Fall 2011 | Issue 21

Contested Connotations
David B. Ruderman on the legacy of ghettos in Jewish history
News from the Hans Arnhold Center | Sketches & Dispatches | N9
The word “ghetto” is
one that rarely has positive
connotations. This particularly
applies to the case of the
National Socialists’ persecution
of Jews, where more often than
not “ghetto” invokes depressing
and inhumane images. Ghettos
constructed by the National
Socialists, primarily in Poland
and Eastern Europe, were the
intermediate stop for many on
their way to extermination camps.
Thus it is rather provocative to
provide the assumption that
ghettos could have also have had
positive effects on the Jewish people.
In the lecture series “History
of the Jews in Italy,” at the Institute
for Jewish Studies at the
University of Potsdam, David B.
Ruderman, professor of modern
Jewish history at the University
of Pennsylvania, focused on this
exact question.
“Are ghettos good or bad for
Jews?” asked the US scholar in
this year’s Emil Fackenheim
Lecture. Ruderman is the author
of several books on the topic of
Jewish thought and modern Judaism.
For 17 years he has directed
the Herbert D. Katz Center for
Advanced Judaic Studies at the
University of Pennsylvania and
in 2001 was honored for his life’s
work by the National Foundation
for Jewish Culture. Presently, he
is working on a new book as the
German Transatlantic Program
Fellow at the American Academy
in Berlin.
Ruderman is aware that “ghetto”
is an emotionally charged
term; in the US it is predominantly
associated with the word
“isolation.” Venice’s first ghetto,
constructed in 1516, demonstrated
a reality that was quite different,
however, argued Ruderman.
In the decades and centuries to
follow, Italian Jews, despite hardship
and exclusion, were able to
develop a vibrant Jewish cultural
space. A turning point for Jewish
life occurred in 1755, when Pope
Paul IV decreed that Jews must
live exclusively in ghettos.
Almost every large Italian
town had its own ghetto. Yet their
Jewish inhabitants’ cultural identity,
lifestyle, and amusements
always remained open to their
Christian neighbors. The ghettos
for Italian Jews were also valued
as “areas of retreat from dark reality”
and vitalized the mystical traditions
of Judaism. Furthermore,
it was in this time that religious
ceremonies became festive occasions
for the first time, following
their Catholic neighbors’ example,
said Ruderman.
This mutual, fruitful cultural
exchange led Ruderman to the
example of Jewish-Italian composer
Salomone Rossi, whose
works are reminiscent of baroque
church music. Another applicable
example can be seen in the notable
writings of Venetian Rabbis
Simone Luzatto and Leone de
Modena, which, lacking the theme
of the ghetto, would not be the
works that they are. The scholar
emphasized that he does not aim
to romanticize medieval Jewish
ghettos, but rather to demonstrate
that one can interpret them as a
place of refuge, as well as a space
that provided Jews the possibility
of having close contact with the
non-Jewish environment.
by Maren Herbst
Published on May 25, 2011,
in Potsdamer Neueste
Nachrichten
Translated by Gretchen
Graywall
The Strains of Exile
A violinist shares stories of his transcontinental past
COURTESY HELLMUT STERN
HELLMUT STERN AT AGE ELEVEN
Hellmut Stern, former
first violinist at the Berlin
Philharmonic, opened
his Academy talk on September 8,
2011, with a deceptively simple
statement: “I was an innocent
child.” Stern’s subsequent recol-
lections made these words all
the more poignant, as the famed
musician, now 82, described his
dawning comprehension, as a
ten-year-old, of the sinister currents
shaping Germany in 1938.
Shortly before his family fled,
Stern witnessed the aftermath
of Kristallnacht; arriving at
his Jewish school, he found the
building in flames, with terrified
teachers urging the students to
“go home, and stay there.”
Stern did not go home. “I
wanted to see everything,” he
said, and continued further into
town, the glass of broken store
windows crunching beneath his
steps, where he watched “normal
people going inside [shops] and
helping themselves.” The sight
posed a question in his mind, one
that still throbs: What would he
have done, in their shoes? “You
cannot condemn a whole people,”
Stern said.
From a feeling of belonging,
of utter German-ness, Stern was
thus forced to see himself as an
outsider, and this psychology
became physical as the Sterns
finally secured visas to China
and relocated to the frigid and
foreign city of Harbin, a cosmopolitan
hotbed of culture
and political intrigue in the
1920s, which had become part of
Japanese-occupied Manchuria
when the family arrived. There
Stern would study violin under
a stern taskmaster, Vladimir
Trachtenberg, trained in the
Russian school, who provided
Stern with the discipline and
attention that the young musician
required to enter into his
own as an undeniably exceptional
talent.
Despite the discomfort of
dislocation, the agony of exile,
and the cold and hunger of
the Harbin years, Stern cited
his parents, also gifted musi-