Search This Blog

Thursday 31 March 2016

We are facing an unprecedented age of terror, by Jonathan Sacks

Christians are being persecuted in some 50 countries, but the real target is freedom.


There have been ages of terror before, but never on this scale, and never with the kind of technology that has given the jihadists the ability to radicalise individuals throughout the world, some acting as lone wolves, others, like the attackers in Paris and Brussels, working in small groups, often involving family members.

The aim of Isil is political: to re-establish the Caliphate and make Islam once more an imperial power. But there is another aim shared by many jihadist groups: to silence anyone and anything that threatens to express a different truth, another faith, a different approach to religious difference. That is what lay behind the attacks on the Danish cartoons; on Catholics after a speech by Pope Benedict XVI; the murder of Theo van Gogh; and the attacks on Charlie Hebdo. The calculation of the terrorists is that, in the long run, the West will prove too tired to defend its own freedoms. They are prepared to keep committing atrocities for as long as it takes, decades if need be.

This kind of movement cannot be defeated by military means alone.The world needs to hear another voice from within Islam, echoing the open-mindedness that made Islamic Spain in the eighth to 12th centuries the “ornament of the world”.

We need people of all faiths to express their active opposition to terror in the name of God. It was Machiavelli not Mohammed who said that it is better to be feared than to be loved. It was Nietzsche, the atheist, who saw life as the will to power.

To read the article in full go to the Daily Telegraph


The Telegraph: The prospect of a two-state solution in Israel is drifting further away, by James Sorene | BICOM



The Telegraph: The prospect of a two-state solution in Israel is drifting further away, by James Sorene

The streets of Israel are once again stained with blood. On Tuesday, the seaside town of Jaffa was the scene of a horrific attack when a 22-year-old Palestinian killed a 29-year-old man and stabbed ten others. By current Middle East standards this violence is small scale, but the 320 stabbings, shootings and car ramming’s since last September are a macabre new normal that blights life in Israel.

The attacks are hard to prevent. The perpetrators are very young Palestinians and not members of terrorist groups. Their weapons are basic and the process of radicalisation, from violent idea to violent act, is completely unique.

BICOM research examining the Facebook pages of attackers revealed that initially they were fixated with false rumours that Israel was violating the Muslim holy places in Jerusalem. Later, attackers were obsessed with avenging the death of martyrs who they believed had been executed by Israeli forces. Palestinian media and Hamas repeatedly lied that Palestinians, who had been killed as they launched attacks against Israelis, were in fact being executed. The Palestinian President Abbas even repeated the charge, citing the case of a young boy whom he said had been executed, but who was alive and being treated in an Israeli hospital. Palestinian groups have filled twitter feeds and Facebook pages with gruesome images and Antisemitic cartoons of Jews being stabbed.

To read the article in full go to The Telegraph.

SADOMASOCHISM AND THE JIHADI DEATH CULT

 
 Anwar Tarawneh, the wife of Jordanian pilot Maaz al-Kassasbeh, takes part in a rally calling for the release of her captive husband in Amman on Feb. 3, 2015. (Khalil Mazraawi/AFP/Getty Images)

A psychoanalytic look at why people throw themselves into campaigns of murder and suicide

Paul Berman’s recent essay in Tablet magazine “Why Is the Islamist Death Cult So Appealing?” is a wonderful piece on the history of Islamist ideas, but Berman does not really answer the question that he poses in his first line: “Why do people who are not clinically crazy throw themselves into campaigns of murder and suicide?” Berman’s conclusion is that “apocalyptic dreams, the cult of hatred and murder and yearning for death” born of unhappiness is what motivates Islamist terrorists, and further that “eschatological rebellion against everyday morality satisfies them.” But is that why they do it? Is that what motivates men in hoods to publicly decapitate an individual with a knife, or pose smiling with the severed head of a woman, or put bullets into the heads of hundreds of captives and toss them into the river, or most recently throw a prisoner into a cage and light him on fire? Berman addresses the ideological part of the problem, but buried deeper is the psychological pull of sadomasochism—the thrill of violence, power, and control that comes from inflicting pain on others. This is the unspoken driver of the appeal of the Islamic State and similar groups.

