Poet Sara Copia Sulam
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Venice Part 3 – The Poet
“The soul of man, Signor Baldassare, is incorruptible, immortal, and divine, created and infused by G_d into our body when the fetus in the maternal womb was made fit to receive it. This truth is as certain, infallible, and indisputable for me as it is, I believe, for every Jew and Christian.” – Poet Sarra Copia Sulam, Venice, Italy July 1621
Crossing over a canal bridge, we descended a steep set of stairs through a low hanging doorway to the Ghetto Nuovo. Emerging from the dark passage to the light of day, an expansive piazza surrounded a collection of multicolored buildings six stories high.
On March 29, 1516 by decree of the Venetian Senate all Jews living in Venice were required to immediately move to the confines of this 17 acre Campo and would be prevented from leaving or reentering by two locked gates from sundown to sunup each day. The existing Christians were ordered to vacate the former copper foundry and the Jews, not allowed to own property, were required to pay one third higher rents. The 1500’s began in a tumultuous time: there was a grave threat to European Sovereignty by the Ottoman Turks and the Church was fending for its existence against the Protestant Reformation movement. Charles V led his French army into Northern Italy and Florence and Milan fell under his control. The Black Death had reduced the population of Europe by 40% and the Franciscan order was anticipating the End of Days at the turn of the century. A great Renaissance of humanist ideology challenged the foundation of leadership and faith. Spanish ships began their rule of the oceans from the New World to the Mediterranean Sea forever undermining Venice’s dominance of trade. The Inquisition was in full force, tolerance was on a short string and Jewish houses of worship were forbidden in the Ghetto or anywhere else in Venice. But a long partnership between Jewish artisans and merchants with the Venetians had just enough root to allow them to stay. Fleeing persecution or expulsion from Spain, Portugal, England, Germany, France and the Levant (Holy Land) other not so fortunate Jews came to Venice in droves as a safe but restricted haven.
In the heat of the midday sun I was approached by a short pale young man in a black coat and hat with scarlet red beard and hair. A member of the Orthodox sect of Chasidic Jews, he asked me in a Brooklyn accent if I wanted to “lay out” Tefilin, two black prayer boxes that are worn on the forehead and above the elbow and bound to the head and arm with leather straps. The young Rabbi seemed a natural bridge between the present and centuries past so I engaged him in conversation deflecting his question by asking him to tell me about some of the local sites and history of the Ghetto. He was well versed.
Within 100 years of its establishment, the Jewish Ghetto had quadrupled in population. Because growth was restricted in area, housing was built up with floor additions. The top floors were surreptitiously made into houses of worship. When it was politically or financially expedient restrictions were loosened and the nearby Ghetto Vecchio was annexed as part of the Jewish area. Not long after, three Synagogues were allowed to be built. In the later part of the 17th Century Venice began new relations with the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire and in a strange redirection Jews from the East were invited by the Doge to live in Venice.
Moshe, embellished his history a bit and mentioned a Jewess poet from the early 1600’s and her Literary Salon that entertained both Christians and Jews. My interest was piqued to learn more about her but I had tapped Moshe’s knowledge of the subject and perhaps his patience. It was later that I learned about the native Venetian Sarra Copia who married Jacob Sulam, a wealthy Jewish merchant in 1614 and a year later gave birth to a daughter Rebecca who died at the age of 10 months. Several years later Sarra miscarried and was never able to bear children again. Though she said it was her deceased father’s wish to start a Literary Salon in 1618 it would not be hard to surmise that she did so to somehow heal the pain she felt for the losses she suffered. Venetian relations had become tolerable, enabling the young Sarra to open the Salon in the Ghetto where Christian and Jewish artists, poets and musicians came to perform and discourse on philosophy, religion and politics. Her admirers praised her extraordinary beauty and humble nature. She bleached her hair blond and dressed in the latest style and fashion for a wealthy Venetian woman. She was an accomplished musician and singer, literate in 6 languages and a student of the Greek classics. This precocious young woman would match wit and intellect with the finest artists of the day in Venice and is regarded as one of early modern Italy’s more significant poets.
