Ρωμανιώτες | |
|---|---|
 Members of the Romaniote Greek Jewish community ofVolos: RabbiMoshe Pesach (front left) with his sons (back). Prior to 1940. | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
 Greece | 1,500+[citation needed] |
 Israel | 45,000[citation needed] |
 United States | 6,500[citation needed] |
 Cyprus | 3,500?[1] |
 Turkey | 500[citation needed] |
| Languages | |
| Greek (Yevanic),Hebrew,Ladino | |
| Religion | |
| Judaism | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| OtherJews,Greeks,Constantinopolitan Karaites | |
TheRomaniote Jews or theRomaniotes (Greek:Ῥωμανιῶτες,Rhōmaniôtes;Hebrew:רומניוטים,romanized: Romanyotim) are aGreek-speakingethnic Jewish community.[2] They are one of the oldest Jewish communities in existence and the oldest Jewish community in Europe. The Romaniotes have been, and remain, historically distinct from theSephardim, some of whom settled inOttoman Greece after theexpulsion of Jews from Spain andPortugal after 1492.
Their distinct language wasYevanic, a Greek dialect that containedHebrew along with someAramaic andTurkish words, but today's Romaniotes speakModern Greek or the languages of their new home countries.Their name is derived from theendonymRhōmanía (Ῥωμανία), which refers to theEastern Roman Empire ("Empire of the Romans",Βασιλεία Ρωμαίων). Large Romaniote communities were located inThessaloniki,Ioannina,Arta,Preveza,Volos,Chalcis,Thebes,Corinth,Patras, and on the islands ofCorfu,Crete,Zakynthos,Lesbos,Chios,Samos,Rhodes, andCyprus, among others.
Most of theJews of Greece were murdered in theHolocaust after theAxis occupation of Greece duringWorld War II and the deportation of most of the Jews toNazi concentration camps. After the war, a majority of the survivors emigrated toIsrael, theUnited States, andWestern Europe. Today there are still functioning Romaniotesynagogues inChalkis (which represents the oldest Jewish congregation on European soil), Ioannina,Veria,Athens, New York City, and Israel.
The nameRomaniote refers to theEastern Roman Empire, also known as Byzantium, which included the territory of modern Greece, which this Jewish group inhabited for centuries. Historically, the Empire was commonly referred to asRhōmanía (Ῥωμανία) and its Christian citizens asRhōmaîoi, "Romans" (Ῥωμαῖοι), while the Greek-speaking Jews were calledRhōmaniôtes (Ῥωμανιῶτες), essentially meaning inhabitants of Rhōmanía.
Jews have lived in Greece since at least theSecond Temple era (516 BCE – 70 CE). Recorded Jewish presence in Greece dates back over 2,300 years to the time ofAlexander the Great.[3] The earliest reference to aGreek Jew is an inscription datedc. 300–250 BCE, found inOropos, a small coastal town betweenAthens andBoeotia, which refers to "Moschos, son of Moschion the Jew", who may have been aslave.[4]
AHellenistic Jewish synagogue was discovered in 1829 near the ancient military port of the capital of the island ofAegina by the Scottish-German historianLudwig Ross, who was working for the court of KingOtto of Greece. The floor was covered for protection and was studied again byThiersch in 1901,Furtwängler in 1904,E. Sukenik in 1928 andGabriel Welter in 1932 under the auspices of the National Archaeological Service. Based on the quality of the floor's mosaic, the building is believed to have been constructed in the 4th century CE (300–350 CE) and used until the 7th century. The mosaic floor of the synagogue consists of multi-coloredtesserae that create the impression of a carpet, in a geometric pattern of blue, gray, red and white. Two Greek inscriptions were found in front of the synagogue's entrance, on the western side of the building. Today, only part of the synagogue's mosaic floor is extant, and it has been moved from its original location to the courtyard ofthe island's Archaeological Museum.
