The history of the Jews in Greece can be traced back to at least the fourth century BCE. The oldest and the most characteristic Jewish group that has inhabited Greece are the Romaniotes, also known as "Greek Jews." The term "Greek Jew" is predominantly used for any Jew that lives in or originates from the modern region of Greece.
Aside from the Romaniotes, a distinct Jewish population that historically lived in communities throughout Greece and neighboring areas with large Greek populations, Greece had a large population of Sephardi Jews, and is a historical center of Sephardic life; the city of Salonica or Thessaloniki, in Greek Macedonia, was called the "Mother of Israel."Samuel Usque, The Foundation for the Advancement of Sephardic Studies and Culture, p. 1 Greek Jews played an important role in the early development of Christianity, and became a source of education and commerce for the Byzantine Empire and throughout the period of Ottoman Greece, until suffering devastation in the Holocaust after Greece was conquered and occupied by the Axis powers. Despite efforts by Greeks to protect them, some 4,000 Jews were deported from the Bulgarian occupation zone to the Treblinka extermination camp.The Foundation for the Advancement of Sephardic Studies and Culture, p.2Zakynthos: The Holocaust in Greece , United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, URL accessed May 25, 2014. In the aftermath of the Holocaust, a large percentage of the surviving community emigrated to Israel or the United States.
the Jewish community in Greece amounts to about 6,000 people out of a population of 10.8 million,Doctor thought to be 1st Jew voted mayor in Greece. Associated Press concentrated mainly in Athens, Thessaloniki (or Salonika in Judeo-Spanish), Larissa, Volos, Chalkis, Ioannina, Trikala, Corfu and a functioning synagogue on Crete, while very few remain in Kavala and Rhodes. Greek Jews today largely "live side by side in harmony" with Christian Greeks, according to Giorgo Romaio, president of the Greek Committee for the Jewish Museum of Greece,Current Activities of the Jewish Museum of Greece , The Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece. URL accessed April 15, 2006. while nevertheless continuing to work with other Greeks, and Jews worldwide, to combat any rise of anti-Semitism in Greece. Currently the Jewish community of Greece makes great efforts to establish a Holocaust museum in the country. A permanent pavilion about the Holocaust of Greek Jews in KZ Auschwitz shall be installed. A delegation and the president of the Jewish communities of Greece met in November 2016 with Greek politicians and asked them for support in their demand to get back the community archives of the Jewish community of Thessaloniki from Moscow.
Independent candidate Moses Elisaf, a 65-year-old doctor, is believed to be the first Jew elected mayor in Greece. He was elected in June 2019.
Jewish cultures in Greece Most Jews in Greece are Sephardic, but Greece is also the home of the unique Romaniote culture. Besides the Sephardim and the Romaniotes, some Northern-Italian, Sicilian, Apulian, Provençal, Mizrahi and small Ashkenazi communities have existed as well, in Thessaloniki and elsewhere. All these communities had not only their own custom (minhag), they also had their own siddurim printed for the congregations in Greece. The large variety of Jewish customs in Greece was unique."Chronika" Vol. 57, Periodical of the Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece, Athens March 1983, transl. from Goldschmidt, D. In Sefunot, Vol. 13, Jerusalem, Ben Zvi Institute 1971-1978
Romaniotes
Romaniote Jews have lived in the territory of today's Greece for more than 2000 years. Their historic language was Yevanic, a dialect of the Greek language, but Yevanic has no surviving speakers recorded; today's Greek Romaniotes speak Greek. Large communities were located in Ioannina, Thebes, Chalcis, Corfu, Arta, Corinth and on the islands of Lesbos, Chios, Samos, Rhodes, and Cyprus, among others. The Romaniotes are historically distinct from the Sephardim, some of whom settled in Greece after the 1492 expulsion of the Jews from Spain. All but a small number of the Romaniotes of Ioannina, the largest remaining Romaniote community not assimilated into Sephardic culture, were killed in the Holocaust. Ioannina today has 35 living Romaniotes.The Holocaust in Greece: Ioannina. URL accessed April 15, 2006.
Sephardim in Greece The majority of the Jews in Greece are Sephardim whose ancestors had left Spain, Portugal and Italy. They largely settled in cities such as Thessaloniki, the city which was to be named "Mother of Israel" in the years to come. The traditional language of Greek Sephardim was Judeo-Spanish, and, until the Holocaust, the community "was a unique blend of Ottoman, Balkan and Hispanic influences",Glenny, p.512 well known for its level of education. The Foundation for the Advancement of Sephardic Studies and Culture calls Thessaloniki's Sephardic community "indisputably one of the most important ones in the world."
History of Judaism in Greece Greek Jews played an important role in Greek history, from the early History of Christianity, through the Byzantine Empire and Ottoman Greece, until the tragic near-destruction of the community after Greece fell to Nazi Germany in World War II.
Hellenistic period One of the earliest pieces of evidence for Jewish presence on the Greek mainland comes from Oropus in Boeotia, dating to around 300–250 BC. A manumission inscription found at the Amphiareion records the freeing of a slave named Moschos, whose father was identified as a Jew. Moschos participated in Greek religious incubation practices and invoked the names of Greek deities; yet, he affirmed his Jewish identity in the inscription. In the mid-2nd century BCE, inscriptions from Delphi mention the emancipation of several Jewish slaves, including a man identified simply as "Ioudaios" (Greek for "Jew") and a woman named Antigona and her two daughters. The latter family is described in the records as belonging to "the race (genos) of the Jews". It has been suggested that they may have been prisoners of war taken during the wars of the Maccabees.