That same year Sarra began a highly irregular correspondence with Genoese Christian monk and poet Ansaldo Ceba after reading his sonnet L’Ester about the Jewish Biblical Queen of Persia. Despite Sarra’s marriage to Sulam, she wrote to Ceba of her great admiration and love of him and his work. Ceba in his 50’s was ailing in health and unable to travel. Sarra was just 18. They never meet and over the next five years carried on an unconsummated romance of the heart. It’s difficult to understand why she was so enamored of Ceba but it would seem to be part of a broader ambition to connect with Christian artists who appeared sympathetic to Jews and to fill a void left by the death of her father. It is pure speculation on my part but her marriage may have also been strained with her husband since she could no longer bear him an heir. For the moment at least the opportunity opened for Jews and Christians of similar mind and expression to engage with one another but it was dangerous. New ideas and religious beliefs were threatening the status quo. At any moment things could change with disastrous results. One such movement was the rapidly growing Jewish mystics of Kabala. Sarra’s close friend and spiritual advisor Rabbi Leone De Modena was a Jewish leader in Venice of the predominant Talmudic Tradition and an outspoken opponent of Kabala.
It is the very same Kabala teachings from long ago that is the foundation for today’s Chasidic Jews. I asked my new friend Moshe how he happened to be in Venice. He seemed slightly annoyed with my questioning but said he was originally from Australia but spent several years in yehiva (religious school) in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn where the Chasidic movement is headquartered. He had only recently been sent to Venice to work at the Chabad House in the Ghetto Nuovo, a place where Jews can come to worship and where it was his job to recruit secular Jews to Tefilin. The heat of the day weighed on my heavily clothed companion and I could see a bead of sweat trickle from the hatband of his fedora down his forehead. He removed his glasses and used his jacket sleeve to wipe the moisture from his brow. If I wore the Tefilin he said, even once I could find a more righteous path to G_d. There was now, more than a bit of impatience in his voice and I thought it would be a good idea to let him tell me what he intended to say from the start.
How is it I asked that I could make such a profound connection through two little boxes with leather straps? It is like a father, said Moshe, now comfortably settling into to his mission, who sits down to play blocks with his child. G_d sits with us at our level and like the father who gently encourages his child in simple direction; G_d speaks through mediums or Metaphors that humans can understand. And He uses Metaphor to explain the complex and often contradictory world. Tefilin, Moshe continued, is a Metaphor for binding the heart and mind with good deed. Further, it is the practice of good deeds in this life that allows the immortal soul to return to heaven.
The idea of an afterlife had been around for a very long time among the ancient Canaanites and Hebrews. The common practice was to place the dead within caves where the recently passed were reunited literally with the bones of their ancestors. Archaeologists have found in these caves gifts left for the dead and believe that these offerings were a form of ancestral worship. Caring for dead ancestors is a deeply rooted belief in Judaism. In the 6th Century BCE when the Bible was transcribed Heaven was considered the House of G_d and angels, not a place for human souls. The Old Testament in Psalms and the books of Isaiah and Job refers to a world called Sheol, not related to Heaven, where unfulfilled human spirits reside. Influenced by the Egyptians, Babylonians and later Greeks the concept of a soul ascending to Heaven for the Righteous evolved over time. Nearly two centuries before Jesus In the year 165 BCE the Book of Daniel is the first record in the Judeo Christian tradition of eternal afterlife for doers of Mitzvah (good deed) and is the basis of religious belief in an immortal soul for all three monotheistic religions, Jewish, Christian and Muslim.
