Others within others. On scole and diversity in the ghetto of Rome (sixteenth to nineteenth centuries)

This chaptes focuses on the scole in the Roman ghetto in the 17th and 18th centuries. Based on the preliminary results of an initial investigation in the Historical Archives of the Roman Jewish Communities, it argues that the scole played an essential economic and political role within Jewish society that went far beyond the preservation of the old national minhagim. They worked as valuable intermediaries between the various social and cultural elements of the community and for this reason their roles were openly recognized even by the Christians. My research aims to answer important questions about the internal character of ghettoization itself by focusing on such internal interactions: What was the ghetto for the Jews and how did they experience it? How did the Jews react to the imposition of general rules from outside? Who and how governed the ghetto? As we will see, my hypothesis is that this living dialectic – based on differences and the defense of specific institutional roles - was one of the key elements that enabled the minority to remain so.