to conflict, the Republic of Venice carefully established the terms for relationships with foreigners in such a way as to guarantee them a place to live and conduct commerce while defending citizens and foreigners from each other.
Ronnie Scharfman's Report / Audio

Shaul Bassi: Shakespeare's Venice: The Merchant of Venice/Othello

Although an immense scholarly bibliography exists for each work, surprisingly little has been written on Shakespeare's two Venetian plays together. This suggests that there may be some resistance to discussing Jews and Moors together. The lecture considers similarities between the afterlife of the two plays and includes a slideshow tour of Shakespeare's Venice.
Presentation / Audio / Discussion (Audio) / Miriam Shein Report

Deanna Shemek: Renaissance Italy, Isabella d'Este, Sara Copio Sullam
Amy Kaminsky's Report / Karina Attar's Response / Introductory Remarks (Audio) / Audio Part 1: Background on Sara Copio Sullam and female writing in Venice / Audio Part 2: Sara Copio Sullam's correspondence with men

Deanna Shemek: Sara Copio Sullam (1594-1641): The Voice of the Shuttle in Venice's Jewish Ghetto

Day 1: Seventeenth-century poet and intellectual Sara Copio Sullam's position between the religious conflict and the gender debate in Venice makes her a historically significant figure. Yet Copio Sullam is a figure of interest in her own right, who possessed a forceful inquisitive mind that stood out among her contemporaries, male and female, Christian and Jew. Resented both for her identity as a Jew and as a woman, Copio Sullam had three major exchanges with prominent Christian men. The lecture begins by reviewing the situation of the Jews and situation of women in early modern Venice, before turning to these contretemps.

Day 2: This day’s presentation surveys the heritage of women’s writing in Venice at the time that Sara Copio Sullam considered herself as someone with an intellectual voice, at least in her salon. It is not clear that these women read each other’s work, since many were not published until long after they died. However, strong patterns emerge in the rhetoric of women’s writing such as a reluctance to assume the task of writing and a solidarity among women who advocate for the writing of other women.
Robin Russin's Report / Audio

Murray Baumgarten: Leone Modena's Hayye Yehuda and Jewish Autobiography

The lecture suggests that Leone Modena's autobiography reveals a representative crisis for Jews in the Venetian ghetto during the seventeenth century. The work exemplifies the contrast between the era of tribalism, which Modena represents, and the movement toward modernity as it records Modena's difficulty in reconciling his individualism with the pressures of his familial and professional responsibilities and relationships.
Kathleen Sunshine's Report / Audio

 

Week 2: June 26-28: Revolution, Emancipation, Citizenship

Eva Renzulli: Lecture: Haunted Ambiguity: Representations of Jews in the Italian Renaissance
Shirley Kagan's Report / Audio / Robin Russin's Response; Q & A (Audio)

Gadi Luzzato Voghera: From Jews to Israelites: Emancipation in Italy
Michael Thaler's Report / Audio / Lang Response; Q & A (Audio)

Shaul Bassi: Flying & Drowning in the Ghetto: Howells, Zangwill, Rilke
Audio / Discussion (Audio)

 

Week 3: July 3-6: Outside and Inside: Modern Venice and the Jews

Margaret Brose: Ghettos without Walls: Giorgio Bassani's The Garden of the Finzi-Contini
Will Wells's Report / Madhuri M. Yadlapati's Response / Audio 1 / Yadlapati Response; Q & A (Audio)

Margaret Brose: Italia Irridenta/Italy Unredeemed: On Being Jewish in Trieste (Umberto Saba and Italo Svevo)
Kathleen Sunshine's Report / Russell Valentino's Response / Will Wells's Response / Audio Part 1 / Audio Part 2 / Valentino and Wells Responses (Audio)

