The Implications of the "Ghetto Synagogues" Concept in the Charter Texts of the Venetian Jewish Community in the End of the 16th and beginning of the 17th cent.
Complex structure was one of the major characteristics of the Jewish community in early modern Venice. It was comprised of Jewish groups of diﬀerent origin, legal status and set of cultural peculiarities. In the present paper we are going to analyse several cases of using collective terms from the documents of the communal Venetian Jewish organizations to ﬁnd out if the concept of the united Jewish community existed among Venetian Jews or if the union of the multifaced congregations was forced and supported by the Christian administration. This analysis will help to justify the importance of the collective terms, like, for example, the “ghetto synagogues” or the mentions of the synagogues of the particular congregations for the communal Jewish life. The congregational division used to be the result of the historical development of the Jewish community in the city. The cultural peculiarities became the ground for such division, but it did not interfere with the consolidation processes between diﬀerent groups of Jews. The borders between the communal structures inside the Jewish community were loose and accommodated for the wide range of activities in the communal space, precepted as uniﬁed and shared.