The Ghetto and the emergence from the Ghetto

During the 16th-18th centuries, many Jewish communities lived in conditions that separated them from non-Jews and were exclusive only to them. The phenomenon started for many reasons as towns sprung up over Western Europe, but the single main reason is that Jews wanted to keep their culture, the social-religious aspects of the community; the need for a minyan of ten men for prayer, a ritual pool, safety from barbarian incursions, all of which required the establishment of an urban Jewish concentration. This situation created a de facto concentration of Jews on a Jewish street or Jewish quarter in the host city, in which Jews lived voluntarily and associated with many gentile neighbors. That seemingly harmonious relationship between Jew and Gentile changed when the expansion of the power of the Roman church created laws regarding where the Jews could and could not live. Gentiles, particularly from the noble or wealthy middle class, continued to live in the Jewish quarter until, as Esther Benbassa writes, on page 5-6 of her book, “The Jews of France”: “By the fourth century, Christian theology had taken a clear position regarding to the Jews, who did recognize the messianic character and divinity of Jesus. The state of inferiority in which they were to be kept was both punishment for their blindness and the sign of the authority of Christ’s message.” Jews were forced to live inside the areas designated for them. Eventually, gates and walls separated them from the non-Jewish population. We refer to some of these places as ‘ghettos.’ However, in other countries, similar spaces had other names, such as Mellah and Serraglio.

This essay will address the question of how these Jewish quarters, or streets, evolved into what we now refer to as ‘ghettoes.’ This essay will also analyze some of the historical reasons that motivated non-Jewish societies to reinforce the lines of separation between gentiles and the Jews who lived amongst them as ‘others’ or ‘strangers,’ including under what set of circumstances where these rules of separation abolished thus allowing Jews to ‘leave the ghetto’ and attempt to integrate to a higher degree in the general environment.

Regarding the evolution leading to the creation of the ghettos and focusing on the European Jewish experience after the fall of Rome, history teaches that Jews had settled for centuries in Gaul and enjoyed full status as Roman citizens under Roman law. When the various invaders conquered Gaul, the pagan conquerors still respected Roman Law vis-à-vis the Jews and other former Roman citizens. Gradually, the pagan elite converted to Christianity; however, according to Benbassa, until the fourth century, there is no indication that the Jews were restricted in any significant way. It was not until after the fourth century that the church took a clear position on Jews, who stubbornly refused to recognize the messianic character of Jesus. The first restrictions included forbidding clerics from sitting at a table with Jews, and it was also forbidden for the Jews from going out in public from Maundy Thursday through Easter Sunday. The church forbade exogamous marriages. She writes that the fact that these restrictive measures were renewed in both the sixth and seventh centuries suggests that the church had trouble enforcing them. (Benbassa pp. 6-8)

These precursors to the Ghettos were, of course, the Jewish Quarters, where both Jews and Christians shared the same streets and conducted business and social functions together. Neither walls nor outward markings were used to identify the Jew as being “the Other.” Benjamin Ravid dates the change as starting with the Third Lateran Council of 1179, with the prohibition of Jews keeping Christian slaves. He paraphrased this to mean that ‘a Christian must not be allowed to live in a Jewish home, either as a slave or servant or nurse; the Christian who serves a Jew or a Saracen shall suffer excommunication. In 1434, the Council of Basel forbade the cohabitation of Jews and Christians. It demanded that Jews live as far from churches as possible. Ravid points out that one of the first acts to separate the Jewish community from the Christian community was in 1267, in the town of Breslau Poland and the province of Gniezno proscribing that Jews should not dwell Christians because it was feared that Christians, “living among Jews, might be infected by the superstitions and depraved mores of the Jews living with them but (the Jews) should possess contiguous or adjoining houses in a segregated location of the village. This should be so arranged that the Jewish quarter be separated from the common habitation of the Christians by a fence, a wall, or a ditch.” (Ravid pp. 6-7)
Ravid writes that in 1516, the Venetian Senate required all Jews to dwell on an Island known as the Ghetto Nuovo. He notes that the name “ghetto” was associated with the preexisting copper foundry located nearby, which took its name from “ghetto,” which means pouring or casting metal in the vernacular. It would become compulsory for all Jews to move to the “ghetto” around 1541.

Israel Abrahams writes, “Beside the isolation which the ghettos more or less perfectly effected—I say more or less, for it is quite certain than many Jews contrived to secure the privilege of living outside the ghetto gates—the most serious effect of the new persecution was the terrible overcrowding that necessarily followed.” Overcrowding and slum conditions would cause the spread of disease and plague.