Although we cannot know what goes on inside anyone’s head, the tools of psychoanalysis offer some tantalizing, and I believe promising, angles of interpretation. To be fair, military strategists, national security specialists, criminal-justice professionals and journalists are not trained to observe these men as if they were patients. They may have read the works of Islamists like Sayyid Qutb and Hassan al Banna, but they lack the diagnostic skills needed to access the deeper unconscious levels of psychology that are necessary for understanding the attraction of sadomasochism.

Indeed the denial of sadism by the specialists who usually comment on terrorism has ironically played into the hands of jihadis by permitting an identification with the aggressor. There are many people out there who, alas, like to watch torture videos of immolations and beheadings. We are even more reluctant to acknowledge that broad portions of the world’s population are drawn into this sadism because they cannot recognize their own impulses.

Paul Berman’s recent essay in Tablet magazine “Why Is the Islamist Death Cult So Appealing?” is a wonderful piece on the history of Islamist ideas, but Berman does not really answer the question that he poses in his first line: “Why do people who are not clinically crazy throw themselves into campaigns of murder and suicide?” Berman’s conclusion is that “apocalyptic dreams, the cult of hatred and murder and yearning for death” born of unhappiness is what motivates Islamist terrorists, and further that “eschatological rebellion against everyday morality satisfies them.” But is that why they do it? Is that what motivates men in hoods to publicly decapitate an individual with a knife, or pose smiling with the severed head of a woman, or put bullets into the heads of hundreds of captives and toss them into the river, or most recently throw a prisoner into a cage and light him on fire? Berman addresses the ideological part of the problem, but buried deeper is the psychological pull of sadomasochism—the thrill of violence, power, and control that comes from inflicting pain on others. This is the unspoken driver of the appeal of the Islamic State and similar groups.

Although we cannot know what goes on inside anyone’s head, the tools of psychoanalysis offer some tantalizing, and I believe promising, angles of interpretation. To be fair, military strategists, national security specialists, criminal-justice professionals and journalists are not trained to observe these men as if they were patients. They may have read the works of Islamists like Sayyid Qutb and Hassan al Banna, but they lack the diagnostic skills needed to access the deeper unconscious levels of psychology that are necessary for understanding the attraction of sadomasochism.

Indeed the denial of sadism by the specialists who usually comment on terrorism has ironically played into the hands of jihadis by permitting an identification with the aggressor. There are many people out there who, alas, like to watch torture videos of immolations and beheadings. We are even more reluctant to acknowledge that broad portions of the world’s population are drawn into this sadism because they cannot recognize their own impulses.

The Islamic State communicates to us on the deepest level of perversity possible, tapping into our own terrors through projective identification. The most recent atrocity committed by ISIS in the case of the Jordanian pilot Lt. Mu’adh Al-Kasasbeh is instructive. Why fire? Why the cage? Clearly they wanted to create a modern-day video of a medieval spectacle to terrify us in order to further a strategic goal: to issue a summons to obey them or otherwise become the object of their rage. But to leave it at that will not help us to deconstruct what is happening symbolically. The terrorists themselves do not realize how revealingly transparent their aberrant behavior is; they have no capacity to look at their own behavior or to understand it psychologically.

Unconsciously and concretely, they have recreated their own group self-perception of being “caged in” emotionally and mentally because of the debilitation of growing up in a shame-honor culture: They realize that, in the eyes of the world, Islam has been shamed. Fire, too, in the context of psychoanalysis, has many aspects worth considering. It might express projected rage. It might also purify an obsession with feeling dirty, deeply linked to this shame, which is supported by a religious conviction that normal human needs are unclean. They must therefore find a scapegoat and then kill off the contaminated one, inviting us to watch voyeuristically.

But what of the Western converts who join the jihadi cults? What is the draw for them? It is nearly the same. From examining their childhoods, the majority are born into what I call shame-honor Western families—highly rigid and authoritarian or lacking any parental structure at all. And then there are the numerous jailhouse converts. Many criminals have a cognitive deficit, and some show signs of clinical sadomasochism. A sadist seeks power through control, manipulation, and forcing the other to submit. Intimacy comes only with violence. They feel, they bond, through violence: Burning the Jordanian pilot expressed the Islamic State’s perverse sense of intimacy with its victim.

