ABSTRACT
In the eighteenth century, the institution of the ghetto appears more sharply etched than at any other period in history, but at the same time its walls begin to crumble, physically as well as figuratively, and a new era in Jewish-Gentile relations was initiated. The growth as well as the decline of the ghetto was a long drown-out process, which is frequently misinterpreted. In trying to comprehend what the ghetto meant, it is not helpful to confuse congregation and segregation. Rather, one must distinguish between a settlement in which co-nationals and co-religionists voluntarily congregate, and a segregated settlement imposed by legal or otherwise compelling restrictions, that is, by external force. Historically, in the cities of the Roman and Sassanian empires, people of various ethnic backgrounds lived in separate quarters. Thus, large Jewish communities dwelled in particular parts of town in Alexandria, Antioch, Rome, and the major cities of Babylonia and Persia, where they congregated around their own institutions, as did Greeks, Syrians, and others. St. Paul found numerous separate but not segregated Jewish communities on his apostolic travels. Yet, individual Jews were not hindered from living outside the Jewish quarter, and individual Gentiles were found within, as for instance, in imperial and early papal Rome, but on the whole kinsmen, compatriots, and co-religionists chose to stay close to one another. In the early Middle Ages, groups of Jewish families settled in the cities of Europe under special charters and in specifically designated quarters, as they did later in the Kingdom of Poland, without compulsory concentration or restriction of activities (Juiverie, Juderia, Judaca, Judiaria, Judengasse, ulica zydowska, etc.). The Jewish quarter in medieval cities was likely to be in the center of town, adjacent to the marketplace, which indicates a favored location. Also, the fact that the Jewish quarter frequently was 90separately walled points to a privilege rather than a restriction. If must be added, however, that both rabbis and churchmen were intent on keeping Jews and Christians socially apart, the rabbis to prevent possible contaminations by idolatry and the churchmen to forestall Judaizing proclivities among the Christian laity. As time went on, the rabbis relented, starting with the disputations about the Talmud in the thirteenth century, insofar as Christians were exempt from the designation of idolaters, but the hedges upon hedges that had been erected about the daily conduct of the Jew, especially concerning eating and drinking, continued to make social intercourse with Gentiles exceedingly difficult, to say the least. Johann Jakob Schudt reports from Frankfurt at the beginning of the eighteenth century that a Jew, when imbibing wine in the company of a Gentile, used to have a big tub of water standing beside him, so that he could rinse the cup after every gulp the Gentile had taken, or else, he would not take a gulp form the same cup again himself. Yet, Schudt added that in the villages, and also in Italy, this rule was frequently disregarded. At the close of the eighteenth century, Goethe relates that he attended circumcisions, weddings, and holiday observances in the Frankfurt ghetto, that he met with exquisite hospitality on those occasions and that he was invited to return. And he does not forget to observe that the Jewish girls seemed pleased with his polite advances.
