1791; David Russey Map Collection, David Russey Map Center, Stanford Libraries.

The Evolution of Greek Jewry in Changing Empires

1821 - 1921

By Yitzchak Kerem¹

As the new, modern Greek state grew and expanded, conflict between its Greek Orthodox majority and its Jewish minority became increasingly intense. This article will show Greek Orthodox enmity towards its Jewish population and conversely, how the Jews revered the Greek state and tried to adjust to it despite the fact that they were victims of Greek Orthodox anti-Jewish theological animosity, fanaticism, and often economic jealousy. As the Greek state expanded, Ottoman Jewry feared Greek rule and societal fanaticism; they opposed Greek nationalism and bore the brunt of the resentment of Greek Orthodox society because the rejected the Greek nationalist struggle and finally, Greek sovereignty.

Historically, the Greek Orthodox Church viewed the Jews as Christ-killers. This motif was most prevalent in the liturgy of the unchanged Byzantine rite at Easter time. The most inciting passages are “Christ has risen but the Jewish seed has perished” as well as numerous references to Jews as “God killers” (theoktonia) and other similar language.² This harsh view of the Jews was the dominant base by which the Greek Orthodox masses in the Greek Peninsula, Asia Minor, and the eastern Mediterranean Basin perpetuated their feelings about Jews in general and in their communities.

The Annihilation of the Jews in the Greek Revolution (1821-1834)

The Greek nationalist movement began evolving in 1814 with the formation of the Filiki Eteria, the secret Greek Society of Friends. In early 1821, the Ottomans put down the revolt of the Greeks in Iasi, in Ottoman Romania. In March 1821, the Maniotes from Morea in the Peloponnese revolted against the Ottomans. A general Greek insurrection was planned for 25 March 1821, on the occasion of the Greek Orthodox Feast of Annunciation, along with a general revolt throughout the Ottoman Empire by the Filiki Eteria. They both failed. In September 1821, the Greek insurrectionists led by Theodoros Kolokotronis captured Tripolitsa (Tripoli) in the southern Peloponnese. Fighting continued on and off in several regions of the Greek Peninsula until 1830, until the Ottomans were defeated.

One of the most noted attributes of the Jews was their loyalty to the sovereign, whether Ottoman or Greek in this case, which also led to their demise in times of change of rule. Because the Jews had been devoted Ottoman subjects for the most part, they were against Greek nationalism and its national struggle.

At the outset of the Greek Revolution in 1821, Jews in the Attica and Peloponnese regions of the Greek peninsula were identified as opposed to an independent Greek state and for their alliances with the Ottoman regime and army. In addition, the Greek national insurrectionists in the Peloponnese, Attica, and Epirus were incensed and took revenge on Jewish communities for alleged involvement in the execution of the Greek Orthodox Patriarch who was hung by the Ottoman authorities in Constantinople; he was accused of affiliation with the Filiki Eteria. Some five thousand Jews were killed by the Greek insurgents and a dozen Jewish communities mainly in the Peloponnese and in Attica were destroyed. In Attica, Jews were killed in Thebes, as well as in Livadia. In the west in the Aetolia-Acarnania region south of Arta in the Epirus region, the Jewish communities of Nafpaktos and Agrinion (Vrahori) were likewise annihilated. In the southern Peloponnese, 1,200 Jews were killed in Tripoli in the fighting since they lived in the Turkish Muslim quarter which was attacked. The Jewish communities in Sparta, Mistra, Kalamata, Argos, Hydra, Corinth, and Nafplion were completely destroyed. Some survivor accounts indicated that mass butchering of Jews by Greek Orthodox insurgents occurred. Only seventeen Jews survived in Patras. Jews that survived and were taken captive were freed by the Jewish community of Izmir when they were sold at that local slave market.³ Most of the refugee Jews from the Peloponnese and Attica resettled in Salonika, Corfu, Ioannina, Volos, and Chalkis;⁴ some managed to escape to as far as Sidon.⁵

As fighting intensified in 1830, many Jews left Chalkis for Turkey even though Evia, the scene of Greek-Turkish battles, was not the site of any massacres. Most returned in 1833, well after the city was liberated. In the midst of the fighting between the Greek and the Turkish forces, the Jewish cemetery was damaged. In 1839, the Chalkis synagogue, which suffered war damages, was rebuilt.⁶ The historian Joshua Starr noted that the Jews of Chalkis were reported to actively side with the Greek revolutionaries.⁷ He added that in a sketch by G. D. Κoromelas, honorable mention was given to the Cohen and Crispi families for their contribution to the Greek national cause.