These jihadis then use fire to work through that which they don’t understand. Since some jihadis have difficulty feeling emotion, they are obsessed with torturing the other in order to see feelings expressed on the agonized face of the other. Fire can also represent their rage and denial of mortality, though they claim to love death. While they may think martyrdom can lead to a certain kind of immortality, that is a delusion: The Islamist ideologies are merely a conduit through which to project their own rage and terror. This all involves sadism of the highest order.

It is important to underline the fact that many viewers enjoy this kind of perversion. Like Jean Baudrillard, the French intellectual who wrote that everyone had to rejoice at the sight of the twin towers collapsing, an unknown percentage of people see these horrendous videos and rejoice—which is why they are viewed so widely and make such effective propaganda for the jihadi cause. We underestimate their appeal. We do not want to think about it.

While it is obviously true that we cannot place every terrorist under intensive psychological investigation, we can nonetheless speculate on their behavior and the sources of this trauma. In my own research and descriptive analysis, corroborated by neuroscience findings, my theory is that terrorists may not fully develop empathy, an emotion acquired in the earliest years of life. Professor Aner Govrin at Bar Ilan University has written a fascinating essay in which he places moral development at the age of 1 and focuses on the importance of maternal attachment: The mother is most influential in shaping the baby’s brain, which quadruples in size between the ages of 0 and 3, and is the repository of morality and knowledge. She is also the earliest cultural interpreter of shame and honor for her child.

It is profoundly mistaken, however, to believe that undervalued women who have been constant shock absorbers for male rage and abuse are able to attach in optimal ways when they have their own children. I refer to this elsewhere as “the maternal drama,” which, along with sadomasochism and shame-honor, lies at the heart of Islamist terrorism. Why now does it produce such a harvest of violence? Mass communication and the Internet have exacerbated a deeper cultural problem.

The Iraqi child-psychiatrist Dr. Sami Timimi has written that in Arab Muslim culture the bond between mother and child is unseverable. One is never permitted to separate from the mother. This is a perversion, a misuse of the baby as an object. In an honor-shame culture one does not go through an individuation separation process known in psychological development as neotenization. This impedes maturity. The group identity is more important than the individual identity. Shame and revenge predominate.

It must be remembered that the father is also a symptom of the underlying problem in shame-honor environments as he, too, was once a baby boy experienced as an object of honor, not as an individual in his own right. Many experts on Arab Muslim culture get this point and emphasize the need for an authoritarian father-figure to keep the shame-honor tribes in line, but that just repeats the awful cycle of treating people like objects: ISIS immolated the Jordanian pilot, an object of their hatred, whereupon the King of Jordan retaliated by killing two terrorists and launching dozens of airstrikes to avenge the death, to great popular acclaim.

Yet I would argue that King Abdullah needs to use both the carrot and the stick. The stick is his revenge attacks on the Islamic State in order to reestablish honor in his kingdom. But at the same time he needs to begin to teach his people that the cycle of blood-letting has to stop in order to pull his people out of the morass of shame and its destructive culture through education and early-childhood development.

Arab culture needs to get over willfully spilling blood in order to cleanse honor. It is delusional, and it has profound consequences for us all. If we fail to consider the sadism of the jihadis and their early-childhood development, we will wind up in the cage that they have built for us. We do not need to share in their perversion. We know in the West that shame destroys a child, but we have failed to understand the ramifications of shame linked to sadism, which is shame’s key instrument.

GIRLS & JEWS & SEX

A new book by Peggy Orenstein brings up questions about how to think Jewishly about our daughters’ sexuality

Tel Aviv festival reveals big dreams for virtual reality





Viewers wearing goggles watch the virtual reality murder mystery “The Doghouse” while sitting around a dinner table during the Steamer Interactive Story Festival. Photo by Eitan Arom



Men loaf on the sidewalk along a street of packed dirt under a blue sky streaked with sparse clouds. Somewhere nearby, a girl sings in Arabic. 

