THE GHETTO, Jewish Museum

In the Schools Square at the center of the Old Ghetto you can visit the Jewish Museum: it's small but is set up very well, and will clarify any questions you could have about the use of many objects of worship and the community's customs.

The first room has materials related to celebrating Jewish holidays both in the community and privately. The silver also comes from other Italian communities who wanted to share specific aspects of Jewish culture and art through the country's most well-known museum. For this reason you'll see authentic masterpieces, such as the silver case containing the Torah. The Sefer Torah are parchments on which the first five books of the Bible are written (strictly by hand): tightly wrapped in bands, the rolls are placed in hard or fabric cases within a wooden structure surmounted by a crown and two pinnacles. The sticks you see in the middle of the rolls served for their easy consultation, as the religion prohibited them from being touched with bare hands. They are preserved in the Holy Ark of the Synagogue and are removed only to be read during the Sabbath or other religious holidays.

The second room of the museum has a complete example of the Holy Ark: if it looks familiar, yes, it resembles a small version of the one in the movie "Raiders of the Lost Ark"! This room has beautiful, often embroidered fabrics: they are covers for the rolls, drapes for the doors of the Ark, and curtains for the pulpit.

Notice also how elegant the lace upholstery for the Brit Milah ceremony is, which is for circumcision, and note how interesting the eighteenth-century examples of the Ketubboth are, which is a marriage contract.

In 2016, the Ghetto of Venice celebrated its 500th anniversary. If you want to learn more about its history, the museum also has a library, called "Alef", which is the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet; the library has a lot of information about Jewish culture and authors.

FUN FACT: the Ghetto district is divided into two parts: the Ghetto Vecchio and Ghetto Nuovo, or Old Ghetto and New Ghetto. But don't be fooled by the names: in fact, the oldest of the two is the New Ghetto, which was assigned to the Ashkenazi community that arrived from central-northern Europe. The Sephardic community instead settled in the Old Ghetto twenty-five years later.