Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

The Ghetto

1927; University of Chicago Press; Volume: 33; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1086/214333

1537-5390

Louis Wirth,

Jewish Identity and Society

The ghetto, the modern Jewish immigrant settlement in the Western world, has arisen out of the medieval European urban institution by means of which the Jews were effectually separated from the rest of the population. It represents a case study in isolation and accommodation, and indicates the processes involved in the formation and development of local communities in city life. The natural history of this institution shows that it developed as a gradual and undesigned adaptation to a strage habitat and culture, and its disintegration proceeds independent of legal enactment. The Jews, in so far as they are a separate ethnic group, are a product of ghetto life, which accounts for the reappearance of the ghetto wherever Jews settle in large numbers. The modern ghetto in its location and structure is determined by the unique status of the Jew and by his traditions. His neighbors in the new world tend to be the same as in the old. Eastern ghettos differ from those of the West in that the latter generally have as many local areas of settlement as there are waves of immigrants. As the Jew becomes conscious of his subordinate position in the ghetto he flees, but he is pursued by fellow-Jew until his new habitat assumes the atmosphere of the ghetto itself. In the course of his migration, his personality changes as the culture of his group fuses with that of the larger world outside.