I began research on this book in earnest as a Kluge Fellow at the Library of Congress in the spring semester of 2013. My gratitude to the John W. Kluge Fellowship Program for endorsing my ambition to write a sweeping history of the word ghetto when the project was still at an embryonic stage is enormous. Over the course of this fellowship, I was able to carry out much of the research for what became Chapter 3 (on the migration of the word ghetto to America) while also drawing up a chapter plan for the book as a whole. Special thanks must go to the former head administrator of the fellowship program, Mary Lou Reker, as well as to the then-chief librarian of the Hebraica Division, Peggy Pearlstein, for their support of this project while I was in residence at the Kluge Center. I was honored to be invited back to the Library of Congress in the spring of 2015 to participate in Scholarfest, a celebration of the first fifteen years of the Kluge Center, where I participated in a public “lightning conversation” about my work in progress.
In the years since my Kluge Fellowship, I have benefited from several opportunities to workshop chapters and sharpen my overall argument in conferences, colloquia, and public lectures. I want to especially thank the Jewish studies colloquia at Brandeis and Yale and now at George Washington University (GW) for inviting me to present precirculated papers; the feedback I received at these meetings was highly fruitful. I was also fortunate to be asked to give talks at the University of Pittsburgh in the fall of 2015, where I spoke on the Jewish-to-black migration of the ghetto concept, and at two events held to mark the five hundredth anniversary of the Venice Ghetto in 2016—one at the University of Pennsylvania, the other at a two-day conference at the Center for Jewish History in New York titled “The Ghetto and Beyond: The Jews in the Age of the Medici.” All these presentations, including others given at the American Jewish Historical Society’s biennial conference in 2014 and at a number of Association of Jewish Studies annual meetings, helped move this project forward.
For eight months in 2018, I held the Sosland Fellowship at the Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. This provided me with the time and resources to research and write my chapter on the Nazi ghettos of the Holocaust. I am grateful to the outstanding staff historians and librarians of the museum, as well as to the other fellows whose time in residence overlapped with my own, for their interest in my work. I am equally grateful to my former student, Katarzyna Pietrzak, who served as my research assistant during my fellowship and helped translate materials from Polish to English for me. Many thanks as well to the University Facilitating Fund of George Washington University, which financially supported my research in its latter phases.
There are a few individuals I would like to single out for mention. While I was still working on my previous book, at a time this project was merely a vague idea, Menachem Butler, as is his wont, sent me attachments of myriad articles on the subject of the ghetto. Ben Ravid, who knows more about the history of the Venice Ghetto than anyone, was a gracious supporter of this endeavor from the outset. His classic essay on the historical odyssey of the word ghetto “from geographical realia to historiographical symbol” sketched the contours of this project and was an early inspiration. Moreover, his reading of Chapter 1 of the manuscript was discerning and perceptive. I came to know Ken Stow (who knows more about the history of the Rome Ghetto than anyone) as a result of our mutual participation in the aforementioned 2016 conference at the Center for Jewish History. His lengthy, substantive responses to my many email queries while I was researching and writing Chapter 1 were invaluable, as were his comments on another essay I wrote on the ghetto for a forthcoming volume on key concepts in the study of antisemitism. I was delighted to host him to give a public talk and visit my seminar at GW in February 2017. Others who provided incisive readings of parts or all of the manuscript include Tyler Anbinder, David Biale, Eliyahu Stern, James Loeffler, and Arie Dubnov. This leaves out the many who read portions of what became my manuscript in various seminars and colloquia; my thanks to them all. I would also like to commend the GW undergraduates who took my course on the history of the ghetto the two times I offered it while working on this project. Their probing questions and thoughtful insights helped make this a better book.
I am indebted to my editor at Harvard University Press, Joyce Seltzer, for helping me conceive an organization for the book at an early meeting at the Library of Congress in May 2013 and for commenting so trenchantly on my manuscript when it was finally complete. Her edits led directly to a tighter, leaner book. I am only sorry that, with her retirement, I will not have an opportunity to work with her again. The two anonymous readers for the press engaged closely with my manuscript and offered many useful suggestions. I was fortunate to be matched up with an editor as experienced and accomplished as Ian Malcolm upon Joyce’s retirement; he expertly oversaw the transformation of the work from manuscript to book. Additional thanks to Kathi Drummy and Olivia Woods for responding promptly to all my questions and for helping shepherd the manuscript through the editorial process.
Any research project will have its share of lulls and dead ends, and rare is the author who is not affected at these times by spasms of worry and self-doubt. My wife, Alisa, who in the years since I began this study has built a flourishing private practice in clinical psychology, could always be counted on to help me through these moments and even extended periods with a ready ear and boundless patience. For that and so much else, I am beyond grateful. In my six years of work on this project, our son, Max, has grown into a handsome, studious runner, fascinated by history and politics, who takes everything in stride and brightens everyone’s day; our daughter Sophie has blossomed from a curly-haired five-year-old into a striking, straight-haired eleven-year-old with exquisite artistic skill and baking prowess and a precocious understanding of real estate; and our youngest, Maddie, has gone from an infant to become a beautiful, blue-eyed kindergartener with a passion for learning and friendship. They make our lives full and rich. This book is dedicated to them.