This date, 1541, marks the beginning of the transformation of many former Jewish Quarters into a compulsory Ghetto. (Ravid pp 14-15) Ravid then offers an outline of his criteria for calling a ghetto: Most Jewish Quarters that evolved into ghettos experienced the expansion of the already restrictive rules. These changes included added rules, which determined their psychological and physical boundaries, including locked gates, curfew hours, penalties for being caught out after hours, and guards. By using this simple “rule of thumb,” a definition of a Ghetto, as opposed to a Jewish Quarter, can easily be categorized.

The question arises as to what the historical reasons were that motivated non-Jewish societies to reinforce the lines of separation between them and the Jews who lived amongst them as ‘others’ or ‘strangers.’ The most compelling reasons for this separation were the ordinances of separation, which were Papal Bulls disseminated via the local bishops and lay priests throughout all of Christendom. These executive orders were the structure that held Christendom together and, since they came from the Pope himself, had a great influence on the behavior of kings and minor nobles as well as the local Christian clergy. The effectiveness of these Bulls is debatable since each Kingdom often delayed implementing them and interpreted how vigorously to enforce them. Concerning the Jew as the “Other,” some Popes genuinely tried to protect them from the cruelty and superstitions of the ordinary people. The first Bull of historical interest concerning the Jews was on July 7, 1120 (for this list I have used a handy chart found at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_papal_bulls) in Sicut Judaeis (Latin: “As the Jews”) was instituted by the attacks on Jews during the First Crusade which took the lives of over 5,000 Jews. This Bull, issued by Pope Calixtus II, forbade Christians from forcing Jews to convert, from harming them, taking their property, desecrating their cemeteries, and disturbing Jewish celebrations. Thus, Christianity made a clear separation between Jew and Christian, albeit perhaps well-intentioned. Between the years 1120–1447, eighteen other Popes re-affirmed this Bull, maintaining the idea of separation for the benefit of Jews which was, in reality, a vehicle that reinforced the attitude of the ordinary people that the Jew was the “Other” and had somehow mysteriously gained the protection of Christ’s representatives on earth.

And then, Honorius III issued a Bull that demanded the enforcement of the 4th Lateran Council (which had until then not been effective), forcing the Jews to dress in a way that would distinguish themselves as Jews and requiring Jews to pay a tithe of 10% of their income to the local churches. What had possibly started as a humanitarian desire to save Jewish lives and property evolved into rules of separation and “otherness,” as is seen in the 1228 Papal Bull, which canceled interest on debts to the Jews and also declared an indefinite moratorium on paying back the original loan. The most effective way of demonizing the Jew was carried out by the lower clergy and the ignorant masses. It was called “blood liable.” The blood libel claim infected the minds of the Christians of Medieval Europe and spread like the Black Plague. The accusation became so prevalent that Pope Gregory X issued a bull in 1272, “Letter on Jews,” in which he came out against the blood libel and demanded that the claims of Jews killing Christian children cease. (“Gregory X: Letter on Jews, (1271-76): Against the Blood Libel”, Internet Medieval Sourcebook, Fordham University. This reaction shows that, regarding Blood Libel at least, the accusations did not receive support from the upper clergy and the Popes who spoke against them, but the fact that Blood Libel slander continued despite this exemplified the grassroots depths of hatred of the Jews and the desire to be wholly separated from them. This everyday level of hate and suspicion of the remained embedded in the Christians has persisted down to the modern age and was used by the Nazi propaganda machine in the first half of the 20th century to justify crimes against the Jewish people.

The church sought to use this as a carrot and a stick on the Jewish population. While giving lip service of disapproval to the accusations of the Christian masses against the Jews, they allowed this to continue as a means of saving the Jews for Jesus. It was either convert or be left to the mercy of the brutal and ignorant masses. In order to facilitate the conversion of Jews to Christianity in 1278, Nicholas III ordered all Jews to attend conversion sermons. Nicholas IV, yet, on the other hand, issued a Bull in 1291 protecting his Roman Jews from oppression. The Jews were oppressed or saved by the order of the Popes. This situation established the Jew as the Other even before the Ghetto walls rose. This policy of back and forth ceased by 1593 when Pope Clement VIII expelled the Jews from the Papal States. The final act, which shows that the Popes fell under the spell of the Jew as being a potentially evil “Other” came in 1755 when Pope Benedict XIV issued a Bull called Beaus Andreas (Blessed Andreas which elevated the martyred Andreas Oxner to sainthood after a blood libel accusation that Jews murdered him in 1462.)

Francesca Matteoni elaborated on the importance of blood in the development of blood libel, which separated the Jews from the Christians in her paper. “The Jew, the Blood and the Body in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe.” Blood was a symbol of Christ and Saints, and that it was used for rituals (Blood Libel) by the Jewish “Other” was unthinkable. During the Black Death in 1348, for instance, she writes that the Flagellants would sacrifice their blood as did Christ on the cross by attacking the German Jewish community in German towns in which they shed Jewish blood (the evil blood) in order to purge Germany of the Plague. (Matteoni p 196)

She writes in the conclusion of her paper: “The dehumanized physical image of the Jew was thought to have led to his ferocious blood-thirst … Looking at Jewish bodies somehow led medieval and early modern Christians to consider their nature deprived of salvation and eternal promise of faith.”