Even though the Greek National Assembly had recognized the Jews as equal citizens as early as 1822, there were very few left alive in the new Greek state to take advantage of the opportunity.⁸ The new Greek government had its Jewish supporters in Romania, Corfu, and Chalkis who anticipated that a progressive government would be formed and that the Greek people could establish a national homeland and renew democracy.⁹ In a very precarious manner, the annihilation of the 5,000 Jews was not internalized or commemorated then, as it has not been recognized or commemorated in the continuum and until present days. Unlike many massacres in general Jewish and Balkan Jewish history, no Jewish memorial day was ever proclaimed for the Jewish martyr victims of the Greek War of Independence. Following the brutal blood libel on Rhodes on the evening of Purim in 1840, however, special songs were composed and the community observed an annual “Purim of Rhodes” in commemoration of the traumatic event.¹⁰

The Don Pacifico Affair (1847)

In the 1840s, a few Jews lived in Athens. They were Jews from Greece and Turkey and a few Ashkenazim such as Max Rothschild of Bavaria, who came to Athens in 1833 and represented Central European commercial firms.¹¹ There were enough to constitute a minyan and support a haham from Turkey. Because they did not have the funds to construct a synagogue building they prayed in the home of Don David Pacifico. The Duchess of Plaisance, Sophie de Marbois-Lebrun, a wealthy Jewish woman convert living in Athens, gave a large tract of land in central Athens to the government for a synagogue.¹² Because of the Pacifico affair in 1847¹³ it was not built at that time. By the mid-nineteenth century, the Jewish community in Athens had grown, including Jews from Smyrna (Izmir). A synagogue was finally constructed in Athens in 1904.¹⁴

In 1847, Don David Pacifico, a British subject and former Portuguese diplomat and consul in Athens, bore the brunt of the Christian need to blame the Jews for the crucifixion of Jesus. In an effort not to offend Lord Lionel de Rothschild, whose family had previously loaned the Greek government money, the annual Good Friday ceremonial burning of the effigy of Judas was banned. An angry, unruly fanatic mob of three to four hundred attacked Don Pacifico’s home twice, set it ablaze, and stole his money, valuables, and possessions. The crowd contained not only poor and ignorant individuals, but also members of the elite including the two sons of Kitsos Tzavellas, then Greek Minister of War and future prime minster,¹⁵ and the nephew of Prime Minister Kolettis.

British Foreign Minister Palmerston sent warships to Greece to blockade the port of Piraeus on 25 April 1850, to pressure the Greek government and force Greece to give Pacifico significant indemnities for the damages he suffered. Palmerston also sought to address other less significant confiscations of property and arrests of British subjects in Greece. Pacifico failed to obtain indemnities from Greece for some three years. Finally, he was forced to leave Greece and settled in London where he joined the Bevis Marks Spanish and Portuguese Congregation there in 1852. Palmerston had not requested approval from the House of Lords before sending the military fleet to Greece. As a result, the government lost the vote in the parliamentary debate, the government fell, and Palmerston was forced to resign.

The Jews of the Ionian Islands: Cephalonia, Zakynthos, and Corfu under Greek Rule (1864 Onward)

British colonial rule (1815-1864) was grueling and oppressive for Jews in Cephalonia and Zakynthos, involving forced road construction labor and higher taxation. The Jews and locals in the Ionian Islands, mostly Greek Orthodox and also a significant Italian Catholic population from the Venetian period (1485-1797), longed for democratic Greek rule which began in 1864.

Cephalonia was a haven for Jewish refugees after the annihilations in the Peloponnese in 1821. In the lists of the local historical archive, some one hundred and sixty Jews settled on the island between 1819 and 1863. They lived in Argostoli and in Levato. The Jews anticipated equal political rights under the Greeks. However, they were denied political representation and reforms in the local parliament in 1852 unlike in the Greek Orthodox sectors of the island.¹⁶ Relations between the Jews and local Greek Orthodox on the island were cordial. In 1861, the impoverished Jews of Argostoli donated generously to the Greek Orthodox rebels in support for the failed insurrection in the Greek peninsula, Crete, and Asia Minor. This was a very rare and unusual sign of Jewish backing for Greek fighters. In 1870, most of the Jews of the island disappeared; they were seeking elsewhere for better economic conditions. By the 1890s, the remaining Jews fell into economic despair and eventually the Jewish community and presence dissipated.

