Volume 42, Number 4 · March 2, 1995
The Bellow & the Uproar
By Richard Jenkyns
Flesh and Stone: The Body and the City in Western Civilization
by Richard Sennett
Norton, 431 pp., $27.50
In 1515 the Venetians decided to take action against the Jews. As a great trading city, Venice could not expel them: they were too badly needed as moneylenders, doctors, and traders. But they could be segregated and kept out of sight, and the city's unique topography offered a unique opportunity. The Jews were clustered into a place in a remote northwestern quarter of the city where the canals formed an island of roughly oval shape. Only two drawbridges, drawn up at night, connected it with the rest of the town. No balconies were allowed to face outward. Because of the lack of space, the buildings soon towered six or seven stories upward, sheer and blank like the walls of a fortress. The place was named, from the industry that had formerly been there, the Foundry—in the local dialect, Ghetto.
Review, 4105 words
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