In 1977 another ancient synagogue was discovered in Athens, theSynagogue in the Agora of Athens, which may be the synagogue in whichPaul the Apostle preached. Inscriptions in theSamaritan andGreek alphabets found in Thessaloniki may originate fromSamaritan synagogues. Concurrently the oldest synagogue found in thediaspora is also the oldest Samaritan synagogue: it is theDelosSynagogue, which has an inscription dated between 250 and 175 BCE[5][6]
The Romaniotes are Greek Jews, distinct from bothAshkenazim andSephardim, who trace back their history to the times of the Greek-speakingByzantine Jews and can be subdivided in a wider sense in a Rabbanite community and in the Greco-Karaite community of theConstantinopolitan Karaites which still survives to this day.[7][8][9][10] A Romaniote oral tradition says that the first Jews arrived inIoannina shortly after thedestruction of theSecond Temple inJerusalem in 70 CE. Before the migration of the Ashkenazi and the Sephardi Jews into the Balkans and Eastern Europe, the Jewish culture in these areas consisted primarily of Romaniote Jews.[11]
The Romanioterites represent those of the Greek-speaking Jews of the Byzantine (or former Byzantine) Empire, ranging from southern Italy (in a narrower sense theApulian, theCalabrian and theSicilian Jewish communities) in the west, to much of Turkey in the east, Crete to the south, Crimea (theKrymchaks) to the north and the Jews of the early medievalBalkans andEastern Europe.[12]
TheSefer Yosippon was written down in the 10th century in ByzantineSouthern Italy by the Greek-speaking Jewish community there.Judah Leon ben Moses Mosconi, a Romaniote Jew fromAchrida edited and expanded the Sefer Josippon later.[13][14] This community of Byzantine Jews of southern Italy produced such prominent works like the Sefer Ahimaaz ofAhimaaz ben Paltiel, the Sefer Hachmoni ofShabbethai Donnolo, the Aggadath Bereshit and manyPiyyutim.[15][16][17][18][19] The liturgical writings of these Romaniote Jews, especially the piyyut were eminent for the development of theAshkenaziMahzor, as they found their way through Italy toAshkenaz and are preserved to this day in the most Ashkenazi mahzorim.[20]
The Jews of Southern Italy (where they were living together with their Greek-speakingChristian counterparts) continued to be Greek-speakers until the 15th century. When they were expelled and went to different regions of Greece, especiallyCorfu,Epirus andThessaloniki, they could continue to speak their Greek language, even if this language was somewhat different from that of Greece.[21][page needed]
In the 12th century,Benjamin of Tudela travelled through theByzantine Empire and recorded details about communities of Jews inCorfu,Arta, Aphilon,Patras,Corinth,Thebes,Chalkis,Thessaloniki, andDrama. The largest community in Greece at that time was in Thebes, where he found about 2000 Jews. They were engaged mostly incloth dyeing,weaving, in the production ofsilverware andsilk garments. At the time, they were already known as "Romaniotes".
The first Romaniote synagogue coming underOttoman rule wasEtz ha-Hayyim (Hebrew: עץ החיים, lit. "Tree of Life", frequently a name of Romaniote synagogues) inProusa inAsia Minor which passed to Ottoman authority in 1324.[22] After theFall of Constantinople on 29 May 1453,SultanMehmed II found the city in a state of disarray. The city had indeed sufferedmany sieges,a devastating conquest byCatholicCrusaders in 1204 and even a case of theBlack Death in 1347,[23] and now had been long cut off from itshinterland, so the city was a shade of its former glory. The event of the conquest of Constantinople was written down by a Romaniote Payetan in a lament hymn, composed with several phrases from the Old Testament in theshibusi style.[24]
As Mehmed wanted to make the city his new capital, he decreed its rebuilding.[25] And in order to revivify Constantinople he ordered thatMuslims,Christians andJews from all over his empire be resettled in the new capital.[25] Within months most of the Empire's Romaniote Jews, from theBalkans andAnatolia, were concentrated in Constantinople, where they made up 10% of the city's population.[26] The forced resettlement, though not intended as ananti-Jewish measure, was perceived as an "expulsion" by the Jews.[27] Nevertheless, the Romaniotes would remain the most influential Jewish community in the Empire for decades to come, determining theChief Rabbis of the towns and theHakham Bashi of the Ottoman Empire until their leading position was lost to a wave of new Jewish arrivals. These events initiated the first great numerical decline of the Romaniote community.
