s of their Gentile neighbors. Nowhere is the average Jew so much
like the non-Jew in appearance, language, manners, and vocation than
the inhabitant of the Roman Ghetto on the bank of the Tiber. He is
engaged there in the petty trades of selling his olives, peaches, and
figs, and hires out as a journeyman in and outside his country. He
hawks with "cartiloni" and "ricordi di Roma" in front of the cafe
terraces, and his street waifs accost the foreigners for a "soldi."
Even at the door of his old-clothes shop you can hardly recognize in
him the Jew. It is this, more than the paucity of the number of Jews
in Italy, that explains the absence of anti-Jewish feeling there. For
the name Sacerdote by which Italian Cohens call themselves does not
suggest affluence, and the cognomen Levi does not necessarily
designate one's business.

In his religious life the Jew of the Roman Ghetto resembles the
Lithuanian rather than the Western European. His religious activity,
to be sure, is restricted to the prayer services of the Temple, but
his Temple is more like a Beth Midrash than a symphony hall and
lyceum. Living within a Catholic environment, his religion has
been preserved as something positive, tangible, and powerful; and
if it is no longer an inspiring influence within him, it exists at
least as a reality outside of him. The religious institutions and
instrumentalities are looked upon by him as something hallowed and
consecrate. The synagogue is spoken of as the "sacro tempio" and the
rabbi, referred to by the Hebrew words "Morenu Harav," is looked up to
in matters religious as if he were the incumbent of the throne of
Moses. The place of worship is opened three times a day for the
traditional number of the daily public prayers, and young men as well
as old, unwashed and in their working garments, repair there directly
from their work to hear the "sacra messa," as the services are
sometimes termed by them. Most of the younger Jews are unable to read
the Hebrew prayers, some read without understanding them; but they all
know a few selected prayers by heart which they recite aloud with many
interesting gesticulations and genuflections, while in the pulpit the
Chasan reads the services from a prayer-book printed in Livorno,
chanting them in a monotonous sing-song not unlike what one often
hears in the chapels of St. Peter.

_Societies of Jewish Youth in Italy_

Racial consciousness is strong among these Jews of the Roman Ghetto