During the British colonial period, Jews on Zakynthos were banned from merchant and artisan guilds as well as from participating in political life. In 1819, the Jews numbered four hundred; their numbers declined to two hundred and seventy-four in 1863. In 1833, the synagogue in Zakynthos was renovated.¹⁷ During the events of the Greek insurrection (1821-1834), Jews from the Peloponnese found refuge in Zakynthos to escape violence and massacres by the Greek Orthodox Christians as well as from the Ottoman Turkish army. Anti-Jewish riots took place in Zakynthos in the spirit of the Greek independence insurrection in 1821. In 1826, there was an exodus to Cephalonia. Jewish refugees left the island for Trikala and Salonika; two boatloads of Jews from Zakynthos, totaling thirty-six people, sought refuge at nearby Cephalonia.

Failed local Jewish efforts for political representation in the early 1850s made news in the Jewish press of England, France, and Italy. In 1863, the Jews took steps to get official recognition from the British authorities, to the dismay of the Greek Orthodox Christian residents of Zakynthos. Jews often needed protection from local prominent figures, such as Pietro Veloasto, a councilman, and police chief Isidore Ayoli, and local anti-Semitic vehemence..

The British gave sovereignty of Zakynthos to Greece in 1864. The Jewish community was poor, but they were organized under president Shabetai Eliyahu Gani. Rabbi Shlomo Ben Yaakov Levi of Corfu was appointed as rabbi in 1879. He served as hazzan, shohet, mohel, bodek, and sofer simultaneously.¹⁸ At that time, the Jewish quarter faced the closing down of water sources because of incidents of disease. Because the Jewish cemetery was in disarray, the Greek interior minister suggested erecting walls around it. To finance the building costs, the Jewish community mortgaged ritual objects from the synagogue. During the construction process, a flood led to the collapse of some of the walls.

Sixty Jewish families lived in Zakynthos in 1884. The Jewish boys school, where Greek and Hebrew were taught, received a Greek government financial allocation. A Jewish girls school also was founded. When the synagogue in Candia, Crete collapsed in 1885, the Torah scrolls were rescued and moved to the synagogue in Zakynthos. Since the Venetian period, there had been strong bonds between the Jews of Zakynthos and the Jewish communities of Crete.

In Corfu, the Jewish situation also deteriorated under British rule in the mid-nineteenth century; Jews were excluded from public office and disenfranchised. Jewish lawyers were forbidden from pleading in court. Rabbi Judah Bibas, known for his support of the ideal of the return to Zion and of the Haskalah movement, was rabbi of Corfu beginning in 1831. From 1861 to 1863, the Jewish Hebrew printer Joseph Nachamuli published the bi-lingual Greek/Italian Chronica Israelitika.

The local Greek Orthodox population maintained their old liturgy-based prejudice. When equal rights were restored to the Jews upon the island's annexation to the kingdom of Greece in 1864, riots broke out, causing a large exodus of Jews to Greece and Italy.¹⁹ On a local level, Jews in Corfu had more influence politically than anywhere else in the nineteenth century Greek state. Under Greek rule, numerous Jews worked as lawyers and notaries and enjoyed a high public profile in Corfu. Elias de Mordo, a councilman and olive oil merchant, was appointed as deputy-mayor and in 1870, he was elected mayor.

After the honeymoon of the Jews under Greek sovereignty with Ionian Enosis (reunification) beginning in late 1864, the Jews were resented for their weight in local politics and their central role in local commerce. Whereas in 1842, the Jews of Corfu numbered two thousand and in 1855, four thousand, by 1879, they numbered six thousand, or twelve hundred families, and accounted for six hundred local voters. Under the British, the Ionian Assembly’s constitution excluded political rights for the Jews. Under Greek rule, unsuccessful attempts to curb Jewish participation in the local political process led to great frustration, agitation, and tension. Jews, together with the Catholic minority in Corfu, were ostracized and criticized by the local parliament member and journalist Yakovos Polylas for not being part of the Greek-Russian rapprochement based on common Christian Orthodoxy.²⁰ Since 1872, Polylas succeeded in inciting the local Greek Orthodox population against the Jews. He led the local press attack against the Jews advocating a separate electoral college in order to neutralize their political weight and he began to incite against them in vicious anti-Semitic attacks, which inevitably led to the 1891 blood libel accusations and riots against the Jews by the local Greek Orthodox population.

