Ghetto (Renaissance and Reformation)

Introduction

From the beginning of their residence in medieval Christian Europe, Jews usually tended to dwell in proximity to each other, as did members of other groups of foreigners. Usually the origins of such Jewish areas are hidden in the twilight zone of undocumented history and were designated differently in different languages. Some designations consisted of the local word for “street,” “quarter,” or “district,” with a modifier indicating that Jews lived there, as, for example, “vicus Judaeorum,” “Judengasse,” “rue des Juifs,” “carrière juif,” “Judenhof,” “Judenviertel,” “Judendorf,” and “Judenstadt.” Other designations derived from the word “Jew,” as “guidecca,” “juiverie,” “juderia,” “judaismo,” and “judaiche.” On the other hand, sometimes Jewish quarters were not referred to by any designation that reflected a Jewish presence: for example, Leopoldstadt. Unfortunately, these various designations are utilized without differentiating between areas in which substantial numbers of Jews voluntarily lived together and those that were compulsory and enclosed by walls with gates that were locked at night to segregate the Jews. The word “ghetto,” however, is never encountered in any contemporary source prior to the 16th century, although modern authors utilize it indiscriminately to refer to Jewish streets or quarters at any time in any place. The compulsory, segregated, and enclosed Jewish quarter established in Venice in 1516 was the first to be called a ghetto, and until the end of the 18th century that word appears to have been used only to refer to such quarters on the Italian peninsula. During the course of the 19th century, it came to be used (often in a negative sense) to refer to areas of dense Jewish settlement in eastern Europe that were neither compulsory, segregated, nor enclosed. Then the word was applied to new immigrant Jewish communities established in the Germanic lands, western Europe, and the Western Hemisphere. It was soon used to designate communities of other immigrants, often with the connotation of an urban slum and eventually those formed by African Americans migrating to northern cities in the United States. Subsequently, the word gained further currency with the establishment of the so-called ghettos of Nazi Germany. Finally, after World War II, “ghetto” came to be widely utilized in connection with the extensive new urban planning and renewal. Of course, these concurrent but different uses of the word have led to considerable confusion as to what exactly is intended in any given context.

General Overviews

Despite the universal usage of the word “ghetto,” somewhat surprisingly there is no extant comprehensive treatment of its Venetian origin together with the new additional meanings that it acquired after its first association with the Jews in Venice in 1516. Ravid 1992 constitutes a first attempt to succinctly trace the evolution of the word “ghetto” from a geographical location to a historiographical symbol, while Ravid 2008 represents an updated discussion of the origin of the word and its subsequent spread as the designation for compulsory, segregated Jewish quarters. Paradoxically, despite its negative aspects, in a sense the ghetto represented an improvement in the life of the Jews in that it represented a recognition of their place in Christian society. Additionally, mainly because of the negative connotations of the word “ghetto,” the nature of Jewish life in the ghetto is often misunderstood. As shown in Ravid 1992, Ravid 2008, and Ravid 1999, as well as in Bonfil 1994 and Ruderman 1997, ghettos were not hermetically sealed but were always porous and open to Christians in the daytime, and their establishment did not lead to the breaking off of all Jewish contacts with the outside world; furthermore, from the internal Jewish perspective, many evaluations of the alleged impact of the ghetto upon the life of the Jews and their mentality require substantial revision. Indeed, as suggested by Bonfil 1988, by limiting, but certainly not eliminating, contact with the outside world, ghettoization encouraged the Jews to develop their own sources and resources, leading in certain cases to an intensification of their own cultural life (see Bonfil 1988, Ruderman 1997, and Ruderman 2008).

