October 18, 2018 - This above picture is looking down from a bridge on to what what was the street level in Ancient Rome. This is the ‘Treatro di Marcello’. It was one of the three major theaters in the city. It predates the Colosseum and held around 10,000 spectators.
It is found in the Jewish Ghetto of the city near a bend in the Tiber River. Roman Jews are unique in the unlike other of the world’s Jewish people who are Sephardic or Ashkenazi, they came directly from the Holy Land before the Diaspora. Things were relatively stable until the Fall of Rome and the remnants of the empire became Christian.
Predictably what followed was a long period of oppression and cruelty of the Jews by the church. This portion of the city was walled off and became a ghetto. It took until 1870 when Italy became the current nation state for the walls to finally come down. Even after that the darkness reached new heights with the coming of the Nazi’s.
Thankfully not all Christians felt this way. Pope John Paul II made it his mission to reach out to the community and build healing bridges. He apologized on behalf of the Church for past transgressions.
Today some 35,000 Jews still live here.
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