The Blood Libel in Corfu (1891)

The Jewish community of Corfu, which lauded Greek rule in 1864, suffered from a major blood libel in 1891. Another like accusation had already occurred in 1822 in Cephalonia. After a nine-year old Jewish girl, Rubina Sarda, was murdered by a local Greek Orthodox rogue man the Jews were blamed for the fictitious disappearance of a Greek Orthodox child on Good Friday.²¹ Intensive rioting ensued against the Jews. One hundred and fifty troops were brought from Kalamata and Patras. The Jews were placed under a curfew and could not escape the attacks. Some twenty Jews were killed during the rioting that lasted for approximately three weeks. Because they could not leave the Jewish quarter to bury the dead, health and sanitary conditions deteriorated. More than fifteen hundred Jews out of five thousand Jews left the island after a week; they went to Trieste, Alexandria, Egypt, Salonika, and elsewhere. In the absence of police and military protection and tangible governmental intervention and in an attempt to restore order, the Great Powers sent naval frigates to threaten Greece. While the dimensions of the 1891 Corfu blood libel and riots were unprecedented and extremely unusual in the historical context of Greek Orthodox-Jewish relations in the Greek peninsula, they did reflect latent Greek Orthodox resentment of the Jews.

During World War I, the Jewish community of Corfu suffered another blood libel with rioting mobs in 1915. There were no casualties, however, and unlike in the past, the Greek authorities assisted in quelling the disturbances. Additional blood libels in 1918 and 1922 prompted migration to Palestine (Eretz Israel).²²

The Jews of Thessaly and the Greco-Turkish War (1897)

Quoting Jewish Ottoman historian Abraham Galante, historian Walter Weiker described the state of tension between the Jews and the Greek Orthodox Christians while also analyzing mutual provocation between both religious minority groups in the last two decades of the nineteenth century:

There were two other sources of worry that were all but perpetual which we must discuss here, however. One involved relations with Christians, and there were frequent requests to the government that Greeks should be prevented from provoking trouble. There was a general ‘atmosphere of tolerance’ between Jews and Turks, but relations with Christians were ‘usually bad’ even though most Jews had learned ‘the art of peaceful coexistence’ and ‘moments of crisis were relatively rare.’ Sometimes Jews also played the worse role, however, as for example, ‘shameful’ behavior by a mob in Haskoy during a disturbance involving Armenians in 1896, and through encouragement of ‘brawler’ (sic) in Salonika during the Greek-Turkish war. Several Alliance reports from the end of the nineteenth century mentioned intergroup conflicts in many places, which led to ‘great nervousness.’ Massive inflow of foreign capital in the 1880s gave rise to ‘immense greed’ and much more heightened competition, in that ‘for Jews this was an opportunity to counteract the effects of several centuries of decline. For the Christians, their main competitors, it meant, on the contrary, the need to maintain their leading positions in numerous sectors.²³

Nevertheless, the Jewish communities of Arta and Thessaly, i.e. Trikala, Larissa, and Volos welcomed Greek sovereignty joyfully and ceremoniously when they became part of the new Greek state in 1881. In the Greco-Ottoman War of 1897, Jews from Old Greece; mostly Romaniote, Greek-speaking Jews from Patras, Corfu, Zakynthos, Volos, Athens, and Chalkis fought in the Greek Army and demonstrated their loyalty to the Greek State.²⁴ The Zionist, Bulgarian Jew, Marko Baruch, volunteered to fight on the side of Greece out of a passion for the “enlightened state,” and tragically fell in battle at a young age.

