The small Jewish Museum in the New Ghetto Square traditionally hosts a collection of precious and exquisitely decorated ritual objects in silver and other metals in the first room, and a rich selection of 17th and 18th century velvets and brocades - some enriched with embroideries and pearls incrustations, in the second. Hanging on the walls, some profusely ornate 18th century Ketuboth (= wedding contracts), in sheer Rococo style. All elements that testify the tastes and wealth of the Jews of Venice during the almost three centuries of segregation in the Venetian Ghetto.
The brand new third room, well equipped with written documentation in Italian and English, is in good part devoted to books in Hebrew printed in Venice through the centuries and to texts, partly manuscripts, referring to the life of the different Jewish "Nations" in the Venetian Ghetto itself.
The history of Hebrew printing in Venice is certainly of enormous interest, as Venice, because of its geographic position, its political and religious tolerance and the business minded mentality of its leaders, became very soon (much before the end of the 15th century) the capital of printing for the entire Europe.
The first printer to obtain a monopoly on book printing in Venice was a German (Johannes of Speyer) - the year was 1469, just one year death of Gutenberg's death. A Frenchman, Nicolas Jenson cut a magnificent Greek type in Venice in 1471, and since then Venice remained the greatest center of Greek printing until the 18th century. Aldus Manutius, moved to Venice to open here his famous printing press, which published memorable magnificent first editions of the Latin and Greek classics to be used by scholars all over the world. The first printed edition of the Koran was issued in Venice either in 1537 or 1538 ( a copy was found some twenty years ago in the Franciscan Monastery of San Michele in Isola in Venice).
Daniel Bomberg, a wealthy Christian merchant from Antwerp arrived to Venice in 1515 with the idea of exploiting this relatively new business and happened to meet here a converted Jew, Felice da Prato, who had become Friar and maintained excellent relations with the Pope (Leo X), for whom he had successufully translated the Bible from Hebrew into Latin. By coincidence, less than year after Bomberg's arrival in the Lagoon, the establishment of the Ghetto was decreed, providing him with a steady community of rabbis and high level Jewish scholars. Daniel Bomberg printing press saw Jews and Christians working together at printing, in forty years, almost 200 editions in Hebrew, made of extremely fine paper (easy to find in the great metropolis that was 16th century Venice !), with elegant characters and illustrations, and extremely accurate in every detail, for the joy of Humanist intellectuals of any religion. The absolute masterpieces where two monumental in folio works: the Rabbinical Bible (1516-1517) and the enormous, magnificent and very costly complete edition of the Talmud (in 15 volumes!)...(Continues...)
