Phil and I were asked to give a talk on Greece for our Temple's new series, "Travels with Temple." Unsurprisingly, they asked to talk about the Jews of Greece as part of the presentation. We did a little research to supplement what we knew, and realized that we were going to one of the Jewish centers of Greece: Rhodes. It was called "Little Jerusalem" at one point because it had such a vibrant Jewish quarter. So after taking the students around to the typical sites, we brought a small group to the single synagogue left on the island. There are something like 36 Jews left, 5 families, and no rabbi. They have services on Friday nights, particularly in summer when families return to Rhodes, and I talked to the woman who was volunteering there. I mentioned that Jeremiah had just had his bar mitzvah, and she told me that her first son had his in Athens, but for the second, they brought a rabbi out from Athens to have it in the synagogue. It was extraordinary to feel like I was bonding with this Jewish woman in Greece.
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| Bima is in the center in the Sephardic tradition |
The synagogue is Sephardic. There were Romiot Jews (Jews who had settled in Greece during Roman times) there during the second century AD, and there is a great story of Jews who fought alongside the Greeks in 1480 against the Turks. The Turks breached the city walls in the Jewish quarter, and there was a lot of destruction, but the Grand Master of the Knights of St. John (who ruled the island at that point) had the synagogue rebuilt. However by 1501, the very same Grand Master banished the Jews from Rhodes or face forced baptism and slavery.
It was once Rhodes was finally conquered by the Turks (1523) that the Jewish community began to flourish when the Sultan invited the Jews to return. Jews coming to Rhodes were offered privileges and exemption from taxes, which brought many Sephardic Jews who had come to the Ottoman Empire after the expulsion of the Jews from Spain. After the Italians took over from the Turks, things were ok until the 1930s and the rise of Italian fascism. When the Nazis arrived, nearly all the Jews were deported and murdered.
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| Gravestone |
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| Very strange to see Hebrew in Greece! |
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| The Mikveh |
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| two Ehals holding the Scrolls of the Law... |
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| ...one on each side of the door to the courtyard |
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| List of names of Jews deported by the Nazis. 1600 left and only 150 survived |
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| above the door to the courtyard which is used as a sukkah |
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| Some of the frescos are still visible. |
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