The Jews in Rome

I've heard many times that the Nazis got their ideas for suppressing the Jews from Jim Crow and white supremacists in the U.S. South. In recent decades, this has become something of the going way of thinking of such things, I would say.

Recently, there has been some historian push-back against this: that Europe had its own examples of Jewish suppression to draw upon. There was an example given on BlueSky by Isaac Gantwerk Mayer, about a week ago, that's worth quoting substantially:

There were a lot of Jews in Rome, and they all had to live there. The per capita population density was approximately equivalent to Kowloon Walled City. Every building was a rickety five-story nightmare, because there was simply not enough space otherwise.

The walls of the ghetto were under guard. The guard was paid by a tax on the Jews and stationed outside the walls, for their own protection, of course. No Jew was allowed to be caught outside of the ghetto walls after sunset, or before sunset unless they were wearing their yellow cloth.

Every Saturday, all of the Jews were forced to listen to sermons about how the Jews are evil Christ-killers, given at the San Gregorietto church just outside the ghetto walls. This church, which is still there, has a plaque outside of it with Isaiah 65:2...: “I spread my hands all day to a disloyal nation, walking a way that is not good, after their own designs; a people provoking My anger always.”...

The Jews, who were forced to listen to these sermons would melt wax in their ears as a sign of silent protest, refusing to listen to the hate. But they didn’t have a choice, but to be there and hear a priest tell them that they were Satan worshipers every Shabbat.

Carnival season is upon us! How exciting, if you’re a Christian. If you’re a Jew then get ready for the Jew race. All of the Jews in town would have to race around in  little games for the amusement of the gnarelim. Sometimes soldiers would sit on them, and they would have to be the horsies. Sometimes they would have nooses around their neck. Sometimes they would be stripped naked.

Every year, the chief rabbi of the entire community would have to go before the Capitoline Hill and pay obeisance - and a hefty fine for the privilege of living in such a place – to the caporione. In return, the caporione would kick the rabbi in the ass.

The Jews were also required to swear a yearly oath of loyalty to the pope. Do you know where that the oath of loyalty had to be sworn? At the fucking arch of Titus.

That’s right, the yearly oath of obedience to the fucker who put them there was at the monument to mass genocide that the Roman empire built to celebrate the single most traumatic thing that happened to the Jewish people in the four-thousand-year span between Abraham and 1938. That was the spot.

Very little of the Roman ghetto remains today. And there’s a reason for that: when Napoleon conquered Rome and liberated the ghettoes, the Jews were the first to take it apart brick by brick, celebrating as they did so. A substantial chunk of the entire ghetto area is currently the great synagogue.

The Catholics in Rome were furious, and rumors spread that a secret Jew traitor let Napoleon into the city gates. The fact that the papal states were an absolute mess of a backwards country couldn’t be the problem. There must’ve been a Jew to blame.

According to legend, the Jews of Italy were so thankful to Napoleon for getting rid of the ghetto system that for a whole year after the conquest, every single Jewish boy in some towns were named Napoleon in his honor.

Mark Twain, whom you might notice was an American and well aware of American racism and how it worked, visited Rome in 1867. In chapter 26 of his memoir “The Innocents Abroad” he imagines what your average Roman would say upon visiting America.

So don’t make me laugh by saying that the Nazis learned how to be bigots from the US. They perfected a science that the European Christian mind had been working on for two goddamn millennia prior. 

I saw one of the Venice ghettos when I visited in 2013. 

One of the photos I took while I was there. 

The word "ghetto" comes from Venetian: a fact I learned back in 2013. 

Both the Roman and Venetian ghettos were instituted in the 16th century. I don't know why Italians in the 1500s suddenly felt compelled to segregate the Jews of their cities. The Venetian ghetto preceded the Papal bull of 1555 by decades, so that wasn't it, or at least not the only thing.