Italy

The Italian peninsula was a home to Jews already in ancient times, even before the second Jerusalem Temple was destroyed by the Romans in the year 70. The extensive Jewish burial catacombs just outside of Rome, along with the images carved on the Arch of Titus, are just two examples of the evidence of this presence.  

But it is fair to say that the height of Jewish life in Italy occurred during the Renaissance, when many Jews in the north—particularly in the region of Venice—flourished and attained wealth and status. Some of the Library’s materials surviving from this period—from illuminated haggadot to elaborately decorated prayer books— testify eloquently to this reality. 

Venice and the north were also the center of Hebrew printing during this period; indeed, it is not claiming too much to say that the Jewish library as we know it was born in this time and place. Jewish dwelling in Venice may have been limited to the Ghetto (beginning in 1516), but Jews were free to leave the ghetto during the day to engage in business, including printing, and Christians were part of the life of the ghetto as well. 

Jewish life continued in Italy in the subsequent centuries, and surviving examples of their creativity—including elaborately decorated ketubbot (marriage contracts) and megillot (scrolls of Esther)—are evidence of an often thriving Jewish life.