The history of the Jews in Greece goes back 2000 years. The Romaniote Jews lived there from ancient times and were Greek speaking while the Sephardic Jews arrived there after their expulsion from Spain and spoke Ladino. Both groups adopted certain Greek customs while retaining their own identity, culture and religious beliefs. This exhibit celebrates the Jews of Greece from 1880-1930 tracing their customs and traditions through life cycles: Birth, marriage, daily life, religious life, and finally departure for the New World. Clothing, photographs, textiles, synagogue items, transit visas and other documents will be featured.

The Jewish community in Greece is one of the oldest in the world, dating back to more than 2,000 years ago. Over the centuries Greek-Jewish life thrived, and occupied a unique niche in Greek society by incorporating certain customs of their adopted land, while retaining their own identity, culture and religious beliefs. Sadly, this distinguished and vibrant community was almost completely destroyed in the Holocaust.

In this exhibit, we explore the rich culture that once was by tracing the customs and traditions of the Jews of Greece from 1880-1930 through their major life cycle events: Birth, marriage, holidays, synagogue, and finally departure for the New World. Clothing, photographs, textiles, synagogue items, transit visas and other documents are featured in our glimpse of the past. We invite you to join us as we honor their memory, by celebrating their lives.

Romaniotes and Sephardim

The indigenous Jews of Greece are the Romaniotes, Greek-speaking Hellenized Jews who date their ancestry back to the Roman Empire. Surrounded for millennia by Greek culture, they adopted the language, dress, foods, music and customs of the majority population. They conducted their religious services in Judeo-Greco, a mixture of Greek and Hebrew. They adapted the foods of Greece to their dietary needs. Their names took on Greek endings. They became Greek in every way with the exception of the religion they practiced.

Romaniotes lived throughout the Mediterranean in lands that now encompass Greece and Turkey. They lived through the Classical Greek period, the Roman Empire, Byzantium, the Ottoman Empire, and the formation of the Modern Greek State. With the influx of the Sephardim from Spain, most absorbed the Sephardic culture. The only Romaniote synagogues still remaining are those in Ioannina and Chalkis in Greece, the Zakynthos Synagogue in Tel Aviv, and right here on the Lower East Side, the only Romaniote Synagogue in the Western Hemisphere, Kehila Kedosha Janina.

Traditionally, Sepharad is the geographical Hebrew denotation for Spain and Sephardim were Spanish Jews who spoke Judeo-Español, a mixture of medieval Spanish and Hebrew. Jews have lived on Spanish soil as far back as the Roman Empire, although oral history dates their ancestry to the destruction of the First Temple. The "Golden Age" of Spanish Jewry (10th and 11th centuries), fostered by the tolerant attitudes of the Arab caliphs, produced poets such as Judah Halevi, and philosophers such as Nachmanides and Maimonides. Spanish Jews rose to positions of prominence and power, both in the courts of the caliphs and, afterwards, in the courts of the Spanish kings. In spite of their blessed existence, there were periods of persecutions, culminating in the Expulsion Order of 1492, which caused hundreds of thousands of Sephardic Jews to flee Spain for safe havens. When Sultan Bayezid II issued his famous invitation to the Spanish Jews, many flocked to the port city of Salonika (La Madre de Israel) which, for over 400 years, would become the most populous city of Sephardic Jews in the world. For centuries, until their destruction in the Holocaust, these Sephardic Jews would continue to speak their medieval Spanish and sing their romanseros: many would even pass down the keys to their houses in Spain, sure that one day they would return again.

The daily lives of Greek Jews were largely dictated by their religious observances. Work did not take place on the Shabbat. This would change in the 20th century when many parts of Greece changed from Ottoman to Greek rule and stores were ordered closed on Sundays, putting the Jewish merchants at a disadvantage. Jewish dietary laws were strictly observed and daily life revolved around the celebration of Jewish holidays and the life cycle celebrations (brit milah, bnai mitzvah, weddings and death).

