Jews took the place of everyday knowledge about their lives, and those fantasies would in the end overwhelm the ghetto. For the Jews themselves, the ghetto raised the stakes of contact with the outside world: their own Jewishness seemed at risk when they ventured outside ghetto walls. Exposure to others threatened a loss of identity.

his is in a way the story of most groups of displaced persons forced into isolation, but Renaissance Venice made it at once a special story and also something larger: the experience of Jews in the Venetian ghetto traced an enduring way of tying culture and political rights together. Venice was undoubtedly the most international city of the Renaissance, due to its trade; it was the gatepost between Europe and the East, as well as between Europe and Africa – a city largely of foreigners. But unlike ancient Rome, it was not a territorial power; the vast number of foreigners who came and went in Venice were not members of a common empire or nation-state. Moreover, the resident foreigners in the city – Germans, Greeks, Turks, Dalmatians, as well as Jews – were barred from official citizenship in the city. They were permanent immigrants. From this historical frame, among non-citizens, came a conflicting set of codes of rights.

n the one hand, human rights were conceived as placeless: these were rights of contract which ­applied to all parties, no matter where they came from, where they lived in the city, or who they were.

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