Ghetto: The History of a Word

Few words are as ideologically charged as ghetto, a term that has described legally segregated Jewish quarters, dense immigrant enclaves, Nazi holding pens, and black neighborhoods in the United States. Daniel B. Schwartz reveals how the history of ghettos is tied up with struggle and argument over the slippery meaning of a word.

Table of Contents:
Cover Title Page Copyright Dedication Epigraph Contents Introduction 1. The Early History of the Ghetto 2. The Nineteenth-Century Transformation of the Ghetto 3. The Ghetto Comes to America 4. The Nazi Ghettos of the Holocaust 5. The Ghetto in Postwar America Conclusion Notes Acknowledgments Illustration Credits Index

Review :
From its first use in 15th century Venice to its echoes in cities such as New York and Chicago, Schwartz traces the word's path to modernity while highlighting its Jewish past--etymology that is often overlooked. -- Boston Globe A thorough etymological, historical, literary, and cultural analysis of an ever-evolving word. Through his all-encompassing approach, Schwartz explores how the term gained substantial emotional weight by showcasing works of literature, news papers' opinion pieces, poems and journal entries. -- Cassandra Gomes-Hochberg Jerusalem Post [An] authoritative survey of how this most malleable of words was understood in different ways over the centuries...[A] rich and nuanced work. -- Howard Cooper Jewish Chronicle [An] eminently readable, accessible and eye-opening history. -- Seth Rogovoy Forward Impressive...The merit of Ghetto, with its nuanced and sophisticated treatment, is making order out of the slippery history of the word...Accessible, elegant in style, and engaging throughout, Ghetto demonstrates definitively how central the concept has been to Jewish self-perception. It is the kind of rewarding study that both academic and lay readers will reach for. -- Francesca Bregoli Journal of Modern History The merit of Ghetto, with its nuanced and sophisticated treatment, is making order out of the slippery history of the word, highlighting existing ties between the term's disparate resonances while also forging new ones through that very excavation...Accessible, elegant in style, and engaging throughout, Ghetto demonstrates definitively how central the concept has been to Jewish self-perception. It is the kind of rewarding study that both academic and lay readers will reach for. -- Francesca Bregoli Journal of Modern History A welcome addition to historians and urbanists alike by providing new insights into conceptions of the term and in so doing, emphasizing the power of language when describing complex phenomena such as segregation. -- Laura Vaughan LSE Review of Books Schwartz's elaborate, multilingual exploration of the Jewish relationship to the ghetto is a triumphant success--emphatically demonstrating that the story of the ghetto is also a story of Jewish agency, and of Jewish philosophical and historical conversation. -- William Pimlott In geveb: A Journal of Yiddish Studies An interesting and informative study of a word's travels through centuries of historical, political, and sociological developments that kept affecting and changing its meaning. -- Mosaic Charts the development of the term ghetto from its medieval Italian roots through its modern variations...An informative, readable book that illuminates both historical contexts and the evolving use of language. -- Choice Schwartz has written a definitive history of the word ghetto, a vital and important term. A fascinating and comprehensive account that will be read and consulted widely. -- Deborah Dash Moore, University of Michigan Challenging and provocative, Ghetto is to my knowledge the first serious, painstakingly researched, book-length lexical history of this central concept in Jewish history. -- David Engel, New York University If you thought you knew the meaning, origins, and historical implications and migrations of the word ghetto, from the time of the founding of the first ghetto in Venice, in 1516, through the black ghettos of today, this book will open your eyes. It is a must-read. -- Kenneth Stow, Professor Emeritus of Jewish History, University of Haifa Ghetto is a superb history that takes us through the word's various and contested meanings. From location to location and across the centuries, Schwartz is an expert guide, leading us through a history as complex and entangled as the very streets of which he writes. -- John M. Efron, University of California, Berkeley With emphasis on the last 250 years, Schwartz traces how the word ghetto developed from a clear reference to compulsory, segregated, and enclosed Jewish quarters on the Italian peninsula to a general term that denoted any substantial concentration first of Jews and then also of other groups, especially African Americans. As a result, the word lost its specificity and was used to refer both negatively and positively to many different situations, raising the question 'What is a ghetto?' An excellent, nuanced, perceptive, and readable account of the history of Jewish quarters from classical Alexandria to the present. -- Benjamin Ravid, Professor Emeritus, Brandeis University