The number of Jews was soon bolstered by small groups ofAshkenazi Jews that immigrated to the Ottoman Empire between 1421 and 1453.[26] Waves of Sephardi Jews were expelled fromSpain in 1492; many settled inOttoman-ruled Greece. They spoke a separate language,Ladino. Thessaloniki had one of the largest (mostly Sephardi) Jewish communities in the world and a solid rabbinical tradition. On the island ofCrete, the Jews historically played an important part in the transport trade. In the centuries following 1492 most of the Romaniote communities were assimilated by the more numerous Sephardim.
The status ofJewry in theOttoman Empire often hinged on the whims of thesultan.Murad III for example ordered that the attitude of all non-Muslims should be one of "humility and abjection" and should not "live near Mosques or in tall buildings" or own slaves.[29]
After the liberation of Ioannina on February 21, 1913, the Rabbi and the Romaniote community of Ioannina welcomed at the New Synagogue of Ioannina the liberator of the city, Crown Prince Constantine, the futureKing of the HellenesConstantine I.[30]
At the beginning of the 20th century, the Romaniote community of Ioannina numbered about 4,000 people, mostly lower-class tradesmen and craftsmen. Their numbers dwindled after that due to economic emigration; after the Holocaust and in the wake ofWorld War II, there were approximately 1,950 Romaniotes left in Ioannina. Centered around the old fortified part of the city (or Kastro), where the community had been living for centuries, they maintained two synagogues, one of which, the Kehila Kedosha Yashan Synagogue still remains today.
A strong Romaniote community was present in Corfu until the late 19th century, when apogrom sparked byblood libel charges forced most of the Jewish community to leave the island.
The Romaniote prayer rite (Nusach) as seen in the originalMahzor Romania and the Romaniote commentaries (Minhag) onJewish exegesis andJewish law, vary from those of theAshkenazi,Sephardic andMizrachi Jews, and are closer to those of theItalian Jews: some of these are thought to have been based on theJerusalem Talmud instead of theBabylonian Talmud (seeEretz-Yisrael minhag). This Minhag was once widespread in Southern Italy, the Balkans, Greece, Anatolia and the Crimea.[31]
The Romaniotes spokeJudaeo-Greek for a long time, and many of them still use theGreek language today.Tobiah ben Eliezer (טוביה בר אליעזר), a Greek-speaking Talmudist and poet of the 11th century, worked and lived in the city ofKastoria. He is the author of theLekach Tov, amidrashic commentary on thePentateuch and theFive Megillot and also of some poems. Romaniote scholars translated theTanakh into Greek. A polyglot edition of theBible published inConstantinople in 1547 has the Hebrew text in the middle of the page, with a Ladino (Judaeo-Spanish) translation on one side, aYevanic translation on the other and theJudaeo-AramaicTargum at the bottom of the page.[32]
In the early Romaniote rite theTorah was subdivided inSedarim while the whole Torah was read in the Palestinian way of theTriennial cycle. The order for reading theHaftarah followed a specific custom, particular to the Romaniote rite.[33] The Romaniote Torah scrolls are housed intikim ('tik', from Greekthḗkē, θήκη "container"), from which they are never completely taken out. Among the Romaniote Jews, tradition dictates, that the most holy Sefer Torah, the Law of Moses, be read with the scroll standing upright in itstik; it is considered improper to lay it flat.[34]
Thesiddur (prayer book) for the Romaniote rite was known as theMahzor Romania. The Romaniote Jews have their own form of wedding blessing. Upon the betrothal, seven blessings are bestowed on the bride and groom to be, while weddingwreaths are covering the heads of the groom and the bride and are interchanged on their heads. At the end of a full year, theKetubah was read at the wedding ceremony proper. This is different in that other Jews bless the bride and groom at the time of the actual wedding. In addition, there are ritual differences in the building of the Synagogue and in the building and the use of themikve. It is a Romaniote tradition to write on the Ketubah the yearsince creation of the world and the year since thedestruction of the Temple.[34][35]
The Romaniotes traditionally gave to a child a mystical document known as an "aleph". This hand-painted "birth and circumcision certificate" was created by a family member and then handed down. The aleph was written in mystical codes for the purpose of warding off the wiles ofLillith, Adam's first wife.