Romaniote Jews adopted the foods of the Greek Christian culture, adapting it to their dietary needs. Both the Sephardim and Romaniotes influenced and were influenced by the Ottoman Turkish culture.
Many Turkish foods became part of their daily diet (as it did among the Greek Christians). Bourekas (filled phylo pastries) were a staple of both communities. Fresh vegetables, usually stuffed with rice and chopped meat fillings, called dolmas or yaprakes (depending on their ingredients) among the Sephardim, and yemista among the Romaniotes, were staples, as were lamb and fish. Holiday foods differed greatly from that of the Ashkenazim: at Passover, keftikes de prassa (leak croquettes) were served by the Sephardim and spanakopita yia Pessah (spinach pie made with matzoth) by the Romaniotes; at Purim, novias (marzipan shaped into figurines) were enjoyed by Sephardic youth and Aftia tou Haman (Haman’s ears) were a specialty of the Romaniotes.

Although there were a few wealthy families among the Jews of Greece especially in Salonika, many were poor and hardworking, their daily energies expended on feeding their large families. In Salonika some were hamales (porters), working at the port of Salonika, carrying the goods from port to market. Many of the men were itinerant merchants, traveling to the markets in outlying towns, small shop owners, and street vendors, selling their wares from pushcarts. Many were engaged in various aspects of the textile trade: importing and exporting, and manufacture and dyeing of fabrics.

Chevrei kaddisha (burial societies) were established in all communities, a practice that has been carried over by Greek Jews as they immigrated to other lands. Funeral practices varied from community to community and go back to ancient practices. In Rhodes, only men followed the funeral procession to the cemetery and women were permitted to visit the grave only after one month. In Ioannina the deceased was kept at home for one day and placed in the center of the room with candles at the feet and head. On the day of the funeral, the Ioannioti burial society would carry the deceased on a wooden plank to the cemetery and earth would be placed over the eyes before burial, a particularly Greek custom. Most cemeteries were small, reflecting the size of the Greek Jewish communities, but the cemetery in Salonika contained over 400,000 graves before its destruction in World War II.

In general, Greek Jewry was a traditional, patriarchal community, preserving century-old customs to reflect a strict observance of Judaism. Jewish women did not work outside the home and did not do the daily shopping. The men would go to the market so that women would not have to deal with men who were not members of their families. Many of the customs, foods, language and traditions of Greek Jewry were carried to new lands as they left Greece in the 20th century to make a better life for their children. In many ways, Greek diasporic Jewry now remains the repository of these traditions.

Jews in Greece for 2000 years

Two thousand years ago the Roman Empire encompassed all the countries around the Mediterranean, reaching the Euphrates, the Danube, the Rhine and England. According to Salo W. Baron, one tenth of its population was Jewish. Jews were even more numerous in the urbanized eastern part of that Empire. Hellenistic culture was strong in these territories and Greek was the most common language of the Jews. There is evidence from the New Testament of large Jewish communities in Corinth and Thessaloniki (Salonika). A century earlier Strabo wrote that when Sulla crossed over to Greece in 87 B.C.E. "the habitable world was filled with Jews." Philo of Alexandria left ample descriptions of the Jewish settlements of Greece.

After Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire the Jewish population decreased significantly, surviving in large numbers only in the regions that were far from the center of imperial power such as southern Italy, Spain and Mesopotamia (Babylon). However, some Jews remained in Greece and other parts of the Byzantine Empire as witnessed by occasional anti-Jewish edicts issued by some Byzantine emperors, and the repeals of the same by their successors. The Spanish rabbi Benjamin of Tudela visited numerous Jewish communities in Greece between 1168 and 1170.

A specific reference to the Jews of Ioannina exists in a edict of the emperor Andronicus II in 1319. Within 100 years most of the Byzantine Empire came under Ottoman rule culminating with the conquest of Constantinople in 1453. While Muslims held a privileged position in the Ottoman Empire, other religious communities were recognized through the system of millets. There was a Rum (Roman) millet consisting of Orthodox Christians, an Armenian millet, and a Jewish millet (as well as several others). The Jewish millet was led by the Chief Rabbi (later called Haham Bashi) and the Rum millet by the Greek Patriarch. Both were members of the imperial council. The non-Muslims were called dhimmis and enjoyed freedom of religious practice and the protection of the state. When the Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492, they were welcomed in the Ottoman Empire, and large numbers of them settled in what is now Greece and Asia Minor. The newcomers, Sephardic Jews, spoke Judeo-Spanish (Ladino) while the earlier Jewish inhabitants, Romaniotes, spoke Greek as they had since antiquity.

