The Jewish community in Rome is the oldest in continuity in Europe: its presence has been documented since the 2nd century BC, still in the Republican period, without the interruption that marks Jewish history in almost every other place on the continent.
From the Republican period to the Empire
The first Jews arrived in Rome as traders and emissaries, at a time when the city was still a republic, centuries before Christianity. The community grew along with Roman power itself, and survived it: when the Empire fell, it continued there, in the same territory, which no other European Jewish community can say about itself for the same length of time. Other important communities on the continent, such as those in Spain or the Rhineland, were born later and were, at some point in history, totally or almost totally expelled from where they were formed. The one in Rome never stopped existing in the same place.
During the imperial period, the Jewish presence in Rome grew enough to leave its mark on the city's own culture, at a time when the Roman elite read the Greek classics, Homer and the tragedies of Sophocles, Euripides and Aeschylus, in the original. Coexistence between different communities was part of the daily functioning of a capital that administered a multiethnic empire, and it is in this context, even before any formal segregation, that the Jewish community established itself as a permanent part of the Roman landscape.
The Arch of Titus and the diaspora
The oldest visual landmark in this history is in the Roman Forum, in the Arch of Titus, erected around 81 AD in honor of the emperor's victory in the Judean military campaign. The internal relief of the arch shows the sacking of the Temple of Jerusalem: Roman soldiers carrying the menorah, the seven-branched golden candelabrum that was permanently lit in the temple, a symbol of a presence that, according to Jewish tradition, should never go out. Titus, son of Vespasian, commanded that campaign, and the arch celebrates what, for Jewish history, is the beginning of the great diaspora.
The ghetto of 1555
For more than a thousand years after that, Jews lived in Rome without formal segregation. This changes in 1555, when Pope Paul IV publishes the bull Cum nimis absurdum, which obliges the community to live isolated within walls, in a marshy territory on the banks of the Tiber, with gates closed at dusk. The Rome ghetto lasted more than three centuries: it was only extinguished in 1870, when the fall of papal temporal power and the annexation of the city to the Kingdom of Italy brought civil emancipation.
The three centuries of ghetto do not interrupt the community, but compress it: a small, overpopulated territory, subject to specific laws on profession and circulation, in the heart of the same city where the Jewish presence had already existed for more than seventeen hundred years. It is this contrast, between the antiquity of the community and the seclusion it experienced afterwards, that makes the history of Rome different from that of other European cities: the ghetto is not the beginning of the Jewish presence there, it is an episode within a much longer continuity.
The Greater Synagogue, and what remains
Emancipation paves the way, decades later, for the construction of the Greater Synagogue of Rome, the Tempio Maggiore, built between 1901 and 1904 in the area of the former ghetto, with a square dome that is not repeated in any other synagogue in the city. It marks, architecturally, the end of an era of seclusion. But the history that spans these two thousand years is not linear: alongside the longest continuity in Europe there is also the era of 1943, treated separately in this cluster, because the same community that survived the Empire did not survive the 20th century in its entirety.
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Why is the Jewish community in Rome called the oldest in Europe?
Because it is the only one on the continent with a documented and continuous presence since the pre-Christian period, the 2nd century BC, without interruption until today, crossing the Empire, the Middle Ages, the ghetto and the modern era.
What does the Arch of Titus represent for this story?
The arch, from around 81 AD, celebrates Titus' victory in Judea and features a relief showing the sacking of the Temple of Jerusalem, with Roman soldiers carrying the menorah, the seven-branched candelabrum. It is the oldest visual record of the Jewish diaspora in Rome.
When and why was the Rome ghetto created?
In 1555, by the bull Cum nimis absurdum, by Pope Paul IV, which forced the Jewish community to live isolated within walls, with gates closed at night. It lasted until 1870, when the annexation of Rome to the Kingdom of Italy extinguished the ghetto and brought civil emancipation.
When was the Great Synagogue in Rome built?
Between 1901 and 1904, in the area of the former ghetto, with a square dome that distinguishes it from any other synagogue in the city.
Continue in the same neighborhood: Stumbling stones in the Rome ghetto · Jewish ghetto in Rome, what to see · SPQR, what does it mean · The lion episode in Don Quixote
Source class (YouTube): A História contada através do Bairro Hebraico em Roma (NousCast)