The Romaniotes are well known for their hymns in Judaeo-Greek and Hebrew, for their special way ofcantillation, based on theByzantine melos[36] and for their Jewish-Greek folksongs, based on regional melodies.[37][38]Jewish immigrants from Sicily brought to Ioannina the celebration of the SicilianPurim Katan. The Jews of Ioannina call this holidayPourimopoulo. They read the special "Megillah for the Purim Katan of Syracuse" and sing corresponding songs and hymns for this festivity.
The Mahzor of the RomanioteKaffa Rite from the year 1735 gives the order to read theMegillat Antiochos in the Mincha of Shabbat Hanukkah.[39] In the second half of the 19th century, the Romaniote community of Greece made an effort to preserve the Romaniote liturgical heritage of Ioannina and Arta, by printing various liturgical texts in the Hebrew printing presses of Salonika.[40] Today, the Romaniote Liturgy follows (with slight differences) the mainstream Sephardic usage, while the Romaniotes and the Jews of Corfu have preserved their old and own Judaeo-Greek and Hebrewpiyyutim, their own way of cantillation and their special customs. A custom, which is still followed in theEtz Hayyim Synagogue of Crete, is to read onYom Kippur theBook of Jonah in Judaeo-Greek.[41] Another custom was to chant theSong of Songs verse by verse by alternating from Hebrew to its paraphrasingTargum Jonathan translation after the morning service on the last two days of Pessach.[40]
Romaniote Synagogues have their own layout: thebimah (where theTorah scrolls are read out during services) is on a raiseddais on the western wall, theAron haKodesh (where the Torah scrolls are kept) is on the eastern wall and in the middle there is a wide interioraisle.Votive offerings made of silver as stars or tablets calledshadayot were a thankful gift to the Synagogue of congregants who have received help, healing or salvation by God. The Romaniote term for the Passover ceremony (Seder) is חובה (Hova), which means obligation. In 2004 theJewish Museum of Greece published a Romaniote rite Pesach-Seder CD (The Ioannina Haggadah). In the years 2017 and 2018 the Romaniote rite Haggadah and the Romaniote rite prayer book (siddur) have been published in a series, containing also Romaniote poetry, thehaftarot according to the Romaniote custom and other texts.[42][43] A Romaniote rite based reformsiddur in Greek and Hebrew has also been published in 2018.[44]
The intellectual pursuits of Romaniote Jews reflected in their history their geographical location within the Jewish and gentile world. Direct heir to Palestinian Jewish traditions on the one hand, they were also heir to the teachings of theGreco-Roman world. The Byzantine Jewish/Romaniote literature shows a rich blend ofHellenistic Jewish andPalestinian rabbinic traditions. Romaniote Jewry, throughout its history, expended great effort on religious poetry, which reached its peak during the period 1350–1550. The writing of piyyutim was clearly held as its own genre. In the twelfth centuryHillel ben Eliakim wrote down his exegetical commentary,Sifre ve Sifra.Shemarya HaIkriti who moved after 1328 to Negroponte prepared his supercommentary to Ibn Ezra and, circa 1346–47 wrote hisSefer Amasyahu, a handbook of biblical apologetics. In tune with the intellectual currents among Romaniotes, Shemarya was trained in philosophy and was able to translate directly from Greek to Hebrew. TheSefer Yosippon was written by the Byzantine Jews of Southern Italy. R. Elnatan ben Moses Kalkes (fromKilkis) wrote a lengthy kabbalistic treatise entitledEben Saphir.