Restoration of the Sukkah room, together with the production of a commemorative CD-ROM disc, was completed in 2007 with funding from Melva Bucksbaum and friends: Martin Bucksbaum Family Foundation, Matthew and Carolyn Bucksbaum Family Foundation, Elizabeth and Alan Doft, Mrs. Estée Lauder Philanthropic Fund, Leonard & Evelyn Lauder Foundation, May and Samuel Rudin Family Foundation Inc., Mary Bucksbaum Scanlan Family Foundation, The Scharlin Family Foundation, Harriet M. Zimmerman, and additional funding from Jennifer and Andrew Lucas.

On the top floor of a nineteenth-century building adjacent to the Canton Synagogue is an unusual room — originally used as a sukkah — that offers a striking example of how the Venetian Jews adapted to the limited space of the Ghetto.

Sukkot, known as the Feast of the Tabernacles, is a weeklong Jewish holiday celebrated by taking shelter and eating meals in a temporary structure, or sukkah, that has been set up outside, perhaps in a courtyard or garden; the purpose of the celebration is to commemorate the forty years that the children of Israel spent wandering in the desert after their exodus from Egypt.

The Canton sukkah originally had a section of wooden roofing that could be manually lifted off, thus technically keeping to the Sukkot tradition of dwelling in a structure under the open sky. A metal grill was placed where the roof had been and it could be decorated with palms, fruits, and foliage in order to further evoke the traditional sukkah. This ritual space had been in use as a storage room, and its former illustrious role in observing the seven days of the Sukkot holiday was close to being forgotten. Archival research uncovered essential documents confirming that the room had indeed served as the Canton congregation’s sukkah from 1858 to 1896.

The Scuola Canton was built in 1532 and is the second oldest synagogue in Venice’s Ghetto. The details surrounding its foundation are uncertain; it is thought to either have been built by French Ashkenazi Jews or founded as a private Ashkenazi synagogue as an alternative to the neighboring Scuola Grande Tedesca, built only a few years earlier in 1528. The synagogue was used for worship until the Second World War. Today, the Jewish Community of Venice worships primarily in the Levantine and Spanish Synagogues, following the Sephardic rite, and celebrates Sukkot in the garden of the Spanish Synagogue.

The restoration was undertaken by conservators from the Co. New Tech firm, with the guidance of project director Anna Chiarelli of the Superintendency of Monuments of Venice.

For select projects, conservation dossiers in Italian containing limited textual and photographic documentation may be available for consultation by appointment at the Venice office of Save Venice and the Rosand Library & Study Center. For inquiries, please contact us at venice@savevenice.org.

Unidentified artists
Sukkah of the Scuola Canton
1858

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