The Jews were here by the first century, but almost disappeared about 500 years later. Today the city has the largest Jewish population in Greece.

History
Community
Sites
Side Trips
Personalities
Books and Music
Recommendations

The Acropolis reigns supreme over Athens, recalling a time when Jews throughout the Greek Empire dressed like Greeks, spoke like Greeks, even took part naked in athletic games like Greeks. Hebrew absorbed Greek words, including bima, the pulpit on which the Torah is read.

The meeting of cultures left its mark on the Greeks, too. According to the Jewish Hellenist philosopher Aristobulus of Paneas (second century B.C.E.), early translations of parts of the Bible influenced Pythagoras, Socrates and Plato.

In Athens a visitor can touch ancient history and see the streets, markets and temples where Socrates walked and taught, the theaters where Euripides’ tragedies were performed, even the stadium where the Panathenaic Games were played in antiquity and where the first modern Olympic Games were played in 1896. And of course, there’s the Acropolis itself, including the pinnacle of classical architecture, the Parthenon, a temple of perfect proportions built entirely of marble.

Despite a frenzy of building and reconstruction that has snarled traffic as the city prepares for the 2004 Olympics, just below the Acropolis visitors can happily wander the labyrinthine streets of Plaka, lined with souvenir shops and restaurants. Or in balmy spring or fall, they can shop in ultra-chic Kolonaki, on the slopes of Likavetus Hill, from the top of which there is a spectacular view of the city and the Acropolis.

The Jews who first settled in Greece called themselves Romaniotes and preserved their distinctive synagogue rites, liturgy and dress long after Sefardic Jews—expelled from Spain and Portugal—became the majority.

In contrast to Jews in other Greek cities, the Jews of Athens in modern times were integrated into the Greek community; this helped determine their fate in World War II. For it was in Athens alone that the church, the municipality, the police, the resistance movement and the general populace joined hands in saving the Jews.

History
Today the Jewish community of Athens is the largest in Greece, but in antiquity it was far less important. The first evidence of a Jewish community dates only to the first century C.E.: a letter from Agrippa I mentioning Attica (the region where Athens is located) as one of the places inhabited by Jews.

Jewish life in Athens all but died out after the sixth century, but in 1705 the city had 20 Jewish families, the descendants of exiles from Spain.

Though the community was destroyed during the Greek War of Independence against the Ottoman Empire (1821-1829), it revived in 1834, attracting some families from Germany.

Following the Balkan Wars, Jews from old Greece and Asia Minor—especially Thessaloniki—moved to Athens. More came after the great Thessaloniki fire of 1917.

Thousands of Jews fled to Athens from Thessaloniki during World War II to escape Italian air raids and then the Nazi deportations. The Italian occupiers tried to prevent Nazi persecution of Jews in Athens, but in September 1943 Adolf Eichmann’s deputy, Dieter Wisliceny, entered the city bent on carrying out the Final Solution. He demanded a list of Jewish residents from Rabbi Elijah Barzilai, but with the help of Greek partisans the rabbi fled and the list was destroyed.

When on October 4, 1943, SS General Jurgen Stroop ordered the Jews to register at community headquarters, most went into hiding, helped by the leftist resistance organization, the police and the Greek Orthodox Church on the instructions of Archbishop Theophilos Damaskinos. Damaskinos was the only head of a European church to issue a declaration demanding a stop to the persecution of his country’s Jews. It was signed by 29 representatives of Greek organizations.

Nevertheless, 1,500 Athenian Jews were deported. After the war, there were about 5,000 in Athens; of these, 1,500 later emigrated to Israel.

Community
Rose petals rained down on Alberto Itzhaki as he carried the Torah around Athens’ “old” synagogue on October 27, 2001. Some 200 people gathered for Alberto’s bar mitzva, celebrated according to the Romaniote rite of his grandfather, who hails from Ioannina. Many of Athens’ 3,000 Jews come from elsewhere in Greece.

Normally, Shabbat services are held at the Beth Shalom Synagogue across the street, attended by just 35 to 50 worshipers. Recently, however, they have been augmented by about 80 youngsters, members of Tradition, a club founded by businessman Leon Levis to foster Jewish awareness and Jewish matchmaking.

Jews live throughout the city, engaging in professions, industry and commerce. One of the two rabbis is also a ritual circumciser and ritual slaughterer. The community provides medical services to indigent Jews and offers matza and kosher wine for Passover. There is a mikve in the basement of the Jewish elementary school.