Suddenly, an explosion fills the air with smoke, and bystanders fall to the ground as an airstrike unfolds.

The scene is straight out of Syria, but it’s being experienced hundreds of miles away, in a sparsely decorated, white-walled room on the first floor of the Center for Contemporary Art in Tel Aviv. There, visitors took turns pulling a hefty set of goggles over their eyes and a pair of headphones over their ears to watch the immersive documentary, “Project Syria.”

Just steps away from the outdoor Carmel Market, the documentary was on display as part of a recent, interactive storytelling festival that highlighted the power of an emerging technology, virtual reality, or VR, to evoke a sense of “being there,” whisking people over hundreds or thousands of miles and inserting them in new and foreign environments.

The virtual reality industry is in the midst of a boom cycle, with a high-water mark coming in 2014 when Facebook bought headset-maker Oculus VR for $2 billion. Israel, home to a number of indie VR studios and related tech companies — including one that plans to manufacture a 360-degree camera for under $1,000 — is vying for a piece of that pie.

“My fantasy is that Israel will be a VR powerhouse, and we have every opportunity to do it,” said virtual-reality game designer Doron Knaan speaking at a March 4 morning panel at the festival.

His optimism comes from the proliferation of indie virtual reality studios, which he sees as the future of the industry, as well as the enterprising spirit for which Israel is famous.

Steamer Salon, which organized the four-day Steamer Interactive Story Festival, is part of an effort to make Knaan’s fantasy a reality. The organization was founded by a group of students from the Tel Aviv University Steve Tisch School of Film and Television who hoped to marry their creative insight to the new medium, but lacked the technical know-how.

“It was really hard to get information and knowledge, which is completely unjustified,” said Adi Lavy, one of the group’s founders, lamenting a “disconnect between the film industry and Israeli VR technology.”

Besides connecting would-be VR filmmakers with technology companies, the Steamer Salon is the nucleus of a program, opening at Tel Aviv University in October, that will allow students to earn a masters of fine arts in digital media, focusing on new platforms for interactive storytelling.

At the festival, the atmosphere was bullish, brimming with confidence that a medium currently characterized by blurry graphics and nausea-inducing motion sequences can emerge as a bona fide artistic medium.

“There’s a lot of junk out there, and they’re able to get away with it because of the ‘wow’ factor,” Nonny de la Peña, a journalist and senior research fellow at USC who directed “Project Syria,” said during an afternoon panel. “That’s not going to last.” 

What will last, she said, is the power of the medium to give audiences an empathetic understanding of people and situations that otherwise might elude them. For example, in 2015 she debuted a virtual reality experience, “Kiya,” that placed viewers inside a domestic violence situation to highlight a problem that claims the lives of three women each day on average, according to the National Network to End Domestic Violence.

“It’s an astonishing number, but people hear it and then it’s gone,” de la Peña said at the panel.

Sitting across from de la Peña at the panel was Gabo Arora, a United Nations senior adviser who makes virtual reality films for the U.N. He discussed the impact a short VR documentary he co-directed about the Syrian crisis had on its audience.

“Clouds Over Sidra” follows a 12-year-old girl who fled her home in Syria because of the conflict. Arora recounted how an Iraqi journalist whom he met at a conference asked to see the film. After removing the virtual reality goggles, “he broke down very seriously and actually had to be consoled,” Arora said, suggesting it resonated with the journalist because of similar violence he had experienced in Iraq.

Arora was in Israel partly to expose people on the streets of Tel Aviv to his newest documentary project and videotape their reactions. “My Mother’s Wing” is an eight-minute VR documentary focusing on a family in Gaza that lost two sons during the 2014 conflict between Hamas and Israel. He said that while some people react defensively (“What about our struggles?”), others were moved.

Between panels, participants circulated through a number of virtual reality exhibits. Upstairs, groups of five took turns sitting around a dinner table set with silverware, empty dishes and artificial flowers, and donning VR goggles to watch “The Doghouse,” a murder mystery by Danish artist Johan Knattrup Jensen. Each participant sees the story unfold from the perspective of a different character. 

Many attendees were experiencing virtual reality for the first time.