Moreover, she finishes her paper with the definition of the Jew as the other: “Medieval and Early Modern Christian society tried to push pain and cruelty beyond its boundaries by identifying them (the Jews) with the stereotypical Jew. It created the double image of a social enemy and a physical monster, hiding, at the same time, what it was really and hopelessly fighting—the transient nature of life inscribed in its blood.” (Matteoni p 197)

What was the event that finally shattered the Ghetto and the separation of Jew and Gentile? When did this take place? Lionel Kochan in “The Making of Western Jewry 1600-1819” writes that, in France, the process of full emancipation started in 1831 when the French Government agreed to pay the salaries of rabbis (making them on a par with Christian clergy). The difficulties of the transition from tolerated French Jews to full Jewish citizenship were finally realized in 1791 with the formal dissolution of the kehillot.

As the Revolution spread, spearheaded by French troops under the command of the revolutionary government and then Bonaparte, the emancipation of the Jews and the destruction of the ghettos swiftly followed. On July 7, 1797, the gates of the Venice ghetto were demolished. Here, the story of the medieval Ghetto has come full circle with the symbolic end of the first Ghetto by the troops of Napoleon. In the wars that followed, Jews never returned to the situation they had lived in previously, and some form of citizenship was then granted to them throughout Western Europe, but at a price. As Rabbi Wolf Boskowits, both a Talmudic Scholar and a student of the natural sciences, wrote,” If the nations desired us to assimilate with them only externally, then we would have some excuse for shedding the heavy yoke of exile and becoming like them. But this is not the case…their true desire is not for us to change our garments and the like. Still, they desire our souls and our religion, for they wish us to be like them in our inner selves and not only outwardly.” (Kochan p 234)

In conclusion, this essay has investigated the differences between Jewish communities living in voluntary Jewish Quarters found in most of Europe as opposed to the Ghetto, which became a semi-permeable prison. In the Ghetto, freedom of mobility was severely curtailed and where at times the intention of moving Jews into the Ghetto with walls and gates that could have been based on the necessity of the rulers to preserve their valuable property (Jews lived at the pleasure of their gentile overlords wherever they were allowed to reside). In the beginning, not all ghettos were compulsory. Still, they evolved into compulsory, overcrowded, and disease-filled ghettoes, which remain a stain on the humanity of Christian Europe.

This essay has addressed the historical, religious, and psychological reasons that encouraged the Gentile populations to keep separate from the Jews who lived amongst them. It is easy to hate and fear a population that is closed in and kept out of sight. This situation lasted for centuries and helped to create the disgust and hatred generated by this policy of separation that kept the eternal Jew as the eternal OTHER. Had it not been for the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars that followed, full emancipation and full citizen might have taken a lot longer. Today, we have no Jewish ghettos. With emancipation has come the freedom to seek to ingratiate ourselves with the Gentiles, but to our surprise, we remain the OTHER, and we ask, ‘what do they want from us’. The answer is quoted above: “They desire our souls and our religion, for they wish us to be like them in our inner selves and not only outwardly.”

Bibliography:
Di Nepi, Serena, Jews in the Papal States between Western Sephardic Diasporas and Ghettoization: A Trial in Ancona as a Case Study (1555-1563). Serena Di Nepi, 2019\DOI:10.1163/9789004392489_012 p. 291

Lionel Kochan, The Making of Western Jewry 1600-1819 (Palgrave/Macmillan, 2004), pp. 44-72;

Benjamin Ravid, “All Ghettos Were Jewish Quarters, But Not All Jewish Quarters Were Ghettos,” Jewish Culture and History, vol. 10, nos. 2-6: 5-24

Susan G. Miller, et al., “Inscribing Minority Space in the Islamic City: The Jewish Quarter of Fez, 1438-1912,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, vol. 60, no. 3 (2001): 310-327.

Esther Benbassa, “The Jews of France,” Princeton University Press, 1999, Chapter Seven, pp 84-94

Serena Di Nepi, Chapter Title: Jews in the Papal States between Western Sephardic Diasporas and Ghettoization: A Trial in Ancona as a Case Study (1555–1563) URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1163/j.ctvrzgvqk.17

Matteoni, Francesca. “The Jew, the Blood, and the Body in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe.” Folklore 119, no. 2 (2008): 182-200. Accessed February 11, 2020. www.jstor.org/stable/40646449.