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For decades the neighborhood east of Montreal’s McGill University has been known as “The McGill Ghetto,” or simply “The Ghetto.” The area was understood as a ghetto for students and the label had no negative connotation. Recently, McGill students have pushed back against the nickname. They prefer Milton-Parc, the original name, designating a community marked by diversity of ethnicity, religion, socioeconomic status, and occupation. They believe “ghetto” has a negative connotation, referring to a slum, a restricted area, and a homogenous population.
The McGill Ghetto reveals the contested meanings behind this controversial term. In Ghetto: The History of a Word, Daniel B. Schwartz traces the word’s roots from sixteenth century Venice to the present-day association with African-American neighborhoods. As Schwartz notes, the term ghetto “has figured prominently in virtually all the major developments of modern Jewish history” (6). Schwartz’s book, more than a simple exploration of a word, is a superb cultural history of Jewish modernity, with its challenges of Jew-hatred, assimilation, and community-building.
Though the meaning of the word shifted dramatically, Schwartz identifies an important consistency: aside from its use during the Nazi Holocaust, ghetto was always a term with both negative and positive connotations, symbolizing restriction and oppression as well as robust Jewish communal life. Schwartz’s chronicle begins in Venice in 1516, where the word ghetto was first employed to designate an enclosed area for Jews to live. The Italian word initially referred to a metal foundry, but after one was erected in Rome four decades later,...