The Talmud and the Kabala were two of the most important “Oral Tradition” works that were recorded over the next two millennium. The Talmud detailed beliefs and practices that were articulated by centuries of rabbinic study of the Old Testament. Kabala was in many ways a Jewish parallel to the Christian Reformation. At its heart was the rejection of seemingly out of touch leadership of the Talmudists and a desire for a personal connection to G_d. Among Kabalists that connection involved spiritual practices that were often misunderstood by Christians as sorcery. The Rabbi’s of Venice like other European cities had to maintain a delicate balance with the Church. Anything that could possibly trigger a backlash of new recriminations was carefully avoided. The Kabala represented just such a threat. At the same time another movement was starting to take shape, not only challenging the established Talmudic order but rejecting the notion of the immortality of the soul altogether. It was bad enough that the Christians thought of the Jews as sorcerers but not believing in Heaven was intolerable. That movement is considered the beginnings of modern Rationalist thought, a philosophy articulated later in the century by Baruch Spinoza that equated G_d and Nature as one in the same. Spinoza’s book Ethics is considered today to be one of the great works of Western thought. Spinoza like his predecessors was a Converso or Spanish/Portuguese Jew forced to convert to Christianity during the Inquisition. Fleeing further persecution they left Spain or Portugal and rejoined the Jewish faith settling in large numbers in Amsterdam, Venice and Hamburg.
The Rabbinic Council of Venice had to act quickly on this new front. An erudite voice that held the forces of Kabala in check was called upon by the Rabbinic Council of Venice to respond to those who accused the established Talmudic order of not practicing the true religion as originally conceived in the Old Testament. In his published reprimand of Rationalist thinking, Sarra’s Rabbi Modena took the threat head on; unless the heretics retracted there denunciation, the key issue being their rejection of immortality of the soul, they would be excommunicated from the faith. What was not calculated by the enigmatic Rabbi Modena was how this controversy would draw his dear friend and student Sarra Copia Sulam to its center.
In time Sarra’s correspondence with the Ceba took a turn when the old poet began to insist that she convert to Christianity to save her soul. He professed so much love for her that his only wish was to see her saved for eternity in a Christian Heaven before he died. Despite his repeated efforts Sarra refused to convert and in a desperate measure Ceba enlisted the help of Signore Baldassare Bonifacio, a Venetian poet, priest and legal scholar who frequented Sarra’s Salon. Perhaps picking up on the controversy raging inside Jewish Synagogues, Baldassare published on June 21, 1621 his public “Discoursa” accusing Sarra of not believing in the immortality of the soul as she had repeatedly not accepted the advances of Ceba to convert to Christianity. This was a terrible blow on Sarra’s reputation; contrary to what he was saying she did believe in the immortality of the soul. It was a very cruel accusation for a woman who still grieved for her dead children and father. The unrelenting persistence and even coercion to convert her was a gross perversion in light of the fact that ascending to Christian Heaven would mean renouncing her religion and making it impossible to reunite in the afterlife with her own family. Sarra acted swiftly with a published response she called her “Manifesto” in which she pointedly tells Baldassare that he is neither a theologian nor a philosopher but rather a fool for speaking on subjects he does not understand. And since the charge that she does not believe in the immortality of the soul in not true she did not wish to engage him in any further public debate about it.
A flock of pigeons descended onto the Ghetto Nuovo Campo and I felt the pressure to rejoin the rest of my party who had wandered off to different corners of the Jewish Ghetto. Rebecca and Sal were looking at a series of bronze plaques that lined two long white stucco walls remembering Italian Jews that died in the Holocaust. The boys were exploring some of the shops and galleries. Rabbi Moshe looked at me probably sensing that my mind was drifting elsewhere and explained to me that laying out the Tefilin would not only bring me to a more Righteous path but in so doing would bring the moment closer when the Messiah would bring Heaven down to Earth.
Look, Moshe, I said, I have enjoyed talking to you. I believe biblical stories are metaphors for explaining things that are hard to understand about the nature of this world. I believe in an immortal soul that lives on in memory, legend and history. There are great sinners and good doers who live in the large collective memory of the world but I believe most souls live on as memories with their children and grandchildren or friends, husbands, wives, brothers, sisters and sometimes with great pain fathers and mothers. By my doing good deeds in the world I believe my soul will live in a greater way in their memory which I think of as Heaven. Perhaps one day a person will come and leave a legacy so great that it will significantly and positively alter the way those that follow will act in the world but I will not wait or act in anticipation of it. In this way I am a Jew. I took Moshe’s hand in mine and shook it. I do not need, I said to him, to wear the Tefilin to be Righteous.