Murray Baumgarten: Venice in modern Hebrew poetry

This presentation was a group discussion on the relationship between modern Hebrew poetry and Venice. Modern Hebrew poetry often employs Venice as a topos, and thus the Ghetto as topos as well. How does modern Jewish culture contend with the Ghetto? Is Jewish culture still in exile? What is a Jewish poem? The discussion considered these and other questions in the context of three modern Hebrew poems translated by Institute participants: Leah Goldberg’s “Sirocco in Venice” (translated by Shirley Kagan), Dan Pagis’s “Venice” (translated by Paul Hamburg), and Yehuda Amichai's “Snow in Venice” (translated by Miriam Shein).
Discussion on translation, Part 1 (Audio) / Discussion on translation, Part 2 (Audio) / Analysis of Amichai's "The Synagogue in the Venice Ghetto" / Analysis of Amichai's "Snow in Venice"

Shaul Bassi: Dabrar in Hatzer: Judaeo-Venetian Literature and Drama

Summary of Umberto Fortis’s book La parlata degli ebrei Venezia e le parlate giudeo-italiane on the everyday language used among Venetian Jews and his own experience with Jewish Venetian. Reissued in 2007, the study was first published in 1979 when there were still speakers of the language. Shaul Bassi is of the generation that understands much of this language but speaks only a little.
Amy Kaminsky's Response / Audio / Q & A (Audio)

 

Week 4: July 10-14: Fascism and the New Ghetto

Simon Levis Sullam: A Community Imagined: the Jews of Venice Before and During Fascism

“My presentation is organized into two parts: I will present the profile of the Jewish community of Venice before and during Fascism, based largely on my book The Jews of Venice, as well as a broader picture of Italian Jews under Fascism, which will lay the basis for the next day’s discussion on Primo Levi. I’d like to suggest that the Venice Jewish community—and the Jewish community in general—can be interpreted as an “imagined community.” This term, proposed by historian Benedict Anderson in his book of the same title, views nations as a symbolic production based on tropological, historical, linguistic cultics. I would claim that the Jews are a symbolic construction that has developed and changed through time, and that they are a particularly strong example of an imagined community, being one of the most imagined groups through time, always present in the Western imagination. I would also propose we consider antisemitism as a way of imagining the community, that is, as a negative construction producing the community as a symbolic construct.”
Karina Attar's Report / Audio 1 / Audio 2 / Attar Response; Q & A (Audio) / Q & A cont'd (Audio)

Simon Levis Sullam: The Jews and Fascism cont'd
Madhuri M. Yadlapati's Response / Audio / Yadlapati Response; Q & A (Audio)

Murray Baumgarten: Primo Levi and Silvano Arieti
Karina Attar's Report / Audio / Q & A (Audio)

Interview: Roberto Bassi
Audio

Interview: Rabbi Richetti
Audio / Sephardic Tune / Haftarot / Pesach 1 / Pesach 2 / SederVen 1 / SederVen 2

Jonathan Malino: Venetian Liturgical Music

Interview: Leo Jesurum, Marco Savadori, Olga Nerman

Translated by Ariella Lang and Karina Attar (and pos. Shaul Bassi or Robin Russin).
Following the screening of the documentary film Rizzo é Patate (“Rice and Potatoes”) made by Italo Todde, an interview panel composed of three of the persons featured in the film was held. Napoleone (“Leo”) Jesurun, Marco Salvatore, and Olga Nerman speak about their experience as Jews growing up in Venice during World War II.
Robin Russin's Report / Audio / Ping Pong with the Nazis - Will Wells

A Discussion on Teaching, led by Murray Baumgarten
Paul E. Michelson's Report

Shaul Bassi: "Excuse Me, Where's the Pagoda?" Globalizing the Ghetto in the Context of Recent Writing About Venice
Paul E. Michelson's Report / Q & A / Handout

 

Week 5: July 17-20: The Ghetto as Museum: Venetian Jewry Today

The concluding week of the NEH Institute was organized as a conference, with each of the Institute participants presenting the results of their research, and included additional speakers, who participated with the support of the Delmas foundation.

11:30-12:30: A Venetian Jewish Anthology - Audio File

Murray Baumgarten

Shaul Bassi


12:30: Closing Ceremony

New VP of Jewish Community - Audio File