Eternal

by Lisa Scottoline

In 1555, the Ghetto was created, and Pope Paul IV had ordered that walls be built surrounding the neighborhood, with doors that were locked at night and guards on patrol, for which the Community had to pay. There were thousands of Jews in Rome at the time, and they were compelled to wear yellow badges and forced to live in the Ghetto, packed into about a hundred and thirty homes on a handful of city blocks that encompassed less than three hectares, or seven acres. It

The Ghetto walls were torn down in 1888, after Rome had been absorbed into the new nation of Italy in 1870, and Jews were permitted to come and go.

They stole the ancient Roman salute from us, too, for their Sieg Heil.”

“History doesn’t hold me back. It holds me up. It gives me strength, like my country and my religion. All of these things are of a piece. They’re part of me, of our family, too.”

The happiness of a man’s family was his responsibility, no less than putting food on the table.

There is no sorrow greater than in times of misery, to hold at heart the memory of happiness. —Dante Alighieri, Inferno, Canto 5, 121–