Bolognese Members of the Tribe

I stumbled upon the Jewish Museum here on Monday. It's small but very nice. It's in the former ghetto area. Up until the 13th century, Jews were living relatively peacefully in Rome. After the second Crusade, they began to be persecuted and many moved to less populated areas such as Bologna and other towns in the Emilia-Romagna region.

The Pope in the 16th century ordered all Jews in Italy to live in ghettos. They were locked in at night, could not own land, and were banned from every profession except printing, medicine, money-lending, and selling rags. Two of the streets in the ghetto reflect these times - they are named Via de Giudei (Jews' Street), and Via dell' Inferno (Hell Street). The Jewish population was expelled from the city within a couple of decades.

In the 1980s, work began to restore synagogues and ghetto areas in Emilia-Romagna. Out of 4 million people who live in this large region of Italy now, only 400 are Jewish.