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The First Ghetto: Venice and the Origins of Modern Antisemitism

byAlexander Lee

Alexander Lee reconstructs daily life in the Jewish ghetto established by Venice in 1516 and examines the institution's wider legacy. Merchants, rabbis, physicians, printers, women, converts, and officials reveal a community constrained by law yet connected to Mediterranean commerce and culture. The book traces confinement, negotiation, creativity, and resistance while showing how Venetian policies helped develop ideas later central to modern antisemitism. Lee avoids treating the ghetto as either simple isolation or harmonious coexistence, presenting it instead as a changing system of exploitation, dependence, fear, and resilient communal life.

Publisher

Picador

Publication date

2026-03-05

Format

Hardback

Pages

400

ISBN

9781529066500