Thursday, January 15, 2015

How a Walk Through Venice Inspired Me to Write a Novel


By Roberta Rich    |   Wednesday, January 14, 2015- Off the Shelf

Venice dazzles. It beguiles. During the day it glitters. At 
night it is so quiet, so filled with shadows, you can hear 
the 
drip of water off the oars of the gondolas, the closing of
 the shutters on the palazzi along the Grand Canal, and 
the low murmur of voices just around the corner. A city 
like no other, Venice is a collection of 130 islands linked 
together by bridges, canals, and history, like pearls on a necklace.
The city that most tourists see is a city of enchantment.

One of these islands served as both a haven and a prison for Jews beginning 
in 1516 ¾ the Venetian ghetto. The Ghetto Nuovo is no larger than a few city 
blocks. 
Walking across the tiny bridge which leads into the ghetto felt like going from,
say, the splendour of the Frick Museum on Fifth Avenue to the Lower East 
Side.

The square is bare except for a lovely marble wellhead in the middle.
Surrounded by tall, plain buildings, the equivalent of tenements, the island 
seems like a stage set.


In 2007 my husband and I went on a walking tour of Venice. Wandering 
around the Ghetto Nuovo, an island probably chosen by the city fathers 
because it had that rarity in the city, a piazza without a church, I looked up at 
he tall, knife-sharp buildings and wondered how people led their day-to-day
lives five hundred years ago in such cramped conditions. As more and more 
Jews arrived in Venice, first Sephardim from Spain and Portugal and, then Ashkenazim from Germany and Eastern Europe, the apartments expanded 
as  more stories were added. Some buildings grew to seven or eight stories 
resting on shaky foundations. Existing apartments were carved into small 
and smaller rooms.

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