Security is tight at the Jewish community offices and school; the Jewish Club is virtually hidden. Though the safety of Jews and their property is protected by law, there have been anti-Semitic incidents and verbal attacks. In April 1998, on Yom Hashoah, two gas-canister bombs exploded in the former offices of the Central Board of the Jewish Communities, causing property damage. Holocaust memorials have been defaced. Since the latest intifada began in September 2000, articles and cartoons in the Greek media have compared the Israelis to the Nazis and have criticized Greek Jews for their staunch support of Israel.

Athens has active chapters of WIZO, Aviv, B’nai B’rith and B’not B’rith. The bulletin Nea Genia (New Generation) reports Jewish news countrywide.

Sites
On Purim, Jewish children in Thessaloniki would nibble on pink-and-white marzipan figures called novies (brides). The primary novia was Queen Esther, but there were also scissors and slippers for girls and Mordechai riding a horse for boys.

Novies are among the nearly 8,000 items in the collection of the Jewish Museum of Greece, the foremost site of Jewish interest in Athens. Founded in 1977, the museum now has artifacts from more than two millennia, reflecting the life, customs, rites and traditions of Greek Jews.

These include the different clothing worn by Sefardim and Romaniotes, the single oil lamp that Romaniote women lit on the Sabbath and the carved wooden interior of a Romaniote synagogue from Patras, which serves both as an exhibit and a place of worship.

Located in central Athens and housed in an attractive neoclassical building, the museum has a modern interior, a rich library and a photographic archive. There are excellent explanations in English.

The museum gift shop sells books in English (39 Nikis, telephone 30-210-322-5582; fax 323-1577; www.jewish museum.gr). Open Monday through Friday 9 to 2:30, Sunday 10 to 2, closed Saturday.

A site in the ancient Greek agora (marketplace) of Athens is said by some scholars to be a synagogue from the third century, destroyed in the sixth century. German archaeologists who excavated the area in the 1930’s found nearby a small piece of marble with carvings of a menora and part of a lulav. Its proximity to the foundations of a synagogue-like building suggests that this was indeed a synagogue, though some archaeologists today dispute that identification because it faces west, not east.

As you enter the agora from Adrianou Street, the Stoa of Attalos (a reconstructed two-story building) is on your left. Across from the long face of the stoa is a ridge, with the temple of Hephaestes atop it. The remains of the “synagogue” are on the side of that ridge facing the stoa. Like other sites, the agora is under construction for the Olympics.

Near the Greek agora, Athens’ two surviving synagogues face each other on Melidoni Street in Thission, a neighborhood once populated by Jews. Thission is a protected historic area that is being restored and gentrified. Behind the synagogues are the famous ruins of Keramikos, the ancient cemetery and site where potters plied their trade. The Museum of Traditional Pottery is next door to the older of the two synagogues.

The white two-story stucco building with traditional ceramic palmetto decorations on its tiled roof at 8 Melidoni houses the “old” Etz Hayim Synagogue, built around 1904. It is also known as the Ioanniotiki Synagogue (that is, synagogue of Jews from Ioannina). Though worshipers followed the Sefardic rite, they followed Romaniote tradition in placing the richly carved wooden bima at the west end; the Ark is on the east wall. Wooden pews line the walls; a huge chandelier with 62 candle-like bulbs hangs in the center.

Today the synagogue is used only for High Holiday services and special occasions. To visit, contact the Athens Jewish Community on the ground floor (325-2823).

Directly across the street is the Beth Shalom Synagogue (5 Melidoni; 325-2773), which follows the Sefardic rite. Rabbi Jacob Arar, 63, the chief rabbi of Athens since 1968, leads the services. A brunch with Greek Jewish dishes awaits worshipers after the Shabbat morning service. Both synagogues are packed on Yom Kippur and places must be reserved.

The neoclassical white marble exterior of Beth Shalom, built in 1939, is imposing. The name is inscribed in Greek characters over the main entrance. In the side entrance tiny memorial lamps, identical to those in Greek Orthodox homes, float in a large pan of olive oil.

Here the bima is directly in front of the Ark. When the synagogue was renovated in 1975, only the elaborately carved wood of the Ark was retained. The wall around it and a rear wall were covered in bronze, and two brightly colored stained-glass windows were added.

There is a morning minyan on Mondays and Thursdays at 8:30, a Kabbalat Shabbat in summer at 7:30 P.M. and in winter at whatever time Shabbat begins; Shabbat morning services at 8:30 and Shabbat minha one-and-a-half hours before Shabbat ends.

The Jewish Club (9 Vissarionos, corner Sina; 360-8896), headed by Rachel Raphael-Sasson, is the venue for lectures, Hebrew classes and community gatherings.

The Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece represents, administers and supports Jewish communities throughout the country, especially those the law considers too small to be independent. Its offices (36 Voulis; 324-4315; e-mail: hhkis@hellasnet.gr) are near the Jewish Museum and its staff members gladly supply information.

The Private Elementary School of the Jewish Community of Athens, with 68 pupils and another 25 children in its preschool, is in the elegant Psyhiko quarter (31 Antheon, corner Kamelion; 671-4598).

The Square of the Martyred Jewish Children, in the Agios Nikolaus Aharnon neighborhood, is near the Agios Nikolaus metro station on Pafou, just off Mikhail Voda. A Greek inscription on a small plaque proclaims that Jewish Greek young mothers contributed to the square and playground “in memory of 13,000 Jewish Greek children killed by the Nazis in the crematoria.”

At the entrance to the Jewish cemetery on Agios Giorgiou, part of the city’s Third Cemetery in the Nikea quarter, is a memorial to the Jewish soldiers who died in the Greco-Italian War, 1940-1941. A memorial to the Jewish communities of Greece destroyed by the Nazis in World War II is just opposite.

The Jewish cemetery has been in continuous use since the 1940’s. Though most of the graves bear simple Jewish symbols, a Parthenon-like structure with a golden Star of David shades the grave of a young girl.

Side Trips
The Jews of Chalkis (today Chalkida) on the island of Euboea (Evia)—a one-hour bus ride northeast of Athens—claim theirs is the oldest Jewish community in Europe, dating back to the Second Temple period. Its 150 members maintain close ties to the Athens community. The white stucco synagogue and community headquarters are at 35 Kotsou. The cemetery, on Mesapion Street, is the most ancient Jewish burial ground in Greece and has gabled tombs at least as old as 1539, with a recess near the head for the tombstone, resembling Jewish graves in Morocco and Iraq. In Heroes’ Square, near the main bridge linking the town with the mainland, is a bust of Colonel Mordechai Frizis of Chalkis, the first Greek officer killed in World War II. Jossif Ovadias (office: 0221-74567, home: 24990) can arrange a visit to the synagogue and cemetery.

Personalities
Like many of Athens’ Jews, its outstanding personalities were born elsewhere. Rosa Askenazi, born in Izmir, was a leading singer of rembetica, the “blues” of Greece’s down-and-outs, in the 1920’s.

The first novel by award-winning writer, literary critic and editor Michel Fais, Autobiography of a Book (excerpted in English translation in Greece: A Traveler’s Literary Companion, Whereabouts Press), is set in Komotini, Thrace, where he was born.

Books and Music
Enter the world of Greek Jewish music through the album The Jewish Museum of Greece Presents: Sephardic Songs by the Little Choir on the MINOS-EMI label.

Jewish Sites and Synagogues of Greece by Nicholas Stavroulakis and Timothy DeVinney (Talos Press) is an excellent introduction for the Jewish visitor.

Alexander Kitroeff’s War-Time Jews: The Case of Athens (Eliamep) is a brief monograph on why and how Greeks rescued Jews in Athens during World War II.

Recommendations
Olympic Airways flies into Athens’ new Venizelou Airport and provides frequent connecting flights to other parts of Greece. Central Athens is eminently walkable.

Dolly Asher, the only Jewish guide in Athens, is knowledgeable about the Jewish community and its sites as well as sights of general interest (934-6739; fax: 937-3264; cell phone: 097-258-6416; e-mail: asser_dolly@hotmail.com). She also arranges and leads Jewish heritage tours throughout Greece.

The comfortable and well-located Titania Hotel is near Omonia Square (330-0111; fax: 330-0700; e-mail: tita nia@titania.gr). The Hotel Jason Inn (12 Assomaton) is just half a block away from the Beth Shalom Synagogue (520-2491; fax 523-4786; e-mail: douros@otenet.gr).

Athens has no kosher restaurants, but on advance notice Rachel Raphael-Sasson will deliver kosher meals to your hotel (211-3371; cell: 094-452-1848; e-mail: ras raf@hellasnet.gr). Kashrut is supervised by Rabbi Arar.

Eden, near the Acropolis (12 Lyssiou, corner Mnissikleous; 324-8858), has vegetarian fare. After 11 P.M. Diavlos Vegetarian Restaurant and Music Bar (9 Drakou, south of the Acropolis; 923-9588) offers rembetica music, in which Jews made a special contribution to the culture of modern Greece. So drink some anise-flavored ouzo, sway to the rhythm and give yourself over to the magic of this old-new Mediterranean city.