History of the Jews (42 page)

The great Sephardi diaspora, from Spain in 1492, from Portugal in 1497, set Jews in motion everywhere, for the arrival of refugees in large numbers usually led to further expulsions. Many Jews, reduced to near destitution, denied entrance to cities from which Jews had already been banned, took to peddling. It is no coincidence that the legend of the Wandering Jew assumed mature form about this time. The story of a Jew who had struck Christ on his
via dolorosa
, and so been condemned to wander until the Second Coming, first appeared in a Bolognese chronicle in 1223; Roger of Wendover recorded it five years later in his
Flowers of History
. But it was in the early decades of the sixteenth century that the Wanderer became Ahasuerus, the Jewish archetype pedlar, old, bearded, ragged, sad, a harbinger of calamity.
¹
The Bishop of Schleswig claimed he saw him in a church in Hamburg in 1542, and as the hundred or more folktale versions circulated in print, he was seen repeatedly: at Lübeck in 1603, Paris in 1604, Brussels in 1640, Leipzig in 1642, Munich 1721, London in 1818. He became the subject of a vast literature. There were, of course, innumerable, genuine wandering Jews: it was the Jewish predicament in the Renaissance and after, to become again ‘strangers and sojourners’, like Abraham.

One such wanderer was Solomon ibn Verga (
c
. 1450-
c
. 1525), a native of Malaga, thrown out of Spain, then Portugal, who came to Italy in 1506 and wandered there. We do not know where, if anywhere, he finally settled; but he spent some time in Rome. There he wrote a book called
Shevet Yehuda
, the Rod of Judah, asking, in effect, Why do men hate Jews? This essay has some claim to be called the first work of Jewish history since Josephus’
Antiquities
1,400 years before, for Ibn Verga describes no less than sixty-four persecutions of Jews. In writing it he signalled the first sign, albeit a faint one, of a return of Jewish historical self-consciousness.

It was evidence of the pitiful Jewish predicament in Christian Europe that Ibn Verga could not get his book published in his lifetime, and it was first printed about 1554 in Turkey. But, all the same, Ibn Verga was a man of the Renaissance, a rationalist, a sceptic, an independent mind. He was strongly critical of the Talmud, he mocked Maimonides, he parodied the views of Judah Halevi. Using the form of imaginary dialogues, he derided much Jewish scholarship. If the Jews were downtrodden, it was to a great extent their own fault. They were proud but at the same time too passive and trustful in God; hopeful and over-obedient, they neglected both political and military science and so were ‘twice naked’. Neither Jews nor Christians would recognize the case for rival beliefs; both countenanced superstition and legends. If the Christians were intolerant, the Jews were unaccommodating. He pointed out that, as a rule, ‘the kings of Spain and France, the nobility, the learned and all the men of dignity were friendly to the Jews’; prejudice came chiefly from the ignorant, uneducated poor. ‘I have never seen a man of reason hate the Jews’, he has a wise man say, ‘and there is none who hates them except the common people. For this there is a reason—the Jew is arrogant and always seeks to rule; you would never think that they are exiles and slaves driven from people to people. Rather, they seek to show themselves lords and masters. Therefore the masses envy them.’
²
Why did not the Jews try to break down prejudice by behaving more modestly and humbly, and by preaching religious tolerance and understanding?
³

Ibn Verga wrote in Hebrew and was clearly addressing himself to an educated Jewish readership, who would know the justice of his criticisms. So we must attach some weight to his charges. But the evidence we have does not suggest that overbearing arrogance was usually the reason why Jews were attacked. The usual cause of trouble was an influx of strange Jews, pushing numbers in the established Jewish community beyond a critical point. In Venice, for instance, which had been a major trading state since the tenth century, and which was a natural place for Jews to settle, they had met some resistance. In the thirteenth century they were corralled on the island of Spinalunga, the Giudecca; at other times they were forced to live on the mainland at Mestre. They had to wear a circular yellow badge, then a yellow hat, then a red hat. But there were always Jews there. They did well. They made important contributions to the Venetian economy, not least by paying special taxes. They had a charter or
condotta
, repeatedly confirmed.

In May 1509 the forces of the League of Cambrai defeated the
Venetian army at Agnadello, and there was a panic flight from the
terra firma
to the main islands. The refugees included over 5,000 Jews, many of them immigrants from Spain and Portugal. Two years later, an agitation for their expulsion began, touched off by sermons from the friars. It culminated in 1515-16 in a decision by the state to confine the entire Jewish community to a segregated area of the city. The spot chosen was a former canon foundry, known as the
ghetto nuovo
, in the part of the central islands furthest removed from the Piazza San Marco. The new foundry was formed into an island by canals, equipped with high walls, all windows facing outward bricked up, and two gates set up manned by four Christian watchmen; six other watchmen were to man two patrol boats, and all ten were to be paid for by the Jewish community, which was also instructed to take out a perpetual lease of the property at one-third above the going rate.
⁴