Natalie Edwards, a marketing manager who moved to Tel Aviv from Los Angeles two years ago and attended the festival, said “Project Syria” helped her visualize a crisis she had only read about in news reports. But she was unable to sit through “The Doghouse” because of the way it was filmed: The characters shift their perspective while also allowing users to independently look around the scene, creating a discomfiting effect.

“It’s the dissonance that makes you dizzy,” Edwards said of the video.

While allowing that the technology is a work in progress, panelists were confident the difficulties could be overcome. Moderating the Friday morning panel, Yoram Honig, director of the Jerusalem Film and Television Fund, a municipal organization that aims to incentivize filming in Israel’s capital, conceded the technology was “not quite exact and completed.” But he nonetheless predicted a coming renaissance for the country’s VR and interactive animation and gaming industry.

“Read my lips,” he said. “We think that in five years from now, 2,000 people will work in that industry in Jerusalem.” 

Wednesday 30 March 2016

Israeli Jews from the former Soviet Union are more secular, less religiously observant


Strong majority among former Soviet Union Jews oppose religious involvement in public lifeAfter the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, Israel’s largest wave of Jewish immigrants arrived from Russia and other former Soviet republics. These immigrants, who have far outnumbered those from other countries since Israel achieved statehood, were able to come because of Israel’s Law of Return, which allows all Jews around the world to immigrate and receive immediate citizenship. Israeli Jews support this right virtually unanimously.

There have been several points in Israel’s modern history when waves of immigrants arrived from particular countries or regions. For example, the first wave – largely from Russia and Romania – arrived in the late 19th century, while another took place in the period leading up to World War II (1929-1939) and was mostly made up of German Jews escaping the Nazis. After the founding of the State of Israel in 1948, rising tensions in the region spurred increased immigration by Sephardi Jews from the Middle East and North Africa. And in the 1980s and early 1990s, Israel airlifted thousands of Jews out of war-torn Ethiopia.

About three-quarters of Jewish respondents from the former Soviet Union (FSU) arrived in Israel between 1990 and 1999, in the years following the disintegration of the USSR in 1991. An additional 15% of FSU Jews say they came from 2000 to 2014, while a similar share (12%) say they arrived prior to 1990, according to data from a new Pew Research Center survey of Israel.

The Soviet Jews brought a secular mindset to Israel, and more than two decades later, Jews who were born in the former Soviet Union continue to be noticeably less religious than Israeli Jews overall. FSU immigrants – who make up 14% of all Israeli Jews – also stand out in other ways, including in their demographic characteristics and opinions on the role of religion in Israeli public life.

For instance, most (73%) say they continue to primarily speak Russian at home, while nearly all other Israeli Jews speak Hebrew. In addition, Jews born in the FSU are more likely than Israeli Jews overall to have a college degree (58% vs. 33%). And one-tenth of FSU Jews who are married or living with a partner say their spouse/partner is Christian (4%) or religiously unaffiliated (6%) – in contrast with Israeli Jews overall, among whom only about 2% say they have a spouse or partner who is not Jewish.

Religiously, the vast majority of FSU-born Jews in Israel (81%) self-identify as secular (Hiloni), compared with 49% of all Israeli Jews. This fact is evident when it comes to their views about religion and politics: FSU Jews are adamantly against religious involvement in government. About eight-in-ten say, generally, that religion should be kept separate from government policies (79%), and similar shares oppose, specifically, making halakha (Jewish law) the state law for Jews in Israel (81%) and shutting down public transportation on the Sabbath (81%). Fewer Israeli Jews overall take these positions.

Although a majority of FSU-born Israeli Jews (61%) say Israel can be both a democracy and a Jewish state at the same time, they are more likely than Israeli Jews overall to say this is not possible (33% vs. 20%). And in the event of a hypothetical conflict between halakha and democratic principles, Israeli Jews who were born in former Soviet republics overwhelmingly say democracy should take precedence (72%, compared with 62% of all Israeli Jews).

Not surprisingly, when it comes to their own religious beliefs and practices, FSU Jews also are considerably more secular than Israeli Jews overall based on a number of measures, such as belief in God, lighting Sabbath candles and keeping kosher. But the survey also finds that the children of FSU Jews (i.e., second-generation immigrants) are significantly more religiously observant than their parents’ generation, and their beliefs and practices are closer in line with those of the Israeli Jewish public overall.

