Venice Haggadah Gets Facelift for 500th Anniversary

Image by Yale University
The Beit Venezia Jewish culture center unveiled a series of 24 etchings created by eight international artists that will form part of a new, illustrated Venice Haggadah.
The ceremony took place Sunday at the Venice Jewish Museum, where the prints will be exhibited until July 31 as part of initiatives kicked off at the end of March to commemorate the 500th anniversary of the imposition of the Venice Ghetto.
The project, organized in cooperation with the International School of Design of Venice, was inspired by the Venice Haggadah, published in Venice in 1609 when the city was a major center of Hebrew printing.
Considered one of the most beautiful of early printed Haggadot, the Venice Haggadah included an elaborate new series of illustrations and appeared with translations into Judeo-Italian, Judeo-Spanish and Judeo-German languages spoken by Jewish communities then living in Venice.
As part of programs to foster Venice as a center of Jewish art, culture and learning, Beit Venezia brought the eight artists to the city for a three-week residency last October. The artists, from countries including England, Israel and Slovakia, first held study sessions on the Haggadah, then each artist was assigned a portion to illustrate with three etchings.
“The idea was for them to live, learn and create in Jewish Venice,” said Beit Venezia director Shaul Bassi, who is also the coordinator of the committee for the 500th anniversary commemorations.
Eight full sets of the prints will be sold at auction, and the prints will also be digitized and printed as a commercial edition to be published in 2017.
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a gift today!
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Most Popular
- 1
Opinion The dangerous Nazi legend behind Trump’s ruthless grab for power
- 2
Opinion A Holocaust perpetrator was just celebrated on US soil. I think I know why no one objected.
- 3
Culture Did this Jewish literary titan have the right idea about Harry Potter and J.K. Rowling after all?
- 4
Opinion I first met Netanyahu in 1988. Here’s how he became the most destructive leader in Israel’s history.
In Case You Missed It
-
Culture Trump wants to honor Hannah Arendt in a ‘Garden of American Heroes.’ Is this a joke?
-
Opinion Gaza and Trump have left the Jewish community at war with itself — and me with a bad case of alienation
-
Fast Forward Trump administration restores student visas, but impact on pro-Palestinian protesters is unclear
-
Fast Forward Deborah Lipstadt says Trump’s campus antisemitism crackdown has ‘gone way too far’
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.