word ghetto (ghèto), originally Venetian, is now found in many languages. Shakespeare's play The Merchant of Venice, written in the late 16th century, features Shylock, a Venetian Jew. The first complete and uncensored printed edition of the Talmud was printed in Venice by Daniel Bomberg in 1523. During World War II, Jews were rounded up in Venice and deported to extermination camps. Since the end of the war, the Jewish population of Venice has declined from 1500 to about 500. Only around 30 Jews live in the former ghetto, which houses the city's major Jewish institutions. In modern times, Venice has an eruv, used by the Jewish community. Government Local and regional government The legislative body of the Comune is the City Council (Consiglio Comunale), which is composed of 36 councillors elected every five years with a proportional system, contextually to the mayoral elections. The executive body is the City Administration (Giunta Comunale), composed of 12 assessors nominated and presided over by a directly elected Mayor. Venice was governed by centre-left parties from the early 1990s until the 2010s, when the Mayor started to be elected directly. Its region, Veneto, has long been a conservative stronghold, with the coalition between the regionalist Lega Nord and the centre-right Forza Italia winning absolute majorities of the electorate in many elections at local, national, and regional levels. The current Mayor of Venice is Luigi Brugnaro, a centre-right independent businessman who is currently serving his second term in office. The municipality of Venice is also subdivided into six administrative boroughs (municipalità). Each borough is governed by a council (Consiglio) and a president, elected every five years. The urban organization is dictated by Article 114 of the Italian Constitution. The boroughs have the power to advise the Mayor with nonbinding opinions on a large spectrum of topics (environment, construction, public health, local markets) and exercise the functions delegated to them by the City Council; in addition, they are supplied with autonomous funding to finance local activities. The boroughs are: Notes Sestieri The historic city of Venice is divided into six areas called sestieri: Each sestiere is now a statistical and historical area without any degree of autonomy. The six fingers or phalanges of the ferro on the bow of a gondola represent the six sestieri. The sestieri are divided into parishes – initially 70 in 1033, but reduced under Napoleon, and now numbering just 38.