When the Turkish army temporarily occupied Larissa in 1897, the local Jews sent a delegation to welcome and bless General Etem Pasha.²⁵ Even though there were parallel delegations of Greek Orthodox Christians, the Athenian press accused the Jews not only of collaboration, but also of providing advance intelligence to the Turks before their invasion. In reality, their acts of respect to the temporary Turkish military occupation force helped preserve the city. When Jews had to accompany Greek prisoners-of-war to prison in Salonika, they were pelted with stones by the Greek Orthodox Christians. The Greek press in Salonika and Athens further incited against the Jews. When the Ottomans were retreating, Larissa’s Jews were accused of pillaging Christian stores. In Trikala, Greek Orthodox townspeople tried to set the synagogue and Jewish houses on fire, but the soldiers of the Greek military occupation of Thessaly under General Vassos expediently restored order.²⁶ Around this same time, a number of blood libel accusations raised their heads. In 1889 the Jews of Volos suffered a blood libel and a series of mini-pogroms.²⁷ In 1893, there were additional blood libels in Trikala,²⁸ Larissa,²⁹ and Volos.³⁰ In 1898, a blood libel in Trikala was followed by violent disturbances against the Jews.

Salonika (Thessaloniki) (20^th Century)

The subject of Greek Orthodox–Jewish relations in Salonika is a very large topic, not yet properly analyzed. I will address only a few main points. Even the name of the city indicates a whole different mindset and conceptualization of the make-up of the city. Thessaloniki, the second largest city in modern Greece, is a city where the story of the Greek Orthodox population is highlighted throughout the historiography of modern Greece since it was liberated by Greece in 1912. In Jewish history and in the Sephardic world, Salonika is seen primarily in its Ottoman context as a city where the Jews were a majority for more than four hundred and fifty years from their arrival after the 1492 Spanish expulsion until their annihilation in the World War II in 1943. Salonika was the main cultural haven for Sephardic Jewry throughout the Mediterranean. It was known as a Judeo-Spanish speaking, Sabbath observant, religious city.

In the eyes of most of the local Jews, Greek sovereignty was the beginning of the end; it would prompt the decline of the most prolific and numerous Sephardic community in the world. For the Jews, Greek authority would lead to displacement, a delegitimized status, migration, and to being reduced to a detested and castigated minority. Greeks have historically been associated with the sea; the role the Jews have played, however, has not been recognized.³¹ The Jews of Salonika controlled the port; they were experts in unloading, boating, and fishing. Early in the twentieth century, Jews from Salonika created a fishing industry in Acco and established ports in Haifa and Tel Aviv.³²

As the Ottoman Empire was disintegrating in the late nineteenth, early twentieth centuries, economic stagnation set in; the political system lacked stability and Sephardic Jews feared military conscription in light of the 1908 Young Turk Revolution. Salonikan Jews began migrating to the United States, Argentina, and England. When the Greek Army entered Salonika in November 1912, soldiers pillaged stores, ransacked synagogues, and attacked local Jews. Hesitancy toward living under Greek rule increased and migration to the west including France intensified. Although the Greek government assured equal rights to its Jewish citizens there was a strong feeling of mistrust towards the Greek government, based on the positive experience of Jews in the Ottoman Empire and perhaps on the fear of possible anti-Semitic incidents.³³

The Greek government promised Sabbath observance and a three year moratorium on military conscription for the Jews of Salonika. Bea Lewkowicz, however, explained that “the Jews presented a different problem from that of other minorities because they were perceived as apatris, without a homeland.”³⁴ Regarding the 1914 tobacco strike, which involved some six thousand Jewish Salonikan workers, Efi Avdela noted that the Jewish workers were characterized as “antihellenes” by the Greek press because they were “bad Socialists”; they were not Venizelos socialists, in other words - Greek, patriotic, and masculine. They were either cosmopolitan, Internationalist socialists, or foreign, homeless, stateless, and feminine.³⁵ The Jewish socialist leaders, Joseph Hazan and Avram Benaroya, a Bulgarian Jew who founded the Socialist Workers Federation of Salonika in 1907, were both imprisoned in the Ottoman and Greek periods. After 1912, the Greek socialist movement resented Benaroya and he had less and less impact and legitimacy as time progressed. Later, Salonikan Jews would become members of parliament as representatives of the Communist Party, but due to their general non-acceptance by their Greek Orthodox contemporaries, they were far less active and numerous in the Greek Socialist and Communist movements.

