16th Century Ghettos

In Venice, Jews have had a history of tolerance and rejection in the 16th-century Venetian society. According to Jewish Venice, “Jews were allowed to come to Venice for money-lending activities but were not allowed permanent residents permits.” Originally, Jews were allowed to inhabit in Venice in 1385 for the reason that the city was at war and needed loans from the Jewish money-lenders. Nevertheless, they were eventually expelled from Venice and were placed to live in ghettos with add-on restrictions such as being permitted to only operate pawn shops and lend money, trade in textiles, and practice medicine. Certain banking laws kept their interest rates low and made it difficult for poor pawnbrokers and moneylenders. As a whole, the government forcing Jewish people to relocate was a method of separation in order to prove they are second class citizens since they are opposite to the ideal religion. In other words, Christianity is the pure and anything not …show more content…
At any rate, these ghettos were a place to keep an eye on the Jewish with the intent to strip away their security while at the same time dissolve their identity’s as human-beings. According to Dana E. Katz (2011) “Jews would be watched by six Christian guards twenty-four hours a day and locked into the ghetto at night… the decree further mandated that the Jews….would be responsible for paying the salaries of their Christians guards…the principal motivation for the Jews’ confinement was to enforce their separation from Christians after nightfall” (233-234). This is significant to highlight because “confinement” is a technique used to create isolation preventing human contact that can also be seen as a way to protect people from themselves. The reason for the Jewish to