Bonfil, Robert. “Change in the Cultural Patterns of a Jewish Society in Crisis: Italian Jewry at the Close of the Sixteenth Century.” Jewish History 3:2 (1988): 11–30.
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Points out that the ghetto transformed the position of the Jews in Christian society by making their presence unexceptional and natural, while the Jews’ restructuring of their physical space led them to reconstruct their religious and intellectual space, aided by the diffusion of the kabbalah, and to intensify their spiritual and cultural creativity. Republished in Essential Papers on Jewish Culture in Renaissance and Baroque Italy, edited by David Ruderman. (New York: New York University Press, 1992), pp. 401–425.
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Bonfil, Robert. Jewish Life in Renaissance Italy. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994.
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The classic by the leading historian of the Jews in Renaissance and early modern Italy. Deals with the result of the encounter between the Jews and the Christian Renaissance from a completely new perspective. Contains a succinct but very insightful account of the ghettoization of the Jews and its deeper significance. Reprinted from the Italian-language edition of 1991.
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Ravid, Benjamin. “From Geographical Realia to Historiographical Symbol: The Odyssey of the Word Ghetto.” In Essential Papers on Jewish Culture in Renaissance and Baroque Italy. Edited by David Ruderman, 373–385. New York: New York University Press, 1992.
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A first attempt to trace the history of the word “ghetto,” with attention to the fact that residence in a ghetto did not automatically mean a low level of culture: for that depended more on the nature of the environment than on the specific nature of the Jewish quarter.
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Ravid, Benjamin. “Curfew Time in the Ghetti of Venice.” In Medieval and Renaissance Venice. Edited by Ellen Kittell and Thomas Madden, 237–275. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999.
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An examination of the curfew provisions in the ghetto of Venice with attention to authorized exceptions and illegal violations, from which it becomes clear that the ghetto was not intended to end all contact between Jews and Christians and indeed could not do so. Reprinted in Benjamin Ravid’s Studies on the Jews of Venice, 1382–1797 (Aldershot, UK: Variorum, 2003).
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Ravid, Benjamin. “All Ghettos Were Jewish Quarters But Not All Jewish Quarters Were Ghettos.” Jewish Culture and History 10.2–3 (2008): 5–24.
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Up-to-date survey of Jewish quarters. Deals with the Middle Ages before the word “ghetto” was applied to compulsory, segregated, and enclosed Jewish quarters. Also traces the spread of the institution in Counter-Reformation Italy and concludes with a brief survey of the end of the ghettos in the late 18th century and first half of the 19th. Also see The Frankfurt Judengasse: Jewish Life in an Early Modern German City, edited by Fritz Backhaus, Gisela Engel, Robert Liberles, and Margarete Schluter (Portland, OR: Vallentine Mitchell, 2010).
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Ruderman, David. “The Cultural Significance of the Ghetto in Jewish History.” In From Ghetto to Emancipation: Historical and Contemporary Reconsiderations of the Jewish Community of Scranton. Edited by David N. Myers and William V. Rowe, 1–16. Scranton, PA: University of Scranton Press, 1997.
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Rejecting the widespread negative assessment of the early modern Italian ghetto as characterized by cultural isolation and stifling isolation, Ruderman proposes the concept of the “open ghetto”: a place where, despite their segregation, Jews could still retain their vital feeling of group solidarity and cultural autonomy while engaging in constant cultural interaction and dialogue with the surrounding Christian world.
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Ruderman, David. “The Ghetto and Jewish Cultural Formation in Early Modern Europe: Towards a New Interpretation.” In Jewish Literatures and Cultures: Context and Intertext. Edited by Anita Norich and Yaron Z. Eliav, 119–127. Providence, RI: Brown Judaic Studies, 2008.
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Further develops Ruderman 1997 by adding a very brief survey of some previous historical treatments of the topic, including those of Salo Baron, Cecil Roth, Jacob Katz, and Robert Bonfil. Suggests a somewhat new perspective by elaborating on the cultural significance of the ghetto for Jewish life in the early modern period.
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The Origin of the Ghetto: Venice, 1516