The 19th century saw the start of the breakup of the Ottoman Empire and the establishment of nation states such as Greece, Serbia, and Bulgaria. The first Greek state consisted only of what is now its southern part and included the Romaniote Jewish communities of Patras and Chalkis. Greece expanded greatly after the Balkan wars of 1912-13 so that it included the Romaniote communities of Epirus, the major Sephardic community of Salonika, and numerous others.

The Jews of Greece: 1880-1930

From 1453 to 1834, the land of Greece was part of the Ottoman Empire which added a Muslim layer (Turks and Albanians) to the Orthodox Christian Greeks, Albanians, Bulgars, Slavs, Latin Christians, Italians, and of course Romaniote, Sephardi, Italian and Ashkenazi Jews.

By 1880 roughly half of Salonika’s 100,000 residents were Jewish. Greek Jews at the turn of the 20th century were a blend of diverse histories and persecutions, expulsions and arrivals, united in communities but divided in customs.

The Balkan Wars of 1912-13 brought major changes. Extensive territory, notably Salonika, came within the borders of modern Greece. The Turkish province of Macedonia was divided between Greece, Serbia, and Bulgaria. Until then, Salonika had been a major port and commercial hub for the Balkan Peninsula. The new borders cut it off from most of the region it was serving. A severe economic downturn followed. The new political situation had several unwelcome effects for the thriving Jewish community of Salonika. Many of them occupied themselves with trade, banking and industry, while the proletariat was concentrated in the tobacco and silk industries and as dockworkers. So significant was the Jewish role that the port of Salonika would close on the Sabbath. The Jews of Salonika not only found themselves in a new state with which they had no previous connection, but they also found themselves in the middle of an economic recession.

The recession caused a number of them to emigrate, the merchants going mainly to France while others went to Palestine.

In 1917 Greece entered World War I. The great fire that swept across Salonika in August 1917 destroyed almost all of the Jewish quarter and crippled the Jewish community. The Jews continued their emigration to other places such as Athens, France, the United States and South America. This flight of wealth, coupled with the mass emigration of youth to Palestine in the early 30’s, left a poverty-stricken, conservative and aging population living a life that had changed little in 300 years.

After WW I, and the integration of Salonika with its huge and complex Jewish community into the new Greek state, the population remained largely Turkish and Judeo-Spanish speaking, and continued its traditional ways. By 1922 the Jews were no longer exempt from military service, which facilitated modernization and hellenization among the young. After the influx of huge numbers of Anatolian Greeks in the wake of the 1924 exchange of populations, the government changed the market day from Sunday to Saturday and this necessitated an adjustment by the Sephardi and Romaniote Jews throughout Greece.

The turn of the 19th into the 20th century was a time of mass immigration for the Jews of Greece. Many came to the shores of the United States, trading their small city existence for the tenements of the Lower East Side. Political turmoil, wars, border changes, the desire for a better life for their children and economic factors all played a role.

Salonika was greatly affected by the upheavals in the Balkans. Factors such as the Young Turk Revolt (1908), the Balkan Wars (1912-1913), World War I (1914-1918) and the Asia Minor Catastrophe of 1922-23, found young Jewish men forced to serve and fight for causes about which they understood little. Forced conscription into the Turkish army caused many families to decide to leave.

Political considerations, especially those involving the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, caused many Jews to reconsider their status as a religious minority. They knew what life had been like under the Muslim Turks, but were not quite sure what life would be like under Greek Christians. They feared the rise of anti-Semitism and in some communities their fears were well grounded.

The fifty years from 1880-1930 were also times of cultural changes: the introduction of secular education with the arrival of the Alliance Israélite Universelle, brought modern ideas into the conservative Jewish communities of Greece. The youth began to dream of opportunities and futures that Greece did not offer them. Many would leave to seek their fortunes elsewhere.

The massive fire of 1917 in Salonika left 50,000 Jews homeless: shops and synagogues were destroyed along with homes. The community found itself in turmoil and many chose to leave. The rise of Zionism would also play a major role in the emigration of Greek Jewry. Hamales from the port of Salonika went to Haifa and Jaffa. Many others went to work the soil on kibbutzim and moshavs.

By far, the most prevalent reason for leaving Greece was economics - the possibility of greater opportunities for oneself and for one’s children. Most came to the United States and found communities in New York, Atlanta, Seattle, Montgomery, Portland and Los Angeles.

The texts and pictures featured online are a sampling of what is available in our exhibition.