JWST 110 - Venice, the Jews and Europe

Semester Offered: Spring
0.5 unit(s)

The intensive class (meeting once a week for the second 6 weeks of Spring semester) and ten day study trip focuses on the urban history of the Jewish Ghetto of Venice, underscoring the wealth of relationships between the Jews and civic society throughout the history of their long residence in the lagoon, in the Veneto, and in Europe and the Mediterranean. It recounts the story of the Ghetto’s settlement, its growth, its architecture, its society, its trades, its daily life, and the relationships between the Jewish minority and the city at large, within the context of its relationships with other Jewish settlements in Europe and the Mediterranean basin. Questions of communal identity and cross-cultural identification are explored, as Venice was a crossroads between Ashkenazic, Sephardic, Levantine and “native Italian” Jewish culture. And material culture plays a crucial role in our course—we discuss everything from the manner in which the unique Jewish silver ceremonial objects created in Venice fuse religious customs and traditions with art, craftsmanship and culture to the ways in which Jews were depicted in art produced for Christians in Venice. And we explore the extraordinary importance of Jewish printing in the city in which the Talmud was first printed. Marc Epstein.

Second six-week course.

One 2-hour period.

Course Format: INT