The word “ghetto” originally referred to the municipal copper foundry of Venice, il ghetto, from the Italian verb gettare, which means “to pour or to cast.” Concina 1991 definitively establishes that the adjacent island where the waste products were dumped, initially called “il terrain del ghetto” (“the terrain of the ghetto”), came to be referred to as the “Ghetto Nuovo” (the “New Ghetto”) and the area of the actual foundry as the “Ghetto Vecchio” (the “Old Ghetto”); then in 1434 the activities of the foundry were transferred to the arsenal, and gradually inexpensive housing was constructed on the two sites. Ravid 1987 explains that in 1516 the Venetian government relegated all Jews to a compulsory, segregated, and enclosed area. It selected for that purpose the island of the Ghetto Nuovo, which was walled up and had only two gates that were locked from sunrise until slightly after sunset, thus creating the association between Jews and the word “ghetto.” Twenty-five years later, after some visiting Ottoman Jewish merchants complained that they did not have enough space in the existing ghetto, the government ordered that twenty dwellings in the Ghetto Vecchio be enclosed and joined by a footbridge to the Ghetto Nuovo thereby further strengthening the association between Jews and the word “ghetto.” Carletto 1981 presents data for a precise reconstruction of the ghetto at three points in the 18th century, while Ravid 1999 develops the details of the curfew, its administration, and related segregatory measures. Calabi 1991 explains how the ghetto served as the “city of the Jews,” while the articles in Davis and Ravid 2001 expand on aspects of the economic, religious, cultural, and communal activities of the Jews in the ghetto. Malkiel 1991 provides, on the basis of a major record book of the Jewish community, a glimpse of how the Jews organized their community and the measures that they undertook to govern themselves within the ghetto and to meet the demands of the Venetian government. The autobiography of Leon Modena (Modena 1988) and the life and writings of Sarra Copia Sulam (Harrán 2009) present a very frank, rich, and variegated picture of life and death in the ghetto in all its complexity, suggesting a revision of many stereotypes about ghetto life and giving new perspectives on the degree of contact with the Christian environment. See also the separate article on Venice.

Calabi, Donatella. “Il Ghetto e la città, 1541–1866.” In La città degli Ebrei: Il ghetto di Venezia: Architettura e urbanistica. Ennio Concina, Ugo Camerino, and Donatella Calabi, 203–300. Venice: Albrizzi, 1991.
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Discussion of the ghetto and its Jewish community from the perspective of an urban historian, considering, among other things, its housing, stores, and cemetery. With photographs and lavish reproduction of archival material and reissued in a paperback edition without most of the illustrations. See also the author’s “The ‘City of the Jews’” in Davis and Ravid 2001.
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Carletto, Giacomo. Il ghetto veneziano nel Settecento attraverso i catastici. Rome: Carucci Editore, 1981.
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The texts of the “cadasters” (real estate inventories organized for taxation purposes) of all property in the Ghetto Nuovo, Ghetto Vecchio, and Ghetto Nuovissimo of Venice for the years 1713, 1739, 1771, and also of 1810, after the end of the requirement that all Jews were to live in the ghetto. With valuable introduction, photographs, and reproductions of archival documents.
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Concina, Ennio. “Parva Jerusalem.” In La città degli Ebrei: Il ghetto di Venezia: Architettura e urbanistica. Edited by Ennio Concina, Ugo Camerino, and Donatella Calabi, 10–91. Venice: Albrizzi, 1991.
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Essential reading. Includes the definitive history of the area of the Ghetto Vecchio and the Ghetto Nuovo of Venice before the Jews were required to live there (pp. 11–34). With photographs and lavish reproduction of archival material; reissued in paperback without most of the illustrations.
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Davis, Robert C., and Benjamin Ravid, eds. The Jews of Early Modern Venice. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001.
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Following an introduction by Davis and a concise history of the Jews of the Venetian Republic by Ravid, this book contains ten up-to-date articles on many important aspects of Jewish life inside the ghetto of Venice by specialists in the field: Howard Adelman, Benjamin Arbel, Robert Bonfil, Donatella Calabi, Don Harrán, Eliot Horowitz, Pier Cesare Ioly Zorattini, David Malkiel, Brian Pullan, and David Ruderman.
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Harrán, Don. Jewish Poet and Intellectual in Seventeenth-Century Venice: The Works of Sarra Copia Sulam in Verse and Prose, along with Writings of Her Contemporaries in Her Praise, Condemnation, or Defense. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009.
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Definitive biography of a most unusually talented and creative Jewish woman in the ghetto of Venice, who had close relations with Christian literati, including a platonic “literary love affair” with a Catholic priest who tried in vain to convert her. With all texts by Sullam and references to her in contemporary literature in their original language and in English translation.
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Malkiel, David, ed. A Separate Republic: The Mechanics and Dynamics of Venetian Jewish Self-Government, 1607–1624. Jerusalem: Magnes, 1991.
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The Italian text of a major record book of the Venitian Jewish community covering the years 1607–1624, translated in 1632 from a mainly Hebrew original now presumably lost. Also includes a detailed 233-page English introduction that is well worth reading on its own, and it is annotated in English. See also Davis and Ravid 2001.
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Modena, Leon. The Autobiography of a Seventeenth-Century Venetian Rabbi: Leon Modena’s Life of Judah. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988.
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A remarkably frank autobiography by the most prolific Italian rabbi of his day who lived most of his life in Venice, this work has served as a major source of information on Jewish life in the ghetto. Covers religious and cultural life, printing and publishing, the education and activities of women, the family, illness, contacts with non-Jews of all levels, popular culture, alchemy, and gambling. Widely used in college courses.
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Ravid, Benjamin. “The Religious, Economic and Social Background and Context of the Establishment of the Ghetti of Venice.” In Gli Ebrei e Venezia. Edited by Gaetano Cozzi, 211–259. Milan: Communità, 1987.
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Studies the most relevant documents regarding the establishment of the Ghetto Nuovo (1516), the Ghetto Vecchio (1541), and the Ghetto Nuovissimo (1633) of Venice.
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Ravid, Benjamin. “Curfew Time in the Ghetti of Venice.” In Medieval and Renaissance Venice. Edited by Ellen Kittell and Thomas Madden, 237–275. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999.
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A basic reconstruction of the establishment of the Ghetto Nuovo and Ghetto Vecchio. Comprises rare exemptions from residence in these ghettos, curfew hours and limited specific extensions, Christians in the ghetto, opening quays leading outside the ghetto, and other issues. Reprinted in Benjamin Ravid’s Studies on the Jews of Venice, 1382–1797 (Aldershot, UK: Variorum, 2003).
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The Spread of the Ghetto: Italy, 1555 and After

