Tredicesimo Giorno - Jewish Museo and Tiberna

The past 12 days have been completely filled with activities to do as a group and they have been planned out for us completely, but today was the first time we had the option to go out on our own and do different activites. Aly, Jacob, Katie and I walked all the way to the Etruscian museum, only to find out it was closed, so we decided to switch it up and go to the Jewish Museum instead.

We have been going to so many churches and doing so much christian stuff that it was nice to switch it up and see something completely different. Growing up in New York City, I have been well acquanted with the jewish religion, but the museum was actually really interesting and I learned a lot about Rome in general from it.

Well, Rome has the oldest Jewish community in Europe and the world because in the 2nd century Jews arrived in Rome and Rome is the only city that Jews weren't expelled from during the various wars etc. So the original community is still in Rome, with around 14,000 jews living here currently.

From the beginning of the city, Jews always lived in separate neighborhoods from the christians, but in the 1500's they were forced to move into ghetto's or prison-like neighborhoods. They didn't get emancipated and gain equal rights until the 1870's. By then they finally started to deconstruct the ghetto's and then in 1884 they built the synagoge which is still standing next to the museum as a symbol of emancipation.

It's so interesting that humans no matter who they are want to be superior to someone, so they go about it by persecuting people who are different from them. The Roman's persecuted the Christians, then the Christians persecuted the Jews, the Christians also persecuted the Muslim's during the crusades, and today the jews and muslims are still in conflict. The chain is endless. It is truly a never-ending cycle of persecution. I think humans also always want to be in control of something or someone and by persecuting people they are in control of them and making them feel inferior. It is just sad that people don't learn from there mistakes or at least don't completely learn from their mistakes. History really does repeat itself and learning about the Jews persecution and life in the ghetto's really brought this issue to forfront of my mind.

On a lighter note, by going to the Jewish Museum we got to see a completely new part of the city and we took a bus from right outside the vatican to trastevere and walked across a bridge to the museum. When we were walking across the bridge we realized that we were on the tiberina which is a little island in the middle to the Tevere. There was a little dam that looked a little like a waterfall. It was really cool to explore a different part of the city!