This original exhibition, Il Ghetto: Forging Italian Jewish Identities, 1516-1870, underlines the complex relationships of the Christian majority and Jewish minority in early modern Italian communities. Some 350 years before there was an Italian nation, Venice enclosed its Jews on the grounds of an abandoned foundry (il geto in Italian); other communities followed. Yes, there was physical enclosure and segregation, but since the Jews were also required to serve as moneylenders to the Venetians, there also was significant interaction and exchange.

How, then, was Jewish life similar to that of the Christian majority? And how was it separate and distinct? With regional communities (Venice, Padua, Florence, Rome, Livorno, and others) as the visual context, the exhibition will explore the sometimes paradoxical juxtaposition of social and physical restriction and the forging of Jewish cultural production and identity. Through this presentation, the Museo also seeks to illuminate how the tensions between a minority culture and the dominant culture in which it is situated, continue to challenge many societies today - including our own.

One aspect of the Museo ItaloAmericano's mission is to educate the general public about Italian culture as part of preserving the heritage of Italian-Americans. It is a premise of this project that most people in the Bay Area have little knowledge of the history or major contributions of Italian Jewish communities, thus the Museo's aim here is for simplicity and clarity while at the same time presenting information based on the most up-to-date scholarship. The Museo has designed the project to be of interest to the Jewish and Italian communities, both of which have made significant contributions to the Bay Area, and has initiated collaborative programming with other area Jewish and cultural organizations, as well. The Jewish Community Center of San Francisco and the Jewish Community Library are offering fall 2008 programs on Italian Jewish themes. The San Francisco Jewish Film Festival is planning to have a portion of its summer festival films on themes related to Italian Jewish life; additional films will be screened at the JCC in the fall. The Holocaust Center of Northern California has taken initial steps to create a program focusing on the experience of the Holocaust in Italy in conjunction with its annual program commemorating Liberation Day, January 27. There will be a Bay-area-wide lecture series by distinguished scholars accompanying the exhibit, and a conference on Martin Luther King weekend held at the Museo and at UC Santa Cruz.

Located on the main floor of Building C in San Francisco's Fort Mason culture and art complex, the Museo is an accessible, attractive, and contemporary facility of 5,000 square feet -4,200 for exhibitions, while the rest houses a library, office, and support areas. The scale is ideal for the design of this project, and will promote a cultural and learning experience for adults and youth that can be accomplished in about an hour and a half visit. The manageable scale will make it possible to tour the exhibit to venues such as those in Jewish centers, synagogues, and community libraries. In northern California, preliminary interest has already been expressed by the Jewish Federation of Greater Silicon Valley and UC Santa Cruz. The publication of a bound catalogue will depend on identifying funding beyond current projections.

An historical context will be established through a multi-media timeline, reaching back to 161 BCE when the envoys of Judah Maccabee came to Rome. Original art, authentic objects, and reproductions of significant documents and codices, will be highlighted; however, these will be presented in a crisp and direct format, using contemporary media and without ponderous labeling. With the regional communities as the basis for organization, and the question and answer approach as the main strategy for communication, the exhibition will look at the daily lives of the Jews in the ghettos: commerce (e.g., money-lending, medicine, textiles, publishing), art and architecture, religious practice and theology, the roles of women and children, dress and food, music and performance, literature and thought, and of course, the complex relationships with the regions and cities in which they lived -the policies and practices that both restrained them and allowed them to flourish. In addition, attention will be given to the "how:" how scholars use documents, art, and cultural artifacts to discover the web of life and articulate the narrative of this formative period which was a crucible for modern ideas and the possibilities of humanistic individualism and multi-cultural communities so important to us today.

Some of the questions which will guide the exhibition include:

• The Venetians were the first to refer to the area where Jews were forced to reside as the "ghetto." It was the former site of a foundry (geto in the Venetian Italian dialect). How did this Venetian word come to be used as the term for all areas of forced Jewish residence throughout Italy - and beyond?
• When and where were Jews forced to live in ghettos and by whose authority?
• What were the different ethnic groups of Jews living together in the ghettos and how did they get along? To what extent did they remain separate? To what extent did the various groups amalgamate?
• What were the various rules, restrictions, laws, and taxes imposed on the Jews in the ghettos? Were these different from how other ethnic groups were treated?
• What distinctive clothing were Jews required to wear?
• What economic (commercial, professional) activities were Jews allowed to engage in? Restricted from engaging in? Were the Jews allowed artistic expression? What kinds of art, music, literature, etc., did the Jewish community create? How did this relate to cultural production in general? How were Jews represented in Italian works of arts?
• What was daily life like in the ghettos - housing, food, family life, etc.

To cope with the physical and psychological experience of enclosure, the Jews devised strategies for cultural resistance and accommodation. They lived under the restrictions of curfew; they had to pay their jailors for locking them up at night; and they were often required to be moneylenders. Yet their resilience and creativity is seen, for example, in the creation of five extraordinary synagogue buildings in the Venice ghetto corresponding historically to the great flourishing of church construction throughout Venice and northern Italy. The writing of Leone Modena (1571-1648) and the poetry of Sara Copio Sullam (1592-1614), give witness to this tension - to the fault-lines of identity-creation in a world that simultaneously offers the opportunities and attractions of renaissance individualism and communal religious reinforcement and defines powerlessness through the imposition of physical barriers and social restriction.

The ghetto had been invented for the Jews, in Venice, in 1516. Rome made its Jewish ghetto in 1555, Florence in 1570. The process of ghettoization continued until the French Revolution when Napoleon's followers burned the gates of the Venice ghetto in 1797; the ghetto in Rome continued until 1870. Il Ghetto: Forging Italian Jewish Identities, 1516-1870, seeks to reveal the little-known history and cultural achievements of Italian Jewish communities during this period and to shed light on the unique Italian Jewish experience and culture.