Sarra Copia Sullam heroically defended her name until her death in 1641 at the age of 41 even though she came under repeated attacks of others whose aim was to discredit her. It is believed she anonymously supported the literary world in Venice playing a significant role in the establishment of Accademia degli Incogniti, an important Literary Salon during the 1630’s and closing her own Salon following the Baldassare affair. Rabbi Modena continued his friendship with Sarra until her death and wrote her Epithet. An orator, writer, artist, musician and actor Modena in his autobiography admitted to an obsession for gambling. Despite having a few unsavory financial obligations including one with Baldasarre, Modena remained true to Sarra never seeking to settle his debts with her charity. The Jewish crisis within the Synagogue grew beyond Modena’s day. A former Modena student and Chief Rabbi of Amsterdam Saul Levi Morteira is best known for being the Rabbi who imposes a cherem (excommunication) on the philosopher Spinoza. Considered a heretic by Jews and Christians alike during his lifetime Spinoza lived a relatively obscure life and died young from a lung disease caused by his trade of lens grinding for spectacles and telescopes. The Kabalist movement spread rapidly throughout Eastern Europe eventually leading to a momentous showdown of Talmudist versus Kabalist rabbi’s in Poland. A moderated version emerged in the 18th and 19th Centuries as modern day Chasidic Judaism.
I rejoined my party and we made our way to the edge of the Ghetto to a kosher restaurant on the canal called GAM GAM. We had a wonderful meal of Italian and Middle Eastern inspired Jewish comfort food. As the sun set I thought about the gates that would close the world away from the Ghetto hundreds of years ago. A breeze along the canal stirred the air and a chill could be felt as Rebecca draped a shawl over her shoulders. I felt oddly at home here, thinking of the souls from years past that perhaps still walked among us searching for fulfillment. There must have been so many.
Crossing over a canal bridge, we descended a steep set of stairs through a low hanging doorway to the Ghetto Nuovo. Emerging from the dark passage to the light of day, an expansive piazza surrounded a collection of multicolored buildings six stories high.
On March 29, 1516 by decree of the Venetian Senate all Jews living in Venice were required to immediately move to the confines of this 17 acre Campo and would be prevented from leaving or reentering by two locked gates from sundown to sunup each day. The existing Christians were ordered to vacate the former copper foundry and the Jews, not allowed to own property, were required to pay one third higher rents. The 1500’s began in a tumultuous time: there was a grave threat to European Sovereignty by the Ottoman Turks and the Church was fending for its existence against the Protestant Reformation movement. Charles V led his French army into Northern Italy and Florence and Milan fell under his control. The Black Death had reduced the population of Europe by 40% and the Franciscan order was anticipating the End of Days at the turn of the century. A great Renaissance of humanist ideology challenged the foundation of leadership and faith. Spanish ships began their rule of the oceans from the New World to the Mediterranean Sea forever undermining Venice’s dominance of trade. The Inquisition was in full force, tolerance was on a short string and Jewish houses of worship were forbidden in the Ghetto or anywhere else in Venice. But a long partnership between Jewish artisans and merchants with the Venetians had just enough root to allow them to stay. Fleeing persecution or expulsion from Spain, Portugal, England, Germany, France and the Levant (Holy Land) other not so fortunate Jews came to Venice in droves as a safe but restricted haven.
In the heat of the midday sun I was approached by a short pale young man in a black coat and hat with scarlet red beard and hair. A member of the Orthodox sect of Chasidic Jews, he asked me in a Brooklyn accent if I wanted to “lay out” Tefilin, two black prayer boxes that are worn on the forehead and above the elbow and bound to the head and arm with leather straps. The young Rabbi seemed a natural bridge between the present and centuries past so I engaged him in conversation deflecting his question by asking him to tell me about some of the local sites and history of the Ghetto. He was well versed.