Counter-Reformation Catholicism adopted a more hostile attitude toward infidel Jews, and in 1555 Pope Paul IV, shortly after his inauguration, issued the papal bull cum nimis absurdum that sought to severely restrict them. Its first paragraph provided that henceforth in all places in the papal states the Jews were to live together on a single street separated from the Christians—and if this street was not sufficient, then the Jews were to be put on as many adjacent ones as necessary, with only one entrance and exit. As traced by Milano 1963, other local Italian authorities instituted special compulsory, segregated, and enclosed quarters for the Jews: following the Venetian and Roman nomenclature already in the legislation that required the Jews to move into this new residential area called a “ghetto,” including the ghetto of Florence. The Jews of the Veneto were also subject to ghettoization in, for example, Verona (1597), Padua (1603), Rovigo (1615), and Conigliano (1675). Elsewhere, ghettos were established in Mirandola (1602), Mantua (1612), Modena (1638), Genoa (1660), Este (1666), Reggio Emilia (1669), Turin (1680), and elsewhere in Piedmont after 1723. The expansion of the papal states led to a significant increase in the number of ghettos on the Italian peninsula. Thus, after the territory of the Este family passed into the hands of the papacy in 1598, the Jews were eventually concentrated into ghettos in Ferrara in 1624–1627 and Cento and Lugo in 1635–1639. Three years after the Duchy of Urbino became a part of the papal states in 1631, its Jews were confined to ghettos in Pesaro, Urbino, and Senegalia. As Luzzatti 1987 observed concerning ghettoization in Italy, “In no European country did the Church and the Papacy succeed in obtaining a similar success.” Siegmund 1997 provides a systematic detailed presentation of the major aspects of ghettoization. The major exception to ghettoization on the Italian peninsula was the case of Tuscan Livorno and Pisa, where out of considerations of commercial raison d’état, no compulsory, segregated, or enclosed Jewish quarter of any kind was ever established.

