In 1516, the Venetian Republic changed the course of Jewish world history by opening the first ever Jewish ghetto. Amidst deep persecution, segregation and humiliation, the oppressed Venetian Jews were somehow able to create a thriving society in their enclave, and soon Jews were even attempting to get inside!
When Samuel Ha-Levi illegally built a synagogue in the provincial Spanish town of Toledo, no one could have known that it would one day become a church, then a military barracks in the Napoleonic war, a national monument, and finally a museum… but that’s just the beginning!
After decades in ruins, Nikos Stavroulakis set out to revitalize Jewish life on the Greek island of Crete
30 years after his death, the Nobel laureate’s village is being rebuilt, including a massive replica of a synagogue that was never there