The concept of a separate quarter for Jews was not new. It went back to antiquity. Most major Islamic cities had one. In Dark Age Europe the Jews had often demanded segregation and high walls as a condition for settling in a town. But they objected strongly to the Venetian proposal. It was plainly designed to secure the maximum economic advantage from a Jewish presence (including special taxes) while ensuring Jews had the minimum social contacts with the rest of the population. They were, in effect, permitted to do their business by day, at an inconvenient distance, and locked in at night. But Venice insisted, and in fact the system probably prevented subsequent proposals, to expel the Jews altogether, from being accepted. The original
ghetto nuovo
accommodated Italian Jews chiefly of German origin. In 1541 Jews of the Levant were moved into the nearby old foundry or
ghetto vecchio
. Finally in 1633 the area was further enlarged by adding the
ghetto novissimo
to house western Jews.
⁵
At this time (1632) there were 2,412 Jews in the ghetto out of a total Venetian population of 98,244. With the extra space the ghetto was able to house nearly 5,000 Jews by 1655.
⁶
To live thus enclosed, the Jews paid not only ordinary taxes and custom dues, but a special annual tax of 10,000 ducats a year and forced levies, during the first century of the ghetto, of at least 60,000 ducats, totalling not less than 250,000 ducats in all.
⁷

Why did the Jews submit so patiently to this kind of oppression? In a book about the Jews of Venice, Simhah Luzzatto (1583-1663), who served them as rabbi for fifty-seven years, argued that Jewish passivity, which so irritated Ibn Verga, was a matter of faith: ‘For they believe that any recognizable change which relates to them…derives from a higher cause and not human effort.’
⁸
Many Jews were disturbed at the
time by the failure of the huge and once wealthy and powerful Spanish community to offer any resistance to their cruel expulsion. Some pointed to the contrast with Jewish bellicosity in antiquity; why could not Jews be more like their ancestor, Mordecai? They quoted the Book of Esther: ‘And all the king’s servants that were in the king’s gate bowed and reverenced Haman…. But Mordecai bowed not, nor did he do reverence.’
⁹
But the same text—a favourite among Jews, then and now—offered alternative guidance. Had not Esther, on Mordecai’s advice, concealed her Jewishness? She ‘had not showed her people nor her kindred’, as many
marranos
pointed out. The concealed, secret Jew, as well as the passive Jew, was as old as the Bible. Then, too, there was Naaman who ‘bowed in the House of Rimmon’. Yet Jews were aware that the Book of Esther contained a warning, for the evil Haman had proposed a general massacre of the Jews to King Ahasuerus. Rabbi Joseph ibn Yahya, in his commentary on Esther published in Bologna in 1538, pointed out that Haman’s reasoning—the Jews being ‘scattered abroad and dispersed among the people’ made them incapable of resistance—applied equally well to the Jews of his day.
¹⁰

The truth is that Jewish communities accepted oppression, and second-class status, provided it had definite rules which were not constantly and arbitrarily changed without warning. What they hated most was uncertainty. The ghetto offered security and even comfort of a kind. It made the observance of the law easier in many ways, by concentrating and isolating Jews. If segregation, as the church claimed, safeguarded Christians from evil Jewish contacts, equally it protected Jews from secularity. The law-code of Joseph Caro (1488-1575), which became the authoritative halakhic text for many generations of orthodox Jews, might have been designed for the self-containment and introspection which the ghetto produced.

Within the ghetto, Jews were able to pursue an intense, if separate, cultural life. But there were many inter-faith contacts. Around the time the ghetto was created, the Christian printer Daniel Bomberg set up a Hebrew printing-press in Venice. Christians, Jews and converts collaborated in producing a magnificent edition of the two Talmuds (1520-3), whose pagination has become standard ever since. The Jewish typesetters and proof-readers were dispensed from wearing the yellow hat. Other Hebrew printing shops appeared. Not only religious classics but contemporary Jewish works thus got into print. Caro’s popular condensation of his great code, the
Shulhan Arukh
, was published in Venice, and in 1574 it appeared there in a pocket edition, ‘so that’, the title-page states, ‘it can be carried in one’s bosom and may
be referred to at any time and any place, while resting or travelling’.
¹¹

Despite the exactions of the state, the Venetian community flourished. It was divided into three nations, the Penentines from Spain, the Levantines who were Turkish subjects, and the Natione Tedesca or Jews of German origin, the oldest, largest and least wealthy section. They alone were allowed to practise moneylending, and they spoke Italian. But they were not granted Venetian citizenship; even at the end of the eighteenth century the law laid down that ‘the Jews of Venice and of the state or any other Jew cannot claim nor enjoy any right of citizenship’.
¹²
Shakespeare was correct in making this point in
The Merchant of Venice
. He was also plausible in having Jessica say that her father Shylock’s house was full of treasures. Successful Jewish moneylenders often accumulated quantities of unredeemed pledges, especially jewels. Local sumptuary laws were enacted to prevent them wearing such spoil; indeed the Jews drew up their own sumptuary prohibitions, to avert ‘the envy and hatred of the gentiles, who fix their gaze upon us’.
¹³