Within 100 years of its establishment, the Jewish Ghetto had quadrupled in population. Because growth was restricted in area, housing was built up with floor additions. The top floors were surreptitiously made into houses of worship. When it was politically or financially expedient restrictions were loosened and the nearby Ghetto Vecchio was annexed as part of the Jewish area. Not long after, three Synagogues were allowed to be built. In the later part of the 17th Century Venice began new relations with the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire and in a strange redirection Jews from the East were invited by the Doge to live in Venice.
Moshe, embellished his history a bit and mentioned a Jewess poet from the early 1600’s and her Literary Salon that entertained both Christians and Jews. My interest was piqued to learn more about her but I had tapped Moshe’s knowledge of the subject and perhaps his patience. It was later that I learned about the native Venetian Sarra Copia who married Jacob Sulam, a wealthy Jewish merchant in 1614 and a year later gave birth to a daughter Rebecca who died at the age of 10 months. Several years later Sarra miscarried and was never able to bear children again. Though she said it was her deceased father’s wish to start a Literary Salon in 1618 it would not be hard to surmise that she did so to somehow heal the pain she felt for the losses she suffered. Venetian relations had become tolerable, enabling the young Sarra to open the Salon in the Ghetto where Christian and Jewish artists, poets and musicians came to perform and discourse on philosophy, religion and politics. Her admirers praised her extraordinary beauty and humble nature. She bleached her hair blond and dressed in the latest style and fashion for a wealthy Venetian woman. She was an accomplished musician and singer, literate in 6 languages and a student of the Greek classics. This precocious young woman would match wit and intellect with the finest artists of the day in Venice and is regarded as one of early modern Italy’s more significant poets.
That same year Sarra began a highly irregular correspondence with Genoese Christian monk and poet Ansaldo Ceba after reading his sonnet L’Ester about the Jewish Biblical Queen of Persia. Despite Sarra’s marriage to Sulam, she wrote to Ceba of her great admiration and love of him and his work. Ceba in his 50’s was ailing in health and unable to travel. Sarra was just 18. They never meet and over the next five years carried on an unconsummated romance of the heart. It’s difficult to understand why she was so enamored of Ceba but it would seem to be part of a broader ambition to connect with Christian artists who appeared sympathetic to Jews and to fill a void left by the death of her father. It is pure speculation on my part but her marriage may have also been strained with her husband since she could no longer bear him an heir. For the moment at least the opportunity opened for Jews and Christians of similar mind and expression to engage with one another but it was dangerous. New ideas and religious beliefs were threatening the status quo. At any moment things could change with disastrous results. One such movement was the rapidly growing Jewish mystics of Kabala. Sarra’s close friend and spiritual advisor Rabbi Leone De Modena was a Jewish leader in Venice of the predominant Talmudic Tradition and an outspoken opponent of Kabala.
It is the very same Kabala teachings from long ago that is the foundation for today’s Chasidic Jews. I asked my new friend Moshe how he happened to be in Venice. He seemed slightly annoyed with my questioning but said he was originally from Australia but spent several years in yehiva (religious school) in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn where the Chasidic movement is headquartered. He had only recently been sent to Venice to work at the Chabad House in the Ghetto Nuovo, a place where Jews can come to worship and where it was his job to recruit secular Jews to Tefilin. The heat of the day weighed on my heavily clothed companion and I could see a bead of sweat trickle from the hatband of his fedora down his forehead. He removed his glasses and used his jacket sleeve to wipe the moisture from his brow. If I wore the Tefilin he said, even once I could find a more righteous path to G_d. There was now, more than a bit of impatience in his voice and I thought it would be a good idea to let him tell me what he intended to say from the start.