For example, children of FSU immigrants are more likely than their parents to believe in God (70% vs. 55%). Only 60% of second-generation FSU Jews say they are Hiloni (secular), compared with 81% of FSU immigrants who say so. And while 4% of first-generation immigrants say they are Haredi (ultra-Orthodox), among the second generation, this proportion has climbed to 14%.

TOPICS: EASTERN EUROPEJEWS AND JUDAISMMIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICARELIGION AND GOVERNMENTRELIGION AND SOCIETYRELIGIOUS BELIEFS AND PRACTICESRUSSIA

Palestinians among those requesting conversion to Judaism

Credit: JNS.org

A Palestinian boy looks behind a wall separating Jewish part and Palestinian part after the funeral of Rabbi Moshe Levinger, a leading figure in Israel's settler movement, in the Jewish settlement in Hebron, West Bank, Sunday, May 17, 2015. Thousands attended the funeral of Levinger outside Hebron's holiest site, known to Jews as the Tomb of the Patriarchs and to Muslims as the Ibrahimi Mosque. Relatives said he died Saturday after an illness. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

A Palestinian boy looks behind a wall separating a Jewish and Palestinian part of Jerusalem (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)










About half of the annual requests in Israel for conversion to Judaism were received from Palestinians, foreign workers, illegal infiltrators, and illegal immigrants, the Israeli Knesset State Control Committee revealed.

There were a total of 200 such conversion cases that were rejected over the past year by the Knesset Exceptions Committee, which must give its approval in order for anyone’s Jewish conversion process to begin in Israel.

Israeli law states that a non-Israeli citizen who is ineligible for “right of return” can begin the conversion process only after receiving permission from the Exceptions Committee, which often involves a drawn-out bureaucratic process.

“The mixture of halachic (Jewish legal) and government immigration policy concerns is not healthy. The Exceptions Committee must transfer its authority to the Interior Ministry, and instead just provide an estimate of the [conversion] candidate’s honesty,” said the head of the State Control Committee, Member of Knesset Karin Elharar (Yesh Atid).

(JNS.org

Monday 28 March 2016

History of Iraqi Jews is warning to Christians


Jews accounted for one-third of Baghdad’s population by the time of the first world war. Now the community is all but extinct

The decline in the number of Christians in Iraq is indeed disturbing (Loose canon, 25 March). It is part of a wider decline in the Middle East, where numbers have dwindled from 20% of the population 100 years ago to 5% today.

The Jewish experience in Iraq also reflects a story of a once flourishing community which has been persecuted to near extinction. Jews first went there 2,700 years ago, and while the community experienced highs and lows over centuries of Muslim rule, the population grew steadily. Jews accounted for one-third of Baghdad’s population by the time of the first world war, and by 1936, official figures showed there to be 120,000 in the country.

However, the period between the world wars, when the British mandate ended, marked the start of terrible antisemitic persecution in Iraq. Thousands of Jews fled: 104,000 emigrated between 1949 and 1951.

The history of the Jews in Iraq is a warning, if any were needed, of the unfolding tragedy facing the Christian community there today.
Zaki Cooper
Trustee, Council of Christians and Jews

