At the U. Nahon Museum of Italian Art art is displayed alongside an ancient Italian synagogue which still functions on holidays and special occasions. Portions of the synagogue’s gold-colored wooden ark date back to the early 1600s

But a tour of the museum doesn’t start with the synagogue. On this particular day we begin with the exhibit “The Jewish Court of Venice” which is on display in honor of the 500th anniversary of the Venetian Ghetto that stood from 1516 to 1797. Our first stop is a series of delicately painted wooden panels depicting scenes of Am Yisrael in the desert which were once part of an 18th-century succah. Here we are introduced to two motifs that will be repeated several times during the tour the strong communal nature of the Italian kehillah and their love of beautifying the mitzvos.

“Although the succah belonged to the Sullam family a well-known Venetian family it probably stood in a public square and was used by the community ” explains Michal Campagnano-Ayali our guide. “The buildings in the ghetto were tall and crowded together and so it wasn’t possible for each family to build their own succah.”

Weren’t the Sullams worried that kids with tomato-sauce-stained hands would finger paint over the expensive artwork? Apparently not; love and respect for art is imbued from an early age it seems because the panels are in remarkably good shape.

Michal adds that even though we don’t know who painted the boards we can assume they weren’t painted by a Jew. Jews weren’t allowed to be members of the artists’ guild although Jewish craftsmen were allowed to work in lace textiles and metal. We will see examples of all of these — exquisitely embroidered silk Torah mantles elaborately worked Torah finials and megillah cases — in the rooms that follow. But no exhibit about Venice can neglect to mention the hundreds of seforim that were printed there during the heyday of Venetian printing. For example the first complete set of the Talmud was printed in Venice in 1520 by non-Jewish printer Daniel Bomberg. A 1609 Haggadah shel Pesach which is on display at the museum not only had illustrations but also translations into three languages — Judeo-Italian Ladino and Yiddish — reflecting the diversity of Venice’s Jewish community at that time.

“The ghetto was filled with all kinds of Jews ” Michal comments. “And we have to differentiate between the Venetian Ghetto and the ones of the Nazis. The Venetian Ghetto was crowded but the Jews were able to practice Judaism freely which is one reason why many Anusim from Spain and Portugal came to Venice. They were able to return to Judaism there.” (Excerpted from Mishpacha Issue 663)