How is it I asked that I could make such a profound connection through two little boxes with leather straps? It is like a father, said Moshe, now comfortably settling into to his mission, who sits down to play blocks with his child. G_d sits with us at our level and like the father who gently encourages his child in simple direction; G_d speaks through mediums or Metaphors that humans can understand. And He uses Metaphor to explain the complex and often contradictory world. Tefilin, Moshe continued, is a Metaphor for binding the heart and mind with good deed. Further, it is the practice of good deeds in this life that allows the immortal soul to return to heaven.
The idea of an afterlife had been around for a very long time among the ancient Canaanites and Hebrews. The common practice was to place the dead within caves where the recently passed were reunited literally with the bones of their ancestors. Archaeologists have found in these caves gifts left for the dead and believe that these offerings were a form of ancestral worship. Caring for dead ancestors is a deeply rooted belief in Judaism. In the 6th Century BCE when the Bible was transcribed Heaven was considered the House of G_d and angels, not a place for human souls. The Old Testament in Psalms and the books of Isaiah and Job refers to a world called Sheol, not related to Heaven, where unfulfilled human spirits reside. Influenced by the Egyptians, Babylonians and later Greeks the concept of a soul ascending to Heaven for the Righteous evolved over time. Nearly two centuries before Jesus In the year 165 BCE the Book of Daniel is the first record in the Judeo Christian tradition of eternal afterlife for doers of Mitzvah (good deed) and is the basis of religious belief in an immortal soul for all three monotheistic religions, Jewish, Christian and Muslim.
The Talmud and the Kabala were two of the most important “Oral Tradition” works that were recorded over the next two millennium. The Talmud detailed beliefs and practices that were articulated by centuries of rabbinic study of the Old Testament. Kabala was in many ways a Jewish parallel to the Christian Reformation. At its heart was the rejection of seemingly out of touch leadership of the Talmudists and a desire for a personal connection to G_d. Among Kabalists that connection involved spiritual practices that were often misunderstood by Christians as sorcery. The Rabbi’s of Venice like other European cities had to maintain a delicate balance with the Church. Anything that could possibly trigger a backlash of new recriminations was carefully avoided. The Kabala represented just such a threat. At the same time another movement was starting to take shape, not only challenging the established Talmudic order but rejecting the notion of the immortality of the soul altogether. It was bad enough that the Christians thought of the Jews as sorcerers but not believing in Heaven was intolerable. That movement is considered the beginnings of modern Rationalist thought, a philosophy articulated later in the century by Baruch Spinoza that equated G_d and Nature as one in the same. Spinoza’s book Ethics is considered today to be one of the great works of Western thought. Spinoza like his predecessors was a Converso or Spanish/Portuguese Jew forced to convert to Christianity during the Inquisition. Fleeing further persecution they left Spain or Portugal and rejoined the Jewish faith settling in large numbers in Amsterdam, Venice and Hamburg.
The Rabbinic Council of Venice had to act quickly on this new front. An erudite voice that held the forces of Kabala in check was called upon by the Rabbinic Council of Venice to respond to those who accused the established Talmudic order of not practicing the true religion as originally conceived in the Old Testament. In his published reprimand of Rationalist thinking, Sarra’s Rabbi Modena took the threat head on; unless the heretics retracted there denunciation, the key issue being their rejection of immortality of the soul, they would be excommunicated from the faith. What was not calculated by the enigmatic Rabbi Modena was how this controversy would draw his dear friend and student Sarra Copia Sulam to its center.