[45]Mordecai Komatiano has left a legacy of some fifteen works on astronomy, grammar (dikduk), biblical commentaries and piyyutim; some of the later have even been included in the Karaite prayerbook. Several manuscripts containing mystical works have survived. The question of an independent Romaniotemystical tradition, probably deriving directly from Palestinian antecedents, is proved.[46] An abridgement ofAristotle'sLogic by Yoseph HaYevani was made available to those Jews (Sephardi immigrants) who were less proficient in Greek. The Byzantine Karaites, showed a knowledge of Greek philosophical terminology. Rabbinic authors spiced their comments with Greek phrases. The familiarity of Romaniote Jewry with theGreek language is well documented. Biblical translations, piyyutim, folksongs, Ketubbot, liturgical instructions, glossaries, mystical texts and the use of Greek words in commentaries in Judaeo-Greek are known.[47]
After World War II, theJudaeo-Greek language of Ioannina underwent a process ofkoinezation. The only phonetic differences toStandard Modern Greek, which could be noted shortly after the war have been [x] > [s] before front vowels, unusual intonation patterns and some peculiar lexical items, mostly of Hebrew-Aramaic provenance.[48] Lexemes, such as Hebrew-Aramaic loans, were easily identified as "ours" and "theirs," i.e., Sephardic vs. Romaniote.[49] While composing texts on their religion, the Greek Jews followed the literary standards of Greek syntax and morphology, using a number of Hebrew-Aramaic loanwords.[50] The Hebrew-Aramaic component would be written down in ways reflecting traditional Romaniote pronunciation, for exampleShalom, was spelled and written asSalom (Σαλώμ).
Krivoruchko states in her workJudeo-Greek in the era of globalization that Judaeo-Greek has always been interchangeable with the spoken variety of Greek, which was used by the surrounding Christian community, but had a few special features in its various geographical and chronological types (for example the Judaeo-Greek of Crete [† 1945] and that of Constantinople).[51] Besides the few phonetic differences between Judaeo-Greek and Standard Modern Greek the most common difference has been the use of Hebrew and Aramaic loanwords in Judaeo-Greek.[50] Considerable are also the phonetic differences between Romaniote Hebrew (look downwards on paragraphRomaniote Hebrew) and Sephardic Hebrew, for example SephardicShavuot was spelled asSavóth (Σαβώθ) in Judaeo-Greek.[52]
Second and third generation Romaniote immigrants in New York city have good knowledge of Greek. In the beginning of the 21st century 90% asserted that they understand Greek while 40% could speak Greek comfortably. Over a third could read Greek satisfactorily. The number of persons fluent in the Greek Language is much lower in the group of the Greek Sephardim outside of Greece.[53]
The Romaniote pronunciation of the Hebrew language is very close in its major features to the common Modern Hebrew pronunciation. The vowel-system is a simple five-vowel system without either quantitative or qualitative distinctions. Typical was the absence of distinction between: the Semitic velarized and non-velarized stops [t] and [ṭ], spelled [ת/ט], and [k/q], spelled [כ/ק]. The distinction between [s] and [ṣ] (ס/צ) is maintained as [s] vs. [ts], i. e., a voiceless alveolar fricative against a voiceless alveolar affricate, a pronunciation common to Byzantine and Ashkenazic pronunciation; "strong" and "weak" [t], spelled [תּ/ת] (t/θ) preserved in Ashkenazic pronunciation as [t]/[s]; velar and pharyngeal [ħ] and [χ], spelled [ח/כ], both of which are pronounced [χ], as in Ashkenazic; the glottal and pharyngeal stops [ʔ] and [ʕ], spelled [ע/א], both of which are weakened to the point of almost total absence in syllable-initial and syllable-final position, another characteristic shared with the Ashkenazic tradition. שׁ was pronounced as [s] in the Romaniote tradition of Hebrew pronunciation. The loss of spirantization rule for postvocalic, non-geminated Old Hebrew b, d, g, p, t, k homorganic fricatives (this rule is not found now in either the Balkan or the North African Sephardic diaspora) may have been due Romaniote practice (it is observed partly in Yiddish Hebraisms and in the Ashkenazic pronunciation of monolingual Hebrew texts). The [ז] was pronounced as[d͡z] and the [ד] as [ð] which are typical sounds of theStandard Modern Greek.[54][55][56]
