History of Ghettos, Part One

The idea of separating people from one another for some reason is undoubtedly so old as to be unrecorded in history. The more specific idea of separating humans due to religious, ethnic, or racial background is somewhat better documented as it related to European Jews going back to a time during the Middle Ages in the 1ate 1100s, when Christian officials (Third Lateran Council) decreed that Jews and Muslims were not permitted to have Christian servants, with further implications that Christians should not live among Jews or Muslims. Christian testimony in any legal matter against Jews was the be accepted over the testimony of Jews. The Council also decreed excommunication for Christians who practiced "usury;" that is, "charging interest on loans."* Since Jews were (and had been) excluded from many professions, but not finance, many Jews went into the field, opening new hostility toward them.** So this whole matter led to Jews being more and more excluded from general society, although that had already been going on to some degree even before this time.

By 1516, Venice forced Jews to live in one part of the city (an island) which had a wall built around it and this was the first time the term "ghetto" was used (see Word History). Not long thereafter, Rome and other European cities followed suit, and Jews frequently had to create their own society within the confines of their part of a city.*** Besides the moral issue involved here, Jewish ghettos were almost always restricted in size, thus making for overcrowding and generally poor living conditions. Some cites did not completely restrict Jews to walled in areas, and Jewish living areas then were often called the "Jewish quarter."

The American Revolution, and the subsequent French Revolution, brought changes to the way "some" people thought about separating people, especially Jews, from the rest of society. Gradually some of the barriers to Europe's Jews came down, but bigotry and hatred towards them remained among significant parts of the population, often depending upon the country in question. In Germany, Jews gradually came to be more accepted (I didn't say totally), although less so in the staunchly Catholic areas, particularly in Bavaria and Austria.**** Germany and Austria are obviously important, because of what was to come under Hitler, but my point here is to indicate that many Jews, particularly in central and northern Germany, came to see themselves and be viewed by many Germans, as "Germans." This later became VERY dangerous, as a number of German Jews believed Hitler to be something of a temporary phenomenon, and their ties to Germany also understandably made them highly reluctant to leave their homeland. Needless to say, it cost many German Jews their lives.

More in Part Two.

* Islam forbids charging interest, but the Christian world (although not every Christian) has redefined "usury" to mean "excessive" interest on loans, the definition of which is beyond the scope of this article. 

** Let's face it, while not always true, the basic old saying has much truth, "Lend a person a dollar and you've made a friend, but lend them more than that, and you've made an enemy." We tend to be resentful against those to whom we owe something, usually money, especially if we are having trouble paying it back.

*** You can't have it both ways, folks. If you segregate people, guess what? They develop a culture and society all of their own, likely to be of varying differences from society in general. If you then remove restrictions and permit free movement and living for these previously restricted people, guess what? They ain't (if my former English teachers will forgive me) going to suddenly acclimate themselves to the general population. Such things take time, and the influences typically go in both directions. 

**** Vienna's Jewish population gradually grew, containing much of Austria's Jewish population. For some info on German Jews in the World War One era, see my article:  http://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2011/02/german-question-part-eighty.html   

WORD HISTORY:
Ghetto-The origin of this word is unclear, but it "likely" goes back to "Venetian," technically a Latin derived (Romance) language spoken in Venice and vicinity, that is usually referred to as an Italian dialect. Venetian has "ghet(o)," a word meaning "slag" (a product of making ore into metal) and also used for a foundry producing slag. This came from Italian "gettare," a verb with the primary meaning "to throw," and the extended meaning "to cast/mould" ('mold,' American spelling).^ This traces back to Latin "jactare/iactare," with the same meanings. Whether the Latin word came from Indo European, is unclear. The term "ghetto" was first used in Venice in the modern context in early 1500s, and the original Jewish ghetto there was in the same part of town as a foundry, and the speculation is, the district may have been tagged as a "ghetto," in local usage because of the foundry, and that the term was simply maintained when Jews lived there. The term and meaning then spread to Italian and English borrowed it from Italian in either the late 1500s or early 1600s, and it later came to be applied to an area of a city or town where, compared to the overall population, the dwellers were predominantly minority.

^ English has the similar development of "cast," which means "to throw" (now more often used, but not exclusively, in terms of fishing lines or nets), but with a secondary meaning "pour metal into a mold," as in "cast iron."