In time Sarra’s correspondence with the Ceba took a turn when the old poet began to insist that she convert to Christianity to save her soul. He professed so much love for her that his only wish was to see her saved for eternity in a Christian Heaven before he died. Despite his repeated efforts Sarra refused to convert and in a desperate measure Ceba enlisted the help of Signore Baldassare Bonifacio, a Venetian poet, priest and legal scholar who frequented Sarra’s Salon. Perhaps picking up on the controversy raging inside Jewish Synagogues, Baldassare published on June 21, 1621 his public “Discoursa” accusing Sarra of not believing in the immortality of the soul as she had repeatedly not accepted the advances of Ceba to convert to Christianity. This was a terrible blow on Sarra’s reputation; contrary to what he was saying she did believe in the immortality of the soul. It was a very cruel accusation for a woman who still grieved for her dead children and father. The unrelenting persistence and even coercion to convert her was a gross perversion in light of the fact that ascending to Christian Heaven would mean renouncing her religion and making it impossible to reunite in the afterlife with her own family. Sarra acted swiftly with a published response she called her “Manifesto” in which she pointedly tells Baldassare that he is neither a theologian nor a philosopher but rather a fool for speaking on subjects he does not understand. And since the charge that she does not believe in the immortality of the soul in not true she did not wish to engage him in any further public debate about it.
A flock of pigeons descended onto the Ghetto Nuovo Campo and I felt the pressure to rejoin the rest of my party who had wandered off to different corners of the Jewish Ghetto. Rebecca and Sal were looking at a series of bronze plaques that lined two long white stucco walls remembering Italian Jews that died in the Holocaust. The boys were exploring some of the shops and galleries. Rabbi Moshe looked at me probably sensing that my mind was drifting elsewhere and explained to me that laying out the Tefilin would not only bring me to a more Righteous path but in so doing would bring the moment closer when the Messiah would bring Heaven down to Earth.
Look, Moshe, I said, I have enjoyed talking to you. I believe biblical stories are metaphors for explaining things that are hard to understand about the nature of this world. I believe in an immortal soul that lives on in memory, legend and history. There are great sinners and good doers who live in the large collective memory of the world but I believe most souls live on as memories with their children and grandchildren or friends, husbands, wives, brothers, sisters and sometimes with great pain fathers and mothers. By my doing good deeds in the world I believe my soul will live in a greater way in their memory which I think of as Heaven. Perhaps one day a person will come and leave a legacy so great that it will significantly and positively alter the way those that follow will act in the world but I will not wait or act in anticipation of it. In this way I am a Jew. I took Moshe’s hand in mine and shook it. I do not need, I said to him, to wear the Tefilin to be Righteous.
Sarra Copia Sullam heroically defended her name until her death in 1641 at the age of 41 even though she came under repeated attacks of others whose aim was to discredit her. It is believed she anonymously supported the literary world in Venice playing a significant role in the establishment of Accademia degli Incogniti, an important Literary Salon during the 1630’s and closing her own Salon following the Baldassare affair. Rabbi Modena continued his friendship with Sarra until her death and wrote her Epithet. An orator, writer, artist, musician and actor Modena in his autobiography admitted to an obsession for gambling. Despite having a few unsavory financial obligations including one with Baldasarre, Modena remained true to Sarra never seeking to settle his debts with her charity. The Jewish crisis within the Synagogue grew beyond Modena’s day. A former Modena student and Chief Rabbi of Amsterdam Saul Levi Morteira is best known for being the Rabbi who imposes a cherem (excommunication) on the philosopher Spinoza. Considered a heretic by Jews and Christians alike during his lifetime Spinoza lived a relatively obscure life and died young from a lung disease caused by his trade of lens grinding for spectacles and telescopes. The Kabalist movement spread rapidly throughout Eastern Europe eventually leading to a momentous showdown of Talmudist versus Kabalist rabbi’s in Poland. A moderated version emerged in the 18th and 19th Centuries as modern day Chasidic Judaism.
I rejoined my party and we made our way to the edge of the Ghetto to a kosher restaurant on the canal called GAM GAM. We had a wonderful meal of Italian and Middle Eastern inspired Jewish comfort food. As the sun set I thought about the gates that would close the world away from the Ghetto hundreds of years ago. A breeze along the canal stirred the air and a chill could be felt as Rebecca draped a shawl over her shoulders. I felt oddly at home here, thinking of the souls from years past that perhaps still walked among us searching for fulfillment. There must have been so many.
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