Mayer A. Rothschild - Page 2

quibbling, arguing, praying, taking no interest in the social life outside. Jehovah led them out of captivity in order that He might make them slaves to Himself. He surely was a jealous God!

Of course, they traded with Christians, bought, sold, ran, walked with them, but did not dine with Christians nor pray with them. There were Jewish architects, painters, printers, lawyers, doctors, bankers, and many of the richest and most practical men in Venice were Jews.

They made money out of the Christians, and no doubt helped the Christians to make money, for, as I have said, things not founded on reciprocity do not last long.

One fact that looks like corroborating proof of Zangwill's pleasantry is that upon one of the Ghetto gates was a marble slab, warning all Jews that if any of them turned Christian he would never be allowed again to live in the Ghetto, nor would he be saluted or spoken to if he returned, nor so much as be given a cup of water, but that the cord, scourge, gallows, prison and pillory should be his portion.

It was a curse almost like that cheerful one visited upon Spinoza, the lens-maker, when he forsook the synagogue and took up his home with the Mennonites.

Children born and brought up in the Ghetto always felt a certain pity for those who were obliged to live beyond the gates, in the great, selfish, grasping, wicked world. Those inside the Ghetto were the Chosen People of God; those outside were the Children of the Devil.

No matter who built the wall, it is a fact that the Government of Venice, which was Christian and under the immediate jurisdiction of the Church, kept guards at the gates and allowed no Jew to leave after a certain early hour of the evening, nor on Sundays or holidays, or when the Emperor visited the city. The only exception to this was on Holy Cross Day, which occurred once a year. On this day all adult Jews were ordered out and marched by the soldiers to some Christian Church, where they were compelled to listen to the service and repeat the Apostles' Creed. Robert Browning says that they were rounded up all right, but when it came to saying the Creed they twiddled their thumbs and said Ben Ezra's Prayer. It is also quite probable that they crossed their fingers, for the Jews are a stubborn sort, given to contumacy and contravention.

On all other days, any Jew who went out into the city had to wear a big yellow O on his breast, and a yellow hat on his head. The Jewish women wore the O and also a veil across which were yellow stripes.

These chromatic signs were changed a few times in the course of the three hundred years that the Ghetto existed, and so were the hours in which the Jews were allowed to come and go, but five o'clock in the evening and seven in the morning were the regular closing and opening times. The watchmen at the gates and the guards who rowed round and round in their barcas were paid out of a special tax