Luzzatti, Michele. Il ghetto ebraico: Storia di un popolo rinchiuso. Florence: Giunti, 1987.
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Brief illustrated history of the ghetto, with emphasis on the Italian peninsula.
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Milano, Attilo. Storia degli Ebrei in Italia. Turin, Italy: Einaudi, 1963.
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A pioneering work in its time and still a useful overview, although somewhat dated. Contains a general discussion of the spread of ghettos on the Italian peninsula and the life of the Jews during the period; see especially pp. 519–546.
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Siegmund, Stephanie. “La vita nei Ghetti.” In Storia d’Italia. Vol. 11, Gli ebrei in Italia. Edited by Corrado Vivanti, 843–892. Turin, Italy: Einaudi, 1997.
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Detailed presentation of many aspects of the Italian ghettos, including their establishment, population, and permeability, as well as information on the religious, communal, and social life of the Jews.
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Rome

Milano 1964 details how in 1555 the Jews of Rome were required to move into a new compulsory, segregated, and enclosed quarter that apparently was first called a “ghetto” seven years later, while Stow 2001 presents insight into actual Jewish life in the ghetto.

Milano, Attilo. Il Ghetto di Roma: Illustrazioni Storiche. Rome: Staderini, 1964.
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A basic study by a scholar who published extensively on the topic. Understandably, since the book’s publication, many points have been further explored and treated in greater depth. With valuable illustrations and drawings, significant because no illustrations or drawings of the former ghetto of Rome still exist in any other form.
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Stow, Kenneth. Theater of Acculturation: The Roman Ghetto in the Sixteenth Century. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2001.
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A detailed study of the Jews of the 16th-century Roman ghetto. Written on the basis of the Hebrew records of Jewish notaries in order to clarify their religious, social, and cultural strategies of survival.
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Florence

Siegmund 2006 describes the context of the establishment of Florence.

Siegmund, Stephanie B. The Medici State and the Ghetto of Florence: The Construction of an Early Modern Jewish Community. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006.
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A close examination of the establishment of the ghetto of Florence and the origin of the Jewish community of the city based on archival sources; places the ghetto in the context of Medicean urban policy, demonstrating that its creation led to the establishment of the Jewish community of Florence.
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Padua

Starting with Verona in 1597 and continuing in the 17th and 18th centuries, the Jews residing in the territories of the Venetian republic were confined to ghettos. Carpi 1973–1979 documents the experience of the substantial Jewish community in the important mainland city of Padua.

Carpi, Daniel. Pinkas Vaad Kehillat Kodesh Padova. 2 vols. Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1973–1979.
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Contains the original Hebrew texts of the negotiations over the establishment of Padua’s ghetto as found in the record books of the Jewish community of Padua, with additional material in Italian. Editor’s introduction in Hebrew.
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Piedmont

The government in Piedmont also subjected the Jews to ghettoization, albeit at a relatively late date. Segre 1986–1990 deals with the situation throughout the Kingdom of Piedmont, while Allegro 1996 discusses and analyzes the situation in Turin, the capital city of Piedmont.

Luciano Allegro. Identità in bilico: Il ghetto ebraico di Torino nel settecento. Turin, Italy: Silvio Zamorani, 1996.
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The Jews in the 18th-century ghetto of Piedmont. On the establishment of the ghetto, see pp. 37–47.
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Segre, Renata. The Jews in Piedmont. 3 vols. Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1986–1990.
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Register of documents dealing with the Jews of Piedmont, in the Documentary History of the Jews of Italy series, with introduction, English summaries, and notes. Includes information on the establishments of the ghettos in Piedmont.
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Mantua

The basic work on the Jews of Mantua remains the very detailed Simonsohn 1977.

Simonsohn, Shlomo. History of the Jews in the Duchy of Mantua. Jerusalem: Kiryat Sepher, 1977.
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For an account of the establishment of the ghetto in 1611, see pp. 39–44 and 118–125.
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Outside the Italian Peninsula

Ravid 2008 surveys the existing literature and concludes that although there were many demands over the centuries to segregate the Jews, much focused research needs to be undertaken to determine where compulsory, segregated, and enclosed Jewish quarters were actually established; a major issue appears to be whether indeed all (or virtually all) Jews actually lived within their special quarter and whether any Christians continued to reside there. In any case, apparently compulsory, segregated, and enclosed Jewish quarters were far less widespread than would appear from the modern misleading and confusing usage of the term “ghetto” as a general synonym for Jewish quarters, and certainly the term “Age of the Ghettos” can only be applied to the Italian peninsula from the Counter-Reformation to the French conquests in the last decade of the 18th century.

