Talking about the Chicago Ghetto, Wirth says that the transition and deterioration of the Ghetto has been proceeding at a speed that the area is changing fast. The children of the immigrants are fleeing the Ghettos like a stampede. They want to get out of the small world which is provincial and sectarian. But only when they leave do they become aware of their Jewish identity.²

When the Jews went to a new area in the city, say for example Lawndale, it becomes the second Jewish settlement and after sometime a second Ghetto. With the modern synagogue, trimmer beard, shorter coats but Lawndale was Jewish. Now there are people who flee from the new Ghetto since it is too parochial for them. In the third settlement, as the Jewish people move in, the non-Jew begins to move out and the Jew begins the pursuit anew.

What is most important in the context of ghettoization is to appreciate the fact that it all depends on how others perceive you. The important point is that the Jewish community remains intact because the outside world has treated it as an entity. Therefore, Ghetto persists despite attempts to flee. They are a community despite heterogeneity because of their ability to act as a corporate body. It is a cultural community—so it should be viewed as a socio-psychological as well as ecological/spatial category. Ghetto is not a physical fact but a state of mind.