Profile: 500 years of Venice's Jewish ghetto

Profile: 500 years of Venice's Jewish ghetto

WHAT'S THE STORY?
A POIGNANT plea on behalf of the mostly Muslim refugees seeking safety in Europe has been made by Jews marking the 500th anniversary of the world’s first ghetto on Tuesday march 29.
The remarkable call for patience and integration comes as preparations are finalised for a series of cultural events to commemorate those who lived in the ghetto, which was created in Venice on March 29, 1516, to keep the Jews separate from the mainly Christian population.
While there is no doubt the early inhabitants suffered from the segregation, over time they became integrated into the Italian community, contributing greatly to the cultural life of the country.
Now the Jews of Venice believe their history has lessons for Europe as it shows that minorities can integrate while still preserving their identity.
“It is imperative to continue to commemorate the tragedies that occurred here but it is also important to highlight the lessons of survival, creativity and cross-cultural dialogue the ghetto experienced,” said university professor Shaul Bassi.
“Those of us who have worked on this anniversary believe the ghetto has precious ethical and cultural lessons to educate the public about Jews as well as the broader question of cross-cultural dialogue, co-operation and co-existence.
"Today, Italian Jews are proof that a minority can keep its identity and still integrate in a process of reciprocal influence," he said.
WHO CREATED IT?
It was 500 years ago that Venetian Republic leader, Doge Leonardo Loredan, declared that if Jews wanted to live in the city then they would have to stay separately from Christians.
The authorities then assigned the polluted site of an old foundry for the “geto” which is derived from “gettare” the Italian verb “to cast”.
A cramped area, it was surrounded by canals and, as Jews from other parts of the world arrived, the people built upwards, constructing some of the world’s first “skyscrapers” which are still some of the city’s tallest buildings at eight or nine stories high.
"They had to build higher and higher and squeeze in low-ceilinged apartments. It was like a beehive," said Bassi.
Here for the next 300 years, the Jews were locked in at night and forced to pay the wages of their Christian guards. Prejudice against them was rife and when they ventured out into the wider city during the day to make their living, they had to wear yellow caps to mark them out.
They were even ordered to use Christian architects to build five synagogues which remain preserved today, plain on the outside but richly decorated within.

WHAT HAPPENED NEXT?
Despite the restrictions Jews from other parts of the world flocked to live there.
"Elsewhere in Europe Jews were treated worse, and Venice to some extent was a safe harbour," said Paolo Gnignati, leader of Venice's Jewish community. "The city wanted them to come because they needed access to Jewish trading networks; it was good business on the part of the doges.”
As Jews from Spain, France, Portugal, German and the Ottoman Empire moved in, so the cultural and religious activity flourished.
One third of all Hebrew publications over the next 150 years were Venetian and at one point Jewish poet Sarra Copia Sulam was famous for the literary salons she held in the ghetto.
“Over time Jewish and Venetian culture intermingled, proving that cultural identities are not immutable,” said Gnignati.
Interestingly, the influx of Jews from different places helped the community integrate as the differences between them meant they did not become one distinct entity separate from the Italian Christians.
"We were deprived of our rights here, but contributed to Europe's identity and we are still here," Gnignati said. "We can serve as an example to newcomers who want to participate in Europe while preserving their original identity.”

WHO OPENED IT UP?
It was Napoleon who finally knocked down the gates of the ghetto when he occupied the city in 1797. Scornful of the separation, he allowed the Jews to live where they chose and many escaped the cramped conditions to live elsewhere in the city.
The ghetto remained their anchor, however, and they flocked back each week on the Sabbath to pray at their synagogues.
By the time of the Second World War the population had dropped from 5,000 Jews to just over 1,000. Of these, 250 were sent to the death camps. Only eight returned.
Now there are just 450 Jews in the whole of the city with a handful remaining in the ghetto, although the synagogues are still active places of worship.
WHAT EVENTS WILL BE HELD?
To remind the rest of the world of the area’s historic importance, a programme of events has been drawn up for the coming year which even includes the first performance in the ghetto of Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, featuring Shylock, the odious money-lending Jew.
"Shylock is the most famous Venetian Jew and we cannot pretend he doesn't exist," explained Bassi.
The commemorations open tomorrow night (tues) with a performance of Mahler’s first symphony at La Fenice opera house and there is also a major exhibition at the Ducal Palace called Venice, the Jews and Europe from June to November.
“The ghetto provided an incredible occasion for cultural exchange and the exhibit will focus on that exchange within the ghetto itself, between the ghetto and the city, and with the rest of Europe,” said Professor Donatella Calabi, who curated the exhibition.
It is also hoped to expand the Jewish Museum of Venice to include treasures hidden from the Nazis that were recently found in the ghetto under a synagogue staircase.
"The concept of the ghetto was born here in Venice," said Bassi. "And that is why we must never forget this place."
http://www.thenational.scot/world/profile-500-years-of-venices-jewish-ghetto.15606