Four months before the famous British Balfour Declaration in support of a national Jewish homeland in Palestine (Eretz-Israel) on 2 November 1917, the Greek cabinet and parliament voted to support a Jewish state; the declaration was proclaimed by Greek Foreign Minister Politis.³⁶ This was not a call to get rid of the Jews in Greece, but genuine support for the principle of a Jewish homeland and the nationalist Jewish idea. In 1919, Constantine I, the Greek king, supported the proposal of the young Salonikan Zionist Raphael Molho to form a Jewish army for the conquest of Eretz-Israel and the defense of the Jews there, an idea which remained theoretical, but reflected the support of the Greek regime for political Zionism.

Greek Prime Minister Venizelos resented the Salonikan Jews for siding with the Ottomans in the First Balkan War.³⁷ Whether socialists, Zionists, proponents of the French-oriented Alliance Israélite Universelle, assimilationists, religious, apolitical, poor, or aristocrat they overwhelmingly supported the Royalists, and opposed the Venizelist Republicans. In order to circumvent the Jewish vote for the premiership in Salonika in 1920, Venizelos created a separate electoral college for the Jews and Muslims of Salonika and Thrace. The Jews, in return, had representatives in Parliament, who were elected in local Jewish elections. In the eyes of the Greek Orthodox community of Salonika, and especially the 100,000 Asia Minor refugees who dominated the city after 1922, the local Jews were a foreign element which was not Greek. The Asia Minor refugees brought with them a long history of blood libels against the Jews living there.³⁸ They resented the Jews for being reluctant to side with the late nineteenth century Greek insurrectionist struggle in Asia Minor. In the first decade of the twentieth century, the local Greek Orthodox community resented that Salonikan Jewry refused to take part in the Greek struggle for Macedonia and opposed its annexation to Greece. The Jews of Salonika went from being a majority of the city to being only a fourth; they lost their local political and commercial hegemony. In the aftermath, the local Greek Orthodox refugees locally promulgated that work was forbidden on Sunday, compelling Jews to lose a day of work or break the Sabbath for a work-day. In 1931, the Asia Minor refugees were a large part of the participants in the Campbell riots against the Jews, when the Asia Minor refugees rioted against the Jews in the eastern half of the city and destroyed a Jewish neighborhood for fishermen and hamalis (stevedores).³⁹

Conclusion

In the first hundred years of modern Greek history the relations between the Jews and the Greek Orthodox living there is a combination and contradiction of harmony and disharmony. It is a long and diversified story of friction, mostly tedious adaptation, in which there were occasional partnerships in defense of the expansion of the Greek nation against the Ottomans. Most of the Jews of the Greek peninsula had benefitted greatly from Ottoman rule and refrained from affiliating with the Greek insurrection movement.

Rare individuals like Yosef Eliyia, the Jewish poet from Ioannina who sought with his verse to educate Greek Orthodox society about other faiths, submerged themselves in mainstream and high Greek culture. Most had not lived in the Greek state long enough to attain such attributes nor did they have sufficient opportunities or encouragement. Greek Jewry lived to the side of Greek Orthodox society with well-grounded fears of hostility.

After the Greek Revolution in 1821, the small community of Jews in old Greece lived in some relative harmony with Greek society until 1912. Incidents like the Don Pacifico affair and the numerous blood libel accusations were painful blemishes on Greece’s international reputation at their respective times. They have been mostly forgotten in the aftermath.

The Jews of the Ionian Islands yearned for Greek rule after harsh British colonial rule, but the Greek Orthodox and Italian Catholics with whom they lived resented the Jews for theological reasons. The local political stature of the Jews in Corfu led to intercommunity antagonism. In Thessaly, the warm ceremonial welcome of Greek rule by the Jews created acceptance by the Greek Orthodox society. They were still attacked, however, for theological reasons including differing religious beliefs and the rejection of Christ. The Jews of Thessaly were attacked as Christ-killers and suffered a number of blood libel accusations. They served in the Greek army, yet were suspected of retaining Ottoman loyalties and not being devoted to the Greek state. They lived quiet decent lives under Greece, but they comprised small communities and their presence was not greatly felt.

