Affects of the Ghetto

When people consider the suppression of the Jews, they often think about the holocaust with the Nazi party and Adolf Hitler. However, the suppression of the Jews started a long time before that period in time. The most important example that we can see of this is the Roman Ghetto. This Ghetto was set up when the Pope was in both religious power and political power. This ghetto followed an order that was created saying that people of the Jewish religion had to live away from the general Christians. They could only live in the Ghetto which would be closed and locked every night. Churches were also set up to force the Jewish people to listen to masses that told them that they were wrong and would go to hell. The Jews were only allowed to be money lenders or merchants and could not own any property. Instead, Christians owned the properties and rented them out to the Jews, never stepping a foot in the house. Because of these strict laws, the ghettos had a huge impact on the people inside and the people outside.

With all of the strict laws that were set in place with the Jews and the Ghetto, the people that were inside were the ones that were mostly affected. If I try and sit back and think about how I would feel with that much restriction on my life, I really do not know what I would do. I would feel like I was not really a human but someone else’s puppet. The Jews were never given a chance to pick their occupation or where they could live, besides what building in the ghetto they would like. In fact, even in Ghettos today they still have the problem. The only difference is that now they are not forced into them because of religion. Now they are automatically put in the ghetto because of the social structure that is in place now. Today, we do not discriminate against the people that live in ghettos, but we also do not help the people to get out of poverty and out of the “modern ghettos”.

The ghettos not only affected the people that were inside of the ghettos, but the outside as well. The people on the outside had to constantly view the ghettos and realize the sin that they were committing on a day to day basis. Even today, people on the outsides of the ghetto have to deal with viewing the lives of the people in the ghetto and yet they do nothing to help. Some people have all the money they could want and when it comes time to helping someone that absolutely needs it to survive, they never help. They conserve their money and think only of themselves. Now I’m not saying that we all should expect those with better lives to donate to us. However, I think that if someone that works hard every day and still cannot escape their tragic lives, then they should receive aid.

The ghettos both in the past and present are completely different because of how people were placed in them, but the affects that are caused from the ghettos are about the same. People are not always treated fairly and when that person tries for success and can’t achieve it because of laws or social structures then something needs changed. The Jewish religion has received multiple eras of discrimination where they were forced not to succeed even though they did nothing wrong except for believing in something different than the Christian religion.