Romaniote Jews

Origins

Jewish life in the Greek world reaches back to Hellenistic times: recorded Jewish presence in Greece dates back more than 2,300 years, to the age of Alexander the Great,¹ and the oldest inscription, from Oropos around 300–250 BCE, names 'Moschos, son of Moschion the Jew.'¹ These communities took their name from Rhōmanía, the Byzantine 'Empire of the Romans.'³ Greek was their everyday language from the outset, and over the centuries they developed the Judeo-Greek vernacular later called Yevanic, whose roots reach back into the Hellenistic koine—so that the Romaniotes long predated the Sephardim in the eastern Mediterranean.²

Religious life

The Romaniotes followed their own rite, minhag Romania, preserved in the Mahzor Romania; it differs from Ashkenazi, Sephardi and Mizrahi usage and stands closest to the Italian rite, with elements thought to derive from the Jerusalem rather than the Babylonian Talmud.⁴ Its liturgy included piyyutim and short poems in Judeo-Greek.² Distinctive customs set the community apart: a hand-painted 'Aleph', a decorated birth-and-circumcision certificate hung as an amulet;⁴ a Torah scroll read while standing upright in its rigid case, or tik, rather than removed from it;⁴ and a ketubbah dated both from the Creation of the world and from the destruction of the Temple.⁴

Language & culture

Yevanic, or Judeo-Greek, was the Romaniote vernacular: a form of Greek carrying Hebrew and Aramaic elements, written in the Hebrew alphabet.² Its largest text in Hebrew script is the Constantinople Pentateuch of 1547; the tradition also produced Greek Bible translations and para-liturgical poetry.² After organized teaching of Greek to Jewish schoolchildren spread from the 1830s, Yevanic increasingly changed from Hebrew to Greek letters.² Assimilation to Ladino-speaking Sephardim, emigration and the Holocaust reduced its speakers from several thousand to a few dozen elderly individuals, and the language is now classified as extinct.²

Relations with neighbours

Under Byzantine rule the Jews' position swung between protection and persecution. The law recognized synagogues as inviolable, gave Jewish courts civil jurisdiction, and forbade compelling Jews to profane the Sabbath;⁵ yet emperors periodically decreed forced baptism, most memorably Basil I (867–886), whose inducements converted many Jews, though they returned to Judaism immediately after the emperor's death.⁶ The communities were town-dwellers and craftsmen: around 1168 Benjamin of Tudela recorded some 2,000 Jews at Thebes⁶ and 2,000 Rabbanite with 500 Karaite Jews at Constantinople.⁶ After 1453 Mehmed II's forced resettlement, or sürgün, drew Romaniotes into his new Ottoman capital, where they came to form about a tenth of its inhabitants.⁴

Decline & dispersal

After 1492 waves of Sephardi exiles settled across Ottoman Greece; more numerous and culturally assertive, they gradually absorbed the Romaniotes, whose Yevanic gave way to Ladino and whose rite yielded to the Sephardi one in most towns.³ Ioannina, in Epirus, remained the great Romaniote stronghold, numbering about 2,000 on the eve of the Second World War.⁷ The Holocaust was decisive: about 86% of Greek Jewry was murdered,⁴ and on 25 March 1944 the Ioannina community was rounded up and deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where of the 1,960 deported only about a hundred survived.⁷ Today the largest Romaniote community is in New York.⁴

Notable figures

• Tobiah ben Eliezer (1050–1108) — Byzantine Talmudist and payyetan of Kastoria. Greek-speaking Talmudist of Kastoria who composed the midrashic compendium Lekach Tov (Pesikta Zutarta), writing it in 1097 and revising it about 1107–1108.⁸
• Mordecai Comtino (1420–1487) — Romaniote Bible commentator, mathematician and astronomer. Constantinople-based Romaniote polymath who taught mathematics and astronomy to both Rabbanite (Elijah Mizrahi) and Karaite (Bashyazi, Afendopolo) pupils.⁹
• Elijah Capsali (1485–1550) — Cretan (Romaniote) rabbi and chronicler. Rabbi of Candia (Crete) from a Romaniote family; his chronicle Seder Eliyahu Zuta narrates Ottoman history and the Sephardi expulsions from Iberia.¹⁰
• Joseph Eliyia (1901–1931) — Romaniote Greek-language poet and Hebraist of Ioannina. Ioannina-born poet who taught at the Alliance Israélite Universelle and rendered Isaiah, Job and medieval Hebrew poets into Greek; he died of typhoid at 29.¹¹
• Rae Dalven (1904–1992) — Romaniote-American writer, translator and historian. Preveza-born Romaniote writer who translated Cavafy and Joseph Eliyia and chronicled the Jews of Ioannina, carrying Romaniote memory to America.¹²

Key events

• 300 BCE Earliest Greek-Jewish inscription (Oropos). A votive inscription at Oropos, dated about 300–250 BCE, names 'Moschos, son of Moschion the Jew'—the oldest attestation of a Jew in mainland Greece.¹
• 873 Forced-conversion drive of Basil I. Emperor Basil I pressed Byzantine Jews to convert through taxes, honours and coercion; many were baptized, but they returned to Judaism immediately after his death.⁶
• 1168 Benjamin of Tudela documents Greek Jewry. The traveller Benjamin of Tudela recorded thriving Greek Jewish communities, among them some 2,000 Jews at Thebes and, at Constantinople, 2,000 Rabbanite with 500 Karaite Jews.⁶
• 1453 Ottoman sürgün resettlement. After the 1453 conquest, Mehmed II's forced resettlement moved Romaniotes into Constantinople to repopulate his capital, where they came to form about a tenth of its inhabitants.⁴
• 1492 Sephardi immigration begins. After the Spanish expulsion, waves of Sephardi Jews settled in Ottoman Greece; over the following generations they outnumbered and gradually absorbed the Romaniotes.³
• 1944 Deportation of the Jews of Ioannina. On 25 March 1944 the Germans seized Ioannina's ancient Romaniote community and deported it to Auschwitz-Birkenau; of the 1,960 deported, 1,850 never returned.⁷

Where they lived

• Asia Minor (Sardis & the Aegean) · 250 BCE
• Constantinople / Istanbul · 300
• Izmir (Smyrna) · 1600
• Byzantine Greece (Romaniote heartland) · 150 BCE
• Salonika (Thessaloniki) · 1492