Ravid, Benjamin. “All Ghettos Were Jewish Quarters But Not All Jewish Quarters Were Ghettos.” Jewish Culture and History 10.2–3 (2008): 5–24.
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Briefly discusses establishment of ghettos outside the Italian peninsula, with references to recent literature and its problems. Also in The Frankfurt Judengasse: Jewish Life in an Early Modern German City, edited by Fritz Backhaus, Gisela Engel, Robert Liberles, and Margarete Schluter (Portland, OR: Vallentine Mitchell, 2010).
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Spain

Beinart 1986 observes that “more is unknown than known about the issue of Jews dwelling in separate quarters in the Middle Ages,” and his statement can be extended to cover the early modern period. Beinart 1986 demonstrates that the Spanish rulers attempted to introduce such quarters into their realms to segregate the Jews to prevent them from influencing converts to Catholicism to return to their former faith. And because of the limited success of curtailing this Jewish influence, the Spanish rulers resorted to expelling the Jews.

Beinart, Haim. “Megore ha-yehudim bisefarad bameah ha-tet-vavugezerat ha-hafradah.” Tsiyon 51 (1986): 61–85.
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In Hebrew. Traces the process by which the Spanish government sought to confine the Jews to special quarters to prevent them from bringing their former co-religionists who had converted to Christianity back to Judaism. Because of its failure, in 1492 Ferdinand and Isabella expelled the Jews from Spain. Condensed English presentation in Haim Beinart’s The Expulsion of the Jews from Spain (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2002), pp. 4–18.
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Germany

Haverkamp 1995 establishes that Jewish quarters were very rare indeed in the Germanic lands, with the exception of the well-known Judenstrasse of Frankfurt, the establishment of which in 1462 is well traced in Backhaus 1978.

Backhaus, Fritz. “Die Einrichtung eines Ghetto für die Frankfurter Juden.” Hessisches Jahrbuch für Landesgeschich 4 (1978): 59–86.
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The definitive account of the establishment of the compulsory, segregated, and enclosed Jewish quarter of Frankfurt known as the “Judenstrasse” (or “Jewish street”) in 1462. Apparently the area was never referred to as a ghetto until the early 19th century, when the word seems to have been first used to describe compulsory, segregated, and enclosed Jewish quarters not on the Italian peninsula.
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Haverkamp, Alfred. “The Jewish Quarter in German Towns during the Late Middle Ages.” In In and Out of the Ghetto: Jewish-Gentile Relations in Late Medieval and Early Modern Germany. Edited by R. Po-chia Hsai and Hartmut Lehmann, 13–28. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
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Very important article by a leading expert on the Jews of the Germanic lands in the Middle Ages. On the confusion between “Jewish quarter” and “ghetto,” see pp. 13–15. Also, according to the text, the concept of the Jewish quarter “means no more than a rather large spatially concentrated Jewish settlement” (p. 13). See pp. 14–15 for the widely varying views on when the so-called Age of the Ghetto began.
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Eastern Europe

Contrary to widespread public opinion, Weinryb 1973 points out that no such compulsory, segregated, and enclosed Jewish quarters ever existed in Poland in pre-Nazi times, and this view is echoed in Heyde 2005 and Steffen 2005.

Heyde, Jürgen. “The ‘Ghetto’ as a Spatial and Historical Construction: Discourses of Emancipation in France, Germany and Poland.” Simon Dubnow Institute Yearbook 4 (2005): 431–443.
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Observes that while topographically, Jewish quarters in large Polish cities were quite similar to those in Venice and Frankfurt, Polish Jews were not subject to similar measures of force and compulsion nor were they concentrated exclusively in the Jewish quarter.
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Steffen, Katrin. “Connotations of Exclusion: ‘Ostjuden,’ ‘Ghettos,’ and Other Markings.” Simon Dubnow Institute Yearbook 4 (2005): 459–479.
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Poses questions concerning application of the concept of the ghetto to Poland and Lithuania and concludes that Jews were not concentrated exclusively in special Jewish quarters. As a result, to call the established quarters “ghettos” (i.e., closed-off forced residential areas) fails to describe their real topographic structure.
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Weinryb, Bernard D. The Jews of Poland: A Social and Economic History of the Jewish Community in Poland from 1000–1800. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1973.
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See p. 43: “No really separate Jewish ghetto or Jew-badge was ever actually introduced in Poland. Although most cities and towns had a ‘Jewish street’ (vicus Judaeorum)—just as some other groups, such as artisans, had a vicus of their own—there were usually some Jews who also owned houses beyond this boundary and some non-Jews whose residences were located on the Jewish street.”
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Modern Considerations