The Hebrew Paleography resp. the Hebrew Epigraphy recognises a specific "Byzantine" or "Romaniote" Handwriting system of theHebrew alphabet, which has been developed among theSoferim of the Greek-speaking lands. In many cases manuscripts of Romaniote origin from the Byzantine Empire, or from later times can be recognised as "Romaniote", only with the science of Paleography, if they do not contain aColophon (publishing) or other characteristics of identification.[57][58][59][60][61]
DuringWorld War II, when Greece was occupied byNazi Germany, 86% of the Greek Jews, especially those in the areas occupied byNazi Germany andBulgaria, were murdered. Some Greeks collaborated with the deportations or expropriated Jewish property; a few, encouraged by theGreek Orthodox Church, sheltered Jews.[64] Roughly 49,000 Jews—Romaniotes and Sephardim—were deported fromThessaloniki alone and murdered. Many Greek Jews were forced to pay their own tickets to the death camps.[65] Almost all Romaniote Jews of the island of Crete, together with some resistance fighters, died on the shipTanaḯs when it was torpedoed by the British submarineHMSVivid on 9 June 1944.[66][67]
During the German occupation, the Romaniotes' ability to speakGreek enabled them to hide better from German deportations than Sephardi Jews who spokeLadino.[68]
The majority of Romaniotes who survived the Holocaust left for Israel or the United States at the end of the war.[69] The creation of the state ofIsrael in 1948, combined with the violence and anarchy of theGreek Civil War (1946–1949), led to an immigration of a number of Romaniotes to Israel. Thegreat earthquake on the island ofZakynthos in 1953 led the last remaining Romaniote Jews to leave the island towards Athens. The vast majority of Romaniotes have relocated to Israel and the United States, with the world's largest community located in New York.[70][71]
Today approximately 4,500 to 6,000 Jews remain in Greece. Of these, only a small number are Romaniotes, who live mainly inThessaloniki,Ioannina,Chalkis andAthens. About 3,500 Jews now live in Athens, while another 1,000 live in Thessaloniki.[72] A mixed community of Romaniote andApulian Jews still lives on the Island ofCorfu.[73]
The Ioanniotiki Synagogue, situated above the Jewish Community of Athens offices at #8 Melidoni St., is the only Romaniote synagogue inAthens. Built in 1906, it now has services only during theHigh Holy Days, but can be opened for visitors upon request through the Jewish Community office.
TheJewish identity of another building found in the excavations of the ancient Agora in Athens, is questionable. It is believed that theMetroon, discovered in 1930 at the foot of the hillHephaestion (Thesion) was used as a synagogue during its construction at the end of the 4th century CE (396–400). This view was expressed by the archaeologist H. Thompson, from the American School of Classical Studies in Athens, but was not developed into a complete theory. TheJewish identity of the Metroon was based on a small piece of marble found near the Metroon that had two Jewish symbols carved on one side, and the resemblance of the building to the synagogue of Sardis in Asia Minor.