The first decade of Greek rule in Salonika was one of confrontation with the new Greek Republic. The Jews suffered greatly from the 1917 fire, were manipulated by the formation of a separate electoral college in 1920 and were increasingly resented as non-Greek elements. When the Asia Minor refugees were resettled in the city in 1922, the status of the Jewish community was reduced from an historical majority to a minority. This was an additional element in the confrontation with Greek Orthodox society. It was an additional decline in their status since Greek rule in 1912 when the Jews became increasingly discriminated against by Greek society and lost more rights and liberties.

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¹ Yitzchak Kerem is a historian and lecturer on Greek and Sephardic Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is editor of the monthly e-publication, Sefarad vehaMizrah (1991), and CEO of The Foundation for Jewish Diversity, Los Angeles and the Heritage House for Sephardic and Eastern Jewish Communities, Jerusalem (in formation).

² The following text is repeated in the popular Epitafios service on Good Friday when Christ is symbolically buried: “Arrogant Israel, murder-stained people”; “Jealous, murderous, and revengeful people”; … (“teeth-) grinding, most malicious race of the Hebrews”; “According to Salomon, the mouth of the felonious Hebrews is a deep hole”; “On the malicious paths of the wicked Hebrews lie thistles and traps”; “Oh, how insane, the murder of Christ by the murderers of the Prophets”; and finally the Jews should be ashamed.

³ Errikos Sevillias, Athens – Auschwitz, Translated and introduction by Nikos Stavroulakis (Athens: Lycabettus Press, 1983): ix.

⁴ Bohor Fourni, "A History of the Israelite Community of Chalkida," Archeion Evoikon Meleton, Vol. III (Athens: Society for Euboean Studies, 1954)59-63 [Greek]. See also Chronika, No. 6 (February 1978): 3.

⁵ Zvi Baras, ed., A Census of the Jews of Eretz Israel (1839), (MS. Montefiore 528) (Jerusalem: The Dinur Center, 1987) 215-216 [Hebrew].

⁶ Shlomo Avraham Rosanes, Korot Hayehudim Biturkiya VeBearatzot Hakedem, Hadorot Haachronim, Vol. 6 (Jerusalem: Mosad Harav Kook, 1945): 98-99 [Hebrew].

⁷ K.E. Fleming, Greece, A Jewish History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008): 23-29. See also Derek Taylor, Don Pacifico, The Acceptable Face of Gunboat Diplomacy (London and Portland, OR: Vallentine Mitchell, 2008): 1-8, 142, 175-176, 178-200.

⁸ Fleming, 92.

⁹ Forni, op. cit.: 59-63.

¹⁰ Marc D. Angel, The Jews of Rhodes, the History of the Sephardic Community (New York: Sepher-Hermon Press, Inc. and The Union of Sephardic Congregations, 1980): 37-39; and Bracha Rivlin, “Rhodes” in Pinkas Hakehillot Yavan: 392-407 [Hebrew].

¹¹ Michael Molho, “La nouvelle Communauté juive d’Athènes,” The Starr Memorial Volume (New York, 1953): 231-239; David Benveniste, Kehilot, Hayehudim Beyavan, Reshmei Masa (The Jewish Communities in Greece, Notes and Impressions) (Jerusalem: Jerusalem Sephardic Council, 1979): 79.

¹² Moise Caimi, “Athens, Modern”, The Jewish Encyclopedia, Vol. II (Philadelphia: Funk & Wagnalls, 1906) 267; See also Errikos Sevillias, Athens-Auschwitz (Athens: Lycabettus Press, 1983): xi.

¹³ Dolphus Whitten, Jr., “The Don Pacifico Affair,” The Historian, Vol. 48, No. 2 (February 1986): 255-267.

¹⁴ Molho, op.cit.

¹⁵ K.E. Fleming, Greece, A Jewish History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008) 23-29. See also Derek Taylor, Don Pacifico, The Acceptable Face of Gunboat Diplomacy (London and Portland, OR: Vallentine Mitchell, 2008): 1-8, 142, 175-176, 178-200.

¹⁶ Bracha Rivlin, “Zakynthos,” in Pinkas Hakehillot Yavan (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1999): 117-123 [Hebrew].

¹⁷ Ibid.: 120.

¹⁸ Cantor, ritual slaughter, circumciser, ritual meat slaughterer inspector of the animals, and scribe of holy parchment, respectively.

¹⁹ Simon Marcus and Yitzchak Kerem, “Corfu,” New Encyclopedia Judaica, Vol. V: 972.