Despite the restrictive garb, however, there was no lack of gaiety in the Venetian ghetto. A contemporary described the Rejoicing of the Law ceremonies:

 

A sort of half-carnival is held on this evening, for many maidens and brides mask themselves, so as not to be recognized, and visit all the synagogues. They are thronged at this period by Christian ladies and gentlemen out of curiosity…. There are present all nations, Spaniards, Levantines, Portuguese, Germans, Greeks, Italians and others, and each sings according to his own usage. Since they do not use instruments, some clap their hands above their head, some smite their thighs, some imitate the castanets with their fingers, some pretend to play the guitar by scraping their doublets. In short they so act with these noises, jumpings and dancings, with strange contortions of their faces, mouths, arms and all other members, that it appears to be carnival mimicry.
¹⁴

 

The absence of musical instruments was entirely due to opposition by the rabbis. Many of them objected to art music of any kind on the grounds that it involved excessive repetition of the sacred words of the prayers, and especially of God’s name—they argued, not very convincingly, that it might lead the simple to believe there were two or more Gods. (In sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England, the Puritans put forward similar arguments against polyphonic music, insisting on no more than one note for each syllable of the prayer.) In Senigallia, near Ancona, the record has survived of a furious row between the local rabbi and the
maestro di capella
, Mordecai della Rocca—the rabbi insisting, with the help of voluminous citations from
the Talmud and kabbalistic sources, that music existed simply to bring out the meaning of the text, all else being ‘mere buffoonery’.
¹⁵
None the less, the Venetian ghetto certainly had an academy of music early in the seventeenth century. Cecil Roth’s studies of Renaissance Venice Jewry show that there were frequent complaints from rigorists about the luxury and worldliness of ghetto life, and the preference for Italian over Hebrew, so that a clamour arose for prayers in the vernacular. Jews wrote plays and works on mathematics, astronomy and economics, all in Italian. They also produced ingenious arguments for taking gondolas on the Sabbath.
¹⁶
They had their own schools in the ghetto, but they were allowed to attend the medical school at nearby Padua, and take degrees there. Many rabbis would have liked the walls of the ghetto higher.

Indeed, though relations between Jews and the world outside tend to constitute the stuff of history, for most of the time Jews were more concerned by their own internal affairs, which were sometimes stormy. At the time the Venetian ghetto was being set up, Italian Jewry was convulsed by attempts to bring to book Immanuel ben Noah Raphael da Norsa, a rich man who ruled the Ferrara community like a tyrant, with his own tame rabbi, David Piazzighettone, to produce rulings on his behalf. He used to say: ‘Here I sit in my city in the midst of my people, and whoever has any claim against me let him come here to sue me.’ Christians as well as Jews bowed before him, it was said. His activities came to light when Abraham da Finzi, who claimed Norsa had defrauded him of 5,000 gold florins, a ruby and an emerald, took him before the rabbinical court in Bologna. Norsa’s son, claiming his father was away, refused to accept the writ, saying ‘Get away, you
fresca di merda
.’ The tame rabbi also refused service, exclaiming: ‘What have I to do with you,
putto di Haman
?’ The case went before half a dozen rabbinical courts all over Italy, and although most sided against Norsa, he had a doughty champion in Abraham Mintz, whose father Rabbi Judah Mintz had been head of the Padua
yeshivah
for forty-seven years, and who was later rabbi of Mantua. Rival letters and summonses were torn up; rabbis were threatened with the pillory and with being dragged into Christian courts. Each rabbinical group abused the other for lack of family and learning; each boasted of its own genealogies and scholarly prowess, and the argument was envenomed by the Sephardi-Ashkenazi divide. Mintz accused Rabbi Abraham Cohen of Bologna of being ‘a smooth-tongued Sephardi…the Satan in the case’. Cohen retorted: ‘You call my forefathers quarrelsome priests…. I am proud of that name [Sephardi] for we Sephardim sanctified the divine name before the whole world, I among
them, and passed through the greatest temptations…. You are a wretch, worthless, a liar and swindler…. You ignorant, stupid, silly, senseless fool.’ He said Mintz had always made his living by robbery and embezzlement, ‘known from one end of the world to the other as a villain and mocker’. It was said, too, that Mintz had succeeded his father only because he played the
shofar
well. In the end more than fifty rabbis, some from outside Italy, were involved and Norsa had to yield. The case against him looks black, but then the account that has survived was compiled by his rabbinical opponents; rabbis on both sides were linked by networks of marriages and the legal-doctrinal points were complicated by dynastic feuds going back generations.
¹⁷