GHETTO. - A district in which Jews were obliged to reside, unlike the districts in certain cities where Jews voluntarily concentrated in order to live peacefully according to their ancestral customs. The ghettos were enclosed by a wall and provided with a gate that was closed at night.
The voluntary separation was encouraged by various Church councils, beginning with that of Narbonne in the year 1050. The Jewish quarter was to be located, if possible, far from churches. Paul IV assigned in 1555 to the Jews of Rome and other cities of the Papal States separate quarters. The term “ghetto” for Rome first appears in a papal bull of 1562. In 1516 the ghetto of Venice arose, but a separate Jewish quarter, even if not called a “ghetto,” existed in Turin as early as the first half of the 15th century. Jews were not always and everywhere discontented with the ghetto. Emancipation brought with it the abolition of the ghetto. In Rome the ghetto remained until 1870.
The most common Hebrew equivalent for “ghetto” was *hâşâr*. Erroneous are the derivations of the word “ghetto” from the Hebrew *gâth*, “divorce,” “repudiation”; from *(Bor)ghetto*; from the vulgar *guetto* (filthy); from the Greek γεστῶν; from the Gothic *gatvo* (street, Gasse); but even the derivation from “getto” presents difficulties, since in the Venetian dialect one would have expected “zetto,” on the model of *giudecca-zudecca*, *zudio*, etc. Consideration might be given to the English *gate*, meaning gate, inasmuch as the gate closed at night and the guard constituted the true characteristic of the ghetto.