Ghetto: The History of a Word

February 12th, 2020, 8:15 pm
Adas Israel Congregation
2850 Quebec Street NW
Washington, DC 20008

Instructor: Daniel Schwartz

What is a ghetto? A compulsory, exclusive, and enclosed district for Jews? A voluntary and densely populated immigrant enclave? A segregated African-American neighborhood? In this class related to his latest book, Ghetto: The History of a Word (2019), Daniel Schwartz will explain how this most malleable and loaded of words—ghetto—has historically been all of the above, chronicling its various and contested meanings from when it was first used in sixteenth-century Venice in reference to Jews to the present.

Daniel Schwartz is an associate professor of history and the director of the Program in Judaic Studies at George Washington University. He is also the author of The First Modern Jew: Spinoza and the History of an Image and Spinoza’s Challenge to Jewish Thought: Writings on His Life, Philosophy, and Legacy.

JSC, Adas members $15, others $20 (W-4)