²⁰ Bernard Pierron, Juifs Et Chretiens De La Grece Moderne, Histoire des relations intercommunautaires de 1821 a 1945 (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1996) 28-39.

²¹ Bracha Rivlin, “Corfu” in Bracha Rivlin, Yitzchak Kerem, and Lea Matkovetski, Pinkas Hakehillot Yavan (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1999) 353-370 [Hebrew].

²² Bracha Rivlin, “Corfu,” in Pinkas Hakehillot Yavan: 364 [Hebrew].

²³ Walter F. Weiker, Ottomans, Turks, and the Jewish Polity, A History of the Jews of Turkey (Lanham, Md: University Press of America and Jerusalem: The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, 1992) 127.

²⁴ Fleming, op. cit.: 45.

²⁵ Pierron: 46-52.

²⁶ Yitzchak Kerem, “The Jews of Larissa: The Difficult Reality Of Ottoman Life,” Thessaliko Imerologio, Larissa, Vol. 41 (2002): 191-200 [Greek].

²⁷ Fleming: 35.

²⁸ Leah Bornstein Matkovetski and Bracha Rivlin, “Trikala,” Pinkas Kehillot Yavan (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1999): 126-131 [Hebrew].

²⁹ Alliance Israelite Universelle Archives (AIU), Paris, AIU, Grece II.B.16. Larisse, Schaki to Secretary Bigart, Larissa. See also Bulletin de l’AIU, no. 18 (1893): 56-57.

³⁰ “Fausses Accusations,” Bulletin de l’AIU, no. 18 (1893): 55-56.

³¹ The notion of people of the sea, especially in the Eastern Mediterranean, is a nineteenth century idea. Greeks (in Venice) and the Ottoman Empire were associated with shipping, fishing, and navigation.

³² Yitzchak Kerem, “The Salonikan Migration to Eretz-Israel in the Thirties”, in Isaac Guershon, ed., Shorashim Bamizra’h, Racines En Orient, Vol. V (Efal, Israel: Yad Tabenkin, 2002): 181-191 [Hebrew].

³³ Bea Lewkowicz, The Jewish Community of Salonika, History, Memory, and Identity (London and Portland, OR: Vallentine Mitchell, 2006): 45.

³⁴ Ibid.

³⁵ Efi Avdela, “O Socialismos Ton Allon: Texiki Agones, Ethnotikes Synkrousis Kai Tavtotites Filou Stin Meta-Othomaniki Thessaloniki” (“The Socialism of Others: Class Struggle, Ethnic Conflicts and Gender Identity in Post-Ottoman Thessalonika”) Ta Historika, No. 18/19 (June-December 1993): 171-203 [Greek].

³⁶ Bracha Rivlin, “Athens” in Pinkas Hekillot Yavan: 67-86 [Hebrew].

³⁷ Yitzchak Kerem and Bracha Rivlin, “Saloniki” in Pinkas Hakehillot Yavan (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1999): 217-299. [Hebrew].

³⁸ In the nineteenth century, there were ninety-four blood libel accusations in the Ottoman Empire; fifty-six in Turkey, nine in Greece, twelve in Egypt, fourteen in Lebanon and Syria, and the rest in Bulgaria and Monastir. See Hayyim J. Cohen, “Izmir,” in Encyclopaedia Judaica, IX: 1162-1165; Jacob M. Landau, Jews in Nineteenth-Century Egypt. (New York and London: New York University Press and University of London Press, 1969); Moise Franco, Essai Sur l’Histoire Des Israelites De l’Empire Ottoman Depuis Les Origines Jusqu’a Nos Jours (Paris: Libraire A. Durlacher, 1897): 31; Abraham Galante, Histoire des Juifs D’Istanbul, I (Istanbul: Impimerie Husnutabiat, 1942): 134-135; Abraham Galante, Turcs et Juifs: Etude Historique, Politique (Stamboul: Etablissement Haim, Rozio & Co., 1932): 17-18, 77; Yitzchak Kerem, “The 1840 Blood Libel In Rhodes,” Proceedings of the Twelfth World Congress of Jewish Studies Division B: History of the Jewish People Jerusalem: World Union of Jewish Studies, 2000): 137-146.

³⁹ Kerem and Rivlin, “Saloniki”: 250-252.