Segregated, compulsory, and enclosed ghettos were abolished under the influence of the ideals of the French Revolution and European liberalism, as outlined in Milano 1963 and outlined in detail by Ottolenghi 1930 for Venice and Milano 1964 for Rome. Paradoxically, however, the word “ghetto” endured and was utilized in many new and less-precise senses, mostly with negative connotations. Aschheim 1982 clearly explained the earliest phases of this development as “ghetto” came to be applied to dense noncompulsory, nonsegregated, and nonenclosed Jewish quarters; then by extension the word would be used as an adjective to refer to the negative mentality allegedly widespread in the ghetto. Understandably, the term “ghetto” was also extended to quarters inhabited by significant numbers of foreigners or native minority groups, especially African Americans in the United States. Mikhman 2010 traces in detail the usage of the word by the authorities of Nazi Germany. The earlier ghettos were intended to provide the Jews with clearly defined permanent space. This space was to be open during the daytime in accordance with the traditional Christian theology that assigned to the Jews the role of testifying to the validity of Christianity through their own abased condition—until the second coming of the Jesus as the Christian Messiah. On the other hand, the Nazi-imposed ghettos came to constitute a part of the implementation of the Final Solution as merely temporary way stations. Furthermore, the two kinds of ghettos reflect the difference between traditional religious anti-Judaism and modern racial anti-Semitism in its ultimate form: in the case of anti-Judaism, the Jew could leave the ghetto by converting, while in the case of modern anti-Semitism one could not escape though one’s own conversion or even that of both one’s parents. In conclusion, certainly, still valid today is the perceptive observation of Darden 1981 that “concepts of the ghetto have attained such a degree of heterogeneity that it is difficult to determine whether any one of the resulting definitions—or even any one group of definitions—affords an adequate description. . . . Preliminary views of ghetto definitions revealed that the ghetto is probably the most misused and misunderstood spatial concept used by social scientists” (pp. 5–6).

Aschheim, Steven E. Brothers and Strangers: The East European Jew in German and German Jewish Consciousness, 1800–1923. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1982.
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Traces the emergence of the negative attitude of modernized, acculturated German Jewry toward eastern European Jewry and its dwelling areas, which it called “ghettos” and that produced a “ghetto mentality.” Also discusses the romanticizing favorable “cult of the Ost-juden” as well as the ambivalent attitude of Zionism to the “ghetto.”
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Darden, J. T., ed. The Ghetto: Readings with Interpretations. Port Washington, NY: Kennikat, 1981.
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Readings on the African American “ghetto” in the United States, relevant in the present context because of the editor’s pertinent quoted observation on the heterogeneity of the concepts of the ghetto in current usage and the misuse and misunderstanding of the spatial concept of the ghetto.
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Mikhman, Dan. The Emergence of the Jewish Ghettos during the Holocaust: Why and How? Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
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A pioneering detailed presentation of the evolving usage of the word “ghetto” by Nazi Germany, demonstrating that initially the authorities had no clear concept of the nature and purpose of a ghetto. Only after the adaptation of the Final Solution to eliminate the Jews did it become a way station on the road to the death camps.
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Milano, Attilo. Storia degli Ebrei in Italia. Turin, Italy: Einaudi, 1963.
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A pioneering work in its time and still a useful overview, although it is somewhat dated. Contains a general account of how the ghettos were discontinued on the Italian peninsula.
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Milano, Attilo. Il Ghetto di Roma: Illustrazioni Storiche. Rome: Staderini, 1964.
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Written by a scholar who published extensively on the topic, but understandably in the intervening years many points have been further explored and treated in greater depth. Discusses the end of the ghetto of Rome and the emancipation of Roman Jewry.
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Ottolenghi, Adolpho. “Il governo democratico di Venezia e l’abolizione del Ghetto.” La Rassegna Mensile di Israel 5 (1930): 88–104.
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Account of the abolition of the ghetto after the end of the Venetian Republic, during the days of the French occupation, with some documents in the original Italian.