Openings: The Venice Center for International Jewish Studies
Live and Learn in Venice
As the Venice Ghetto approaches its 500th Anniversary, the Jewish and intellectual communities of Venice reflect on its tradition of seclusion and cosmopolitanism, as well as on the paradoxes of its present condition: while the Ghetto has become a on of the most popular destinations in Europe, visited by hundreds of thousands of tourists, the Jewish community, numbering less than 500, may be on the verge of disappearance. A small group of community leaders and international intellectuals are trying to put a new spin on the way in which “we can live and learn in Venice”.
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After a two year pilot project supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Venice Center for International Jewish Studies was officially inaugurated in June and will be starting its activities this week.
The Center will function as an open university where past and present, local and global come together in the forms of creative endeavor and interdisciplinary research. Activities will gravitate around the historic Ghetto of Venice with easy access to the Synagogues, the Venice Jewish Museum, the Community Library "Renato Maestro,” the Kosher Club “Le Baltahazar”, the Jewish Community Residence House, as well as lecture halls and classrooms. In addition the the University of Venice Cà Foscari and the Venice International University will be active participants in the project.
“Live and Learn in Jewish Venice -explains Shaul Bassi, co-director of the Center and professor of Post Colonial Literature at the University of Venice- is a motto to rethink our Jewish heritage as part of a city that has long transcended the notion of borders, whether geographical, social, or aesthetic. We are welcoming scholars and students, as well as artists and lay audiences to access the artistic, intellectual, and cultural resources of Venetian Judaism through a diverse structure of general and scholarly residencies.”
Taking advantage of the in an evocative environment of the city, the organizers are also designing specialized programs to serve small groups of creative artists, graduate and post-graduate students, and faculty seminars.
The Center’s output will be the Venetian Jewish Anthology, a scholarly resource of publications, films, and multimedia for the teaching and research of the cultural, intellectual, and historic experience of Venetian Jewry.
9/8/09
Visit the Center’s website www.venicejewishstudies.org
In 2016 the Venetian Ghetto will celebrate its 500th anniversary. For centuries, the Ghetto has been not only a place of segregation but also a meeting place of many cultures. In the Venice Ghetto Jewish culture was nurtured and thrived and from there it spread to many other parts of the world.
To recognize and commemorate the shaping power of the Ghetto for Jewish life and its historical connections to other cultures, The Venice Center for International Jewish Studies is dedicated to promoting and facilitating advanced academic study and research, ongoing student and adult learning in Jewish studies, and the enhancement of Jewish life and culture in the Ghetto today.