Palaces, Ghettos And Co-Existing Dissonant Truths

As a child, the world seemed relatively binary. Things are good or bad, I like them or I don’t, people are nice or mean. Following the rules was good, disobeying them a problem. You’re happy or sad. We’re a fight, angry and at odds or we’re resolved, copacetic and happy . People who love you are kind, people who don’t aren’t. So many clear-cut, simple to understand dichotomies.

Looking back, one of the hardest parts of growing up was coming to grips with not only all the shades of both gray and color that exist. More importantly, two or more seemingly dissimilar things can be simultaneously true. We can not be in a fight and not be resolved. I can like something and not. People are often not mean but not nice – AND – they can be both nice and mean. We can have the best government, which can also suck in many ways – as Winston Churchill observed in a 1947 speech to Parliament, “Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”

I don’t know if it’s universal, but today children are often taught through books, school and media – as well as from emotionally sophisticated parents – that we can have two feelings at the same time. Daniel Tiger was teaching it to my kids when they were just three. From there, it becomes easier to branch into how two seemingly dissonant truths can coexist.

Today, Ailyn struggled with how Jews locked into ghettos at night might also be making their best possible choice by staying.

The word Ghetto originated here in Venice. It came from the word for foundry – getto. The Ghetto Nuovo (New Foundry) was the first decreed into existence in 1516 – forcing the largely Ashkenazi Jewish population into the area around the New Foundry in which gates were placed around the bridges in and out of the neighborhood and the residents locked up from sundown to sunrise (an order Tevye would hundreds of years later daringly turn on its head). The Venetian government was so pleased with the Ghetto Nuovo that when 3o+ years later, Sephardic Jews began showing up in Venice, the Doge gave them their own ghetto – Ghetto Vecchio, meaning Old Foundry – right next to Ghetto Nuovo. So, the New Foundry is the older ghetto and the Old Foundry is the newer Ghetto – being immediately adjacent, they eventually formed one “greater ghetto area” only one leaned knishes and the other bourekas.

Venetian Jews lived this ghetto life for 271 years when Napoleon came marching into Venice, ended 1100 years of independence and merged it into Austria, which he ultimately put under the French Empire – until that no longer worked out for him. The Hapsburgs, however, were happy to keep Venice and did so for another 69 years. And while Jews weren’t emancipated in Austria for much of that time, Napoleon and his code of law (one of his actual gifts to France and Europe) had emancipated the Venetian Jews already and Austria chose not to roll it back.

When the kids and I visited the ghettos – just a few “blocks” from our Airbnb apartment – it wasn’t hard for them to viscerally understand the idea. The remnant of a frame for a gate was still in one tunnel leading into the neighborhood and they just had to imagine gates around a couple of other bridges and tunnels – and there you have it. Inside the ghetto was a giant Hanukkiah, lit to six nights. A kosher restaurant, Jewish community center, several synagogues and a few American Jewish teenagers talking about what it is to be Jewish in the middle of the Ghetto Nuovo square all made it very clear that within this little section of town, there’s Jewish life.

So did the police kiosk with seven or eight officers armed with semi-automatic weapons.

I contacted the Jewish Venice organization that runs the synagogues to see if we could attend Friday night Kabbalat Shabbat services – something we thought would be very cool. I wasn’t surprised they required advance submission of our passports in order to be added to the admission list. Temple Etz Chaim does the same thing for High Holidays. Their rule about not being allowed to leave services early also made sense for security reasons. I was surprised, but okay with the fact that they merge their Kabbalat Shabbat with afternoon Mincha prayers rather than with evening Ma’ariv prayers – the way we do it in the US and at any synagogue I’ve ever been. But you know, when in Venice…

Then came the one condition that broke the deal – they offer only Orthodox Sephardic services and women (and girls) have to sit in an upper balcony, separate from men. Ailyn was understandably uncomfortable with this on both physical and philosophic levels. Sitting alone in a balcony in a new synagogue in a foreign country would be uncomfortable for anyone – and this was the first thing to which she reacted. Then, as she processed the concept of women sitting separately from men and effectively being excluded from any meaningful participation, I could see the spark of annoyance grow into a flame of anger. Ailyn went from not liking the idea of the balcony to a soft-edge Gloria Steinem calling bullshit on the patriarchy.

“I like the way we do it in America, men and women should be able to sit together – families should be together. We all should be able to pray together and sing together. That’s what Shabbat is!”

I agree completely, my girl.

But it wasn’t until we left the ghetto  – having elected not to attend services – that a bigger realization hit Ailyn and her flame shrunk. Were Jews locked in their individual homes or just the neighborhood in general? If they didn’t want to be locked in the ghetto all night, could they just stay out, enjoy the city and just not go home until morning (kind of the John Hughes/Ferris Bueller approach)? Then – when I explained it all… If Jews were locked up at night and in danger of being imprisoned or killed for staying out of the ghetto past sunset – why would they stay in Venice?

Because as shitty as being locked up at night was, Venice also gave Jews meaningful economic opportunities – maybe more so than anywhere else in Europe at the time. Unlike the contemporary use of the word ghetto, the Venetian Ghettos were not necessarily filled with poor people. The allowed occupations included doctors, jewelers, publishers and as anyone familiar with Shakespeare knows – money lenders. In Venice money and power didn’t always co-exist – which was especially the case for its Jewish population.

This co-existence of success and repression bent Ailyn’s noodle. Though she stopped her verbal questions there, I could see her face flood with the conundrum of “what would I choose – freedom or financial security?” or maybe phrased another way, “what is success?” It came with the same look as “why does she stay with that man?”

It is sadly possible for someone to decide the best possible life for them involves being locked up nightly.

Perhaps it helped that earlier in the day, we took the “Hidden Treasures” guided tour of the Doge’s Palace. In 1100 years of the Republic of Venice, there were a lot of Doges – ruling dukes elected by the voting noble classes with not only lifelong tenures, but no option as to whether or not they served (they could be elected against their wills) or to resign. Surely, most doges wanted the job – but apparently not always and even more commonly, some wanted to quit once they found out what it was really like.

One thing we learned was that frequently, Venetian merchants could become fabulously wealthy, but no amount of success could raise their status. Only nobility could rule. Titles alone made you eligible to be Doge or to serve in his council. Power was formally in the hands of three percent of the population with no options for a merchant or anyone else to ascend.

And while Ailyn processed the ghetto visit more deeply, Sennen took the lead at the palace. In fact, it’s possible I have never gotten more for my money than what I paid for the tour tickets. The very nice English-speaking guide was regularly peppered with questions both detailed and deep. “If everyone was Catholic, why would the Doge stand on a staircase with statues of Mars and Neptune which are pagan gods?” And the series of questions about why the daughters of the wealthy and noble were often forced to become nuns but still had wealth and sometimes babies – well, that involved numerous co-existing truths, not all of which the guide wanted to address.

The guide spoke a lot about Saint Mark – the patron saint of Venice – and I realized from Sennen’s questions that perhaps I should have provided a Christianity 101 course before arriving in Italy . How saints could be actual humans, but then have stories about their continued action in spirit form was of special interest to Sennen.

For Ailyn, the narrative of St Mark was of no interest, but she was wowed by St Mark’s Basilica – particularly the complex and ornate ceilings with gold-covered mosaic.

I suppose in varied ways, we’re all learning, expanding our worldviews and sometimes tackling dual and multiple realities. With waterways for streets, boats for buses, a kind-of-elected Catholic duke who ran the churches but was the enemy of the Pope, and successful Jews who stayed with a city-state that locked them up at night – there’s no shortage of seemingly dissonant, yet co-existing truths to ponder.