In the 2nd century BC, Hyrcanus, a leader in the Jewish community of Athens, was honoured by the raising of a statue in the agora.The Foundation for the Advancement of Sephardic Studies and Culture, p. 3 A man named Simon, son of Ananias, appears in Athens, while two Jewish women, Heraclea and Marthina, are documented at Delos (as murdered). Delos is also the findspot of an inscription honoring Herod the Great, King of Judaea, as well as another honoring his son, the tetrarch Herod Antipas, located in the Temple of Apollo.
Archaeologists have discovered ancient synagogues in Greece, including the Synagogue in the Agora of Athens and the Delos Synagogue, dating to the 2nd century BC.
The Jews of Alexandria created a "unique fusion of Greek and Jewish culture", while the Jews of Jerusalem were divided between conservative and pro-Hellene factions. Along with the influence of this Hellenistic fusion on the Jews who had found themselves part of a Greek empire, Karen Armstrong argues that the turbulence of the period between the death of Alexander and the 2nd century BCE led to a resurgence of Jewish messianism, which would inspire revolutionary sentiment when Jerusalem became part of the Roman Empire.
According to Josephus (Contra Apionem, I, 176–183), an even earlier mention of a Hellenized Jew by a Greek writer was to be found in the work "De Somno" (not extant) by the 4th-century BC Greek historian Clearchus of Soli. Here Clearchus describes the meeting between Aristotle (who lived in the 4th century BCE) and a Jew in Asia Minor, who was fluent in Greek language and thought:"'Well', said Aristotle, [...] 'the man was a Jew of Coele Syria (modern Lebanon). These Jews were derived from the Indian philosophers, and were called by the Indians Kalani. Now this man, who entertained a large circle of friends and was on his way from the interior to the coast, not only spoke Greek but had the soul of a Greek. During my stay in Asia, he visited the same places as I did, and came to converse with me and some other scholars, to test our learning. But as one who had been intimate with many cultivated persons, it was rather he who imparted to us something of his own.'"Josephus, Flavius. Contra Apionem, I.176-183. Retrieved 6/16/2012 from http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=J.+Ap.+1.176&fromdoc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0215.
Roman Greece
Macedonia and the rest of Hellenistic Greece fell to the Roman Empire in 146 BC. The Jews living in Roman Greece had a different experience than those of Judaea Province. The New Testament describes Greek Jews as a separate community from the Jews of Judaea, and the Jews of Greece did not participate in the First Jewish-Roman War or later conflicts. The Jews of Thessaloniki, speaking a dialect of Greek, and living a Hellenized existence, were joined by a new Jewish colony in the 1st century AD. The Jews of Thessaloniki "enjoyed wide autonomy" in Roman times.
An epitaph found in Taenarum (modern Kyparissa) records a man named Justus, son of Andromache, from the city of Tiberias in Galilee. He is believed to have been a first- or second-generation refugee displaced from Judaea in the aftermath of the First Jewish Revolt.
Originally a persecutor of the early Jewish Christians until his conversion on the Road to Damascus, Paul of Tarsus, himself a Hellenized Jew from Tarsus, part of the post-Alexander the Great Greek Seleucid Empire, was instrumental in the founding of many Christian churches throughout Rome, including Asia Minor and Greece. Paul's second missionary journey included proselytizing at Thessaloniki's synagogue until driven out of the city by its Jewish community.
Evidence from the 2nd and 3rd centuries CE includes three inscriptions that combine menorah imagery with Hebrew and Semitic names, discovered in Athens, Arcadia and Plataea. This period displays a strengthening of Jewish identity through an onomastic shift: the increasing adoption of Hebrew names for children of parents with Greek names. This pattern is evidenced by names such as "Issachar son of Heraclides", and "Beniames son of Lachares".
Byzantine Empire
After the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, elements of Roman civilisation continued on in the Byzantine Empire. The Jews of Greece began to come under increasing attention from Byzantium's leadership in Constantinople. Some Byzantine emperors were anxious to exploit the wealth of the Jews of Greece, and imposed special taxes on them, while others attempted forced conversions to Christianity. The latter pressure met with little success, as it was resisted by both the Jewish community and by the Greek Christian synods.
The Sefer Yosippon was written down in the 10th century in the Byzantine south Italy by the Greek-speaking Jewish community there. Judah Leon ben Moses Mosconi, a Romaniote Jew from Achrida edited and expanded the Sefer Josippon later.Medieval Jewish Civilisation: An Encyclopedia, Norman Roth, 2014 p. 127.Jews in Byzantium: Dialectics of Minority and Majority Cultures, Robert Bonfil, 2011, p. 122
Tobiah ben Eliezer (טוביה בן אליעזר), a Talmudist and poet of the 11th century, worked and lived in the city of Kastoria. He is the author of the Lekach Tov, a midrashic commentary on the Pentateuch and the Five Megillot and also of some poems.
Spanish Jewish explorer Benjamin of Tudela visited Greece during his travels around 1161/1162 CE. After leaving southern Italy and sailing through the Adriatic Sea, he visited Corfu, Thebes, Almyros, and Thessaloniki, before moving on to Constantinople. In Thebes, he reported a Jewish population of 2,000, the largest Jewish community in any Byzantine city of the 12th century, after Constantinople, the empire's capital.