The Ghetto: A Very Short Introduction

Very Short Introductions #648

by Bryan Cheyette

For three hundred years the ghetto defined Jewish culture in the late medieval and early modern period in Western Europe. In the nineteenth-century it was a free-floating concept which travelled to Eastern Europe and the United States. Eastern European ghettos, which enabled genocide, were crudely rehabilitated by the Nazis during World War Two as if they were part of a benign medieval tradition. In the United States, the word ghetto was routinely applied to endemic black ghettoization which has lasted from 1920 until the present. Outside of America the ghetto has been universalized as the incarnation of class difference, or colonialism, or apartheid, and has been applied to segregated cities and countries throughout the world.

In this Very Short Introduction Bryan Cheyette unpicks the extraordinarily complex layers of contrasting meanings that have accrued over five hundred years to ghettos, considering their different settings across the globe. He considers core questions of why and when urban, racial, and colonial ghettos have appeared, and who they contain. Exploring their various identities, he shows how different ghettos interrelate, or are contrasted, across time and space, or even in the same place.

ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Race, Judaism

160 pages, Paperback

Published November 1, 2020

Reviews

[Tiemu]

An informative book on the origin of the Jewish ghetto in Europe, how it became re-imagined in literature, and how the term changed over time to apply now to poor black neighbourhoods of America. A few very old black and white illustrations are included.

[SpaceBear]

A very short introduction to "the ghetto", focusing on the experiences of Jews in Medieval Europe, under Nazi rule in WW2, and the experience of African Americans in US cities. It compares how ghettos are imposed (as with Jews in Europe), and contrasts to how the idea of the ghetto may be appropriated as a form of identity (as with African Americans, or in Soweto in South Africa).

[Laurie]

Getting back at my prof by getting books for my essay out on inter-library loans that I don't have to return until after the final marks date :P

[Thomas]

Intriguing even if brief look at the polyvalent conceptual understand of the 'ghetto.'