VENICE – A new room dedicated to the Jewish Passover will be opened from 9 April in the heart of the Jewish Ghetto in Venice. The temporary installation will be open to visitors by appointment and will allow visitors to learn more about the rituality of the Jewish Passover, according to the curator.

 Marcella Ansaldi, the curator of the exhibition, highlighted the intention to “recreate the interior of an 18th-century Venetian home during the Seder, the Passover dinner. One will thus discover rituals, customs and different traditions, including culinary ones, still alive today within the Venetian Jewish Community.”

 This year from the 15th of the Hebrew month of Nissan, i.e. from sunset on Wednesday, 5 April, for eight days, until sunset on 13 April, Pesach (Passover) is celebrated.

 “Pesach is the holiday that celebrates freedom, as it commemorates when, on leaving Egypt, the Jews became a free people. This holiday is also called Chag Hamatzoth, feast of unleavened bread, and Chag Haaviv, feast of spring, because it was anciently linked to the first reaping of barley. For this reason, it is also one of the Shalosh Regalim, the 'three feasts of pilgrimage': in ancient times, part of that harvest was brought as an offering to the Temple in Jerusalem,” Ansaldi continued

 The word Pesach meaning 'passage' refers to the tenth plague which passed over Egyptian houses to kill their first-born sons, while the Hebrews, who were recognisable by the sign of lamb's blood on the doorpost, were spared.

 Opera Laboratori, who have installed the exhibition, has been working alongside the Jewish Community for just over three months in the management and promotion of Ghetto Venezia, a unique example of a widespread Jewish museum in the world, and aims to enhance its artistic and cultural heritage as well as its tradition and historical memory.

 For more information and bookings:  Ghetto Venezia -tel. + 39 055 2989815 - e- mail ghettovenezia@operalaboratori.com

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