The Romaniote Jewish Community of Chalkis is not the oldest one in Greece, but it is the only one in Europe that has been living in the same city for 2,500 years without interruption and the community is still active in the city's life. The community has a synagogue and a cemetery with important and old inscriptions. The Synagogue is on Kotsou Street. It is unknown when the first synagogue in Chalkis was constructed. In 1854, during the Holy Week a great fire destroyed the synagogue. In 1855 it was re-constructed in the same size with funds offered bySophie de Marbois-Lebrun, Duchess of Plaisance.[74] The Synagogue opens every Friday evening and occasionally on Shabbat morning.[75]
InIoannina, the Romaniote community has dwindled to 50 mostly elderly people. The Kehila Kedosha Yashan Synagogue there is open primarily on the High Holidays, or in the case of the visit of a chazzan, or is opened for visitors on request. Immigrant Romaniotes return every summer to the old synagogue. After a long time aBar Mitzvah (the Jewish ritual for celebrating thecoming of age of a child) was held in the synagogue in 2000, and was an exceptional event for the community.[76]
Thesynagogue is located in the old fortified part of the city known asKastro, at 16 Ioustinianou street. Its name means "the Old Synagogue". It was constructed in 1829, most probably over the ruins of an older synagogue. Its architecture is typical of theOttoman era, a large building made of stone. The interior of the synagogue is laid out in the Romaniote way: theBimah (where theTorah scrolls are read out during services) is on a raiseddais on the western wall, theAron haKodesh (where theTorah scrolls are kept) is on the eastern wall and in the middle there is a wide interioraisle. The names of the Ioanniote Jews who were killed in theHolocaust are engraved in stone on the walls of the synagogue. The Bet Chaim cemetery in Ioannina belongs to the community.
In the community of Volos[77] many of the Romaniote pre-Sephardic traditions prevail.[78][page needed][79] The community consists of Romaniotes as well as Sephardim (particularly fromLarissa) andCorfiots. Ancient historic texts mention that Jews lived in the region ofMagnesia,Thessaly and in particular in neighbouringAlmyros as early as the 1st century AD. Historians argue that Jews have been living in ancientDemetrias since the 2nd century AD. Ancient Jewish tombstones dating back to 325–641 AD, were also discovered in the neighbouring city ofPhthiotic Thebes.[80]Moshe Pesach was Rabbi of Volos who saved Greek Jews during the Holocaust and helped to consolidate the community of Volos after World War II.
Most Romaniotes in Israel live inTel Aviv.[81] There are two Romaniote synagogues in Israel: the Zakynthos Synagogue in Tel Aviv, and the Beit Avraham Ve'ohel Sarah liKehilat Ioanina inNachlaot,Jerusalem. The former RomanioteYanina Synagogue in theChristian Quarter, Jerusalem is no longer in use.[82] In Beit Avraham Ve'ohel Sarah liKehilat Ioanina inJerusalem, the prayers today follow the Sephardic rite, but they preserve a few piyyutim from the Romaniote rite.[83]
Only one Romaniotesynagogue (from originally several Romaniote Synagogues in New York) is in operation in the entire Western Hemisphere:Kehila Kedosha Janina, at 280 Broome Street, in theLower East Side ofManhattan, where it is used by the Romaniote emigrant community.[84] It maintains a mailing list of 3,000 Romaniote families, most of them living in thetri-state area.[84][85] It is open for services every Saturday morning as well as all major Jewish holidays. The synagogue also houses a museum devoted to Greek Jewry and offers guided tours to visitors on Sundays.[84] Like the community in Jerusalem, the prayers today follow the Sephardic rite, but they preserve a few piyyutim from the Romaniote rite.
DNA research[86][87] and genealogical works[88][89] based on the Romaniote communities of Ioannina and Zakynthos are in progress. Nearly 4/5th of theautosomal DNA ofAshkenazi Jews is related to that of Romaniote Jews.[90] Romaniote Jewish men have been found to belong to various branches ofY-chromosomal haplogroupsE1b1b1,G,J,Q,R1a, andR1b.[87] In 2024, a team of researchers announced that a modern Romaniote Jewish man from Greece belongs to "a previously undiscovered" branch of the Y-chromosomal haplogroup J-P58 found to be "dating straight back 7,000 years to theNeolithic era."[91] Romaniote Jewishmitochondrial DNA haplogroups includeHV1b2,U5b, and U6a3.[92]
Byzantine times to theOttoman Empire
Greek-speakingKaraites of Constantinople
Modern times
…but the fact that the most prominent hero of Jewish origin, Colonel Mordechai Frizis (1893–1940), originated from the ancient Romaniote community of Chalkis, speaks for itself.
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