Who were the Romaniotes in Greece?

Their languages ​​were the Yevanic Greek dialect and Greek. Its name comes from the Romani, the ancient inhabitants of the Byzantine Empire. Large communities could be found in Thebes, Ioannina, Chalcis, Corfu, Arta, Corinth and on the islands of Lesvos, Chios, Samos, Rhodes and Cyprus. The Romaniotes are historically different from the Sephardim, who settled in Ottoman Greece after 1492 when they were expelled from Spain by the Edict of Granada.

Most of the Greek Jewish population was murdered in the Holocaust after the Axis powers occupied Greece during World War II. Most Greek Jews were deported to concentration camps, where they were murdered. After the war, survivors emigrated mainly to Israel, the United States and Western Europe. Today a total of only 4.500 to 6.000 Jews, both Romaniote and of Sephardic descent, remain in Greece.

History

The first reference to a Greek Jew is found in an inscription dated between 300-250 BC, found in Oropos, a small coastal city between Athens and Boeotia, which refers to: “'Moscus', son of Moschyon the Jew.” , who may have been a slave. The Romaniotes are Greek Jews, different from both the Ashkenazim and the Sephardim. They have possibly lived in Greece since the Babylonian exile. A Romaniote oral tradition says that the first Jews arrived in Ioannina, Greece, shortly after the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem in 70.

In the 2.000th century, Benjamin of Tudela records details about the Jewish communities in Corfu, Arta, Aphilon, Patras, Corinth, Thebes, Chalcis, Thessaloniki and Drama. The largest Romaniote community in Greece was in Thebes, where there were about XNUMX Romaniotes, they were mainly dedicated to dyeing, texturing and making silk clothing. Already at that time they were known as “Romaniotes”.

The Romaniotes had very different customs from those of the Sephardic Jews, their customs were closer to those of the Italian Jews; some of them are believed to have been based on the Jerusalem Talmud rather than the Babylonian Talmud. Unlike the Sephardim, they did not speak Judeo-Spanish, but rather the Ivanic Greek dialect and the Greek language. Romaniot scholars translated the Tanakh into Greek. A polyglot edition of the Bible published in Constantinople in 1547 has the Hebrew text in the center of the page, with a translated Judeo-Spanish text on one side and a Yevanic translation on the other side.

Waves of Sephardic Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492, and many settled in the Ottoman Empire. They had greater economic power, and they believed themselves to be more educated and cultured than the Romaniotes, in addition to speaking another language, Judeo-Spanish, which is why they formed separate communities. Thessaloniki had one of the largest Jewish communities in the world, especially Sephardic, and a solid rabbinic tradition. On the island of Crete, they historically played an important role in trade and transportation. In the centuries following the year 1492, most of the Romaniote communities were absorbed by the Sephardic communities.

At the beginning of the 4.000th century, the Yoanina Romaniote community numbered approximately 1.950 people, mostly lower-class merchants and artisans. Economic emigration caused their numbers to decrease. Shortly before World War II, there were approximately XNUMX Romaniotes in Yoanina, concentrated near an ancient fortified area of ​​the city, where the community had been living for centuries, they maintained two synagogues, one of them was called Kehila Kedosha Yashan and still remains today.

A strong Romaniote community was present on Corfu until the late 19th century, when a blood libel accusation forced the majority of the Jewish community to leave the island.

Holocaust

During World War II, when Greece was occupied by the Axis powers, 86% of Greek Jews, especially those in areas occupied by Nazi Germany and Bulgaria, were murdered despite the efforts of the Greek Orthodox Church and many Greek Christians to give them shelter. Although the National Socialists deported large numbers of Jews, many were hidden by their Greek neighbors. Around 49.000 Jews were expelled from Thessaloniki and exterminated.

The Romaniotes were protected by the Kingdom of Greece until the Nazi occupation. During the occupation, the Romaniotes could speak Greek better than the Sephardim, since their language was the Spanish Judeo language, when the Sephardim spoke Greek they had a characteristic foreign accent. The Sephardim were more vulnerable targets because of their language, so they suffered great losses in their communities. In Ioannina between 1.860 and 1.950 Greek Jews were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau in April 1944. Most of them were murdered by the Nazis.

The creation of the State of Israel in 1948, combined with the violence and anarchy of the Greek Civil War, was the last episode in the history of the Romaniotes in Greece. Most emigrated to Israel or the United States.

Today

A small number of Romaniotes currently live in Greece, out of the approximately 4.500 to 6.000 Jews living in Greece today, both Romaniotes and Sephardic Jews; They are mainly found in Thessaloniki, Yoanina and Athens. Around 3.500 people live in Athens, while another 1.000 live in Thessaloniki. The vast majority of Romaniotes live in Israel and the United States of America, especially in New York. These communities identify themselves as Romaniotes, but currently use the Sephardic rite: the Romaniote rite is no longer used, except for some liturgical hymns used by the Jewish community of Corfu.

United States

Only one Romaniote synagogue is in operation in the entire Western Hemisphere: the Kehila Kedosha Janina, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, this temple is used by the migrant Romaniote community. A mailing list of 3.000 families of that family is maintained. community, most of them live in the tri-state area, but often have difficulty forming a Minyan (a group of 10 Jewish males over the age of thirteen) during Shabbat and Jewish celebrations. The synagogue is open on Sundays for guided tours.

Source: Wikipedia