Romaniote Jews

The Romaniote Jews or Romaniotes are an ethnic Jewish community native to the Eastern Mediterranean.

They are one of the oldest Jewish communities in existence having lived in the Levant for over two thousand years.

Their distinct language was Judaeo-Greek, a Greek dialect that contained Hebrew as well as Turkish, and is today modern Greek or the languages of their new home countries.

They derive their name from the old name for the people of the Byzantine Empire, Romaioi.

Large communities are located in Thebes, Ioannina, Chalcis, Corfu, Arta, Preveza, Volos, Patras, Corinth, and on the islands of Zakynthos, Lesbos, Chios, Samos, Rhodes, and Cyprus, among others.

The Romaniotes are historically distinct and still remain distinct from the Sephardim, who settled n Ottoman Greece after the 1492 expulsion of the Jews from Spain.

A majority of the Jewish population of Greece is killed in the Holocaust after Axis powers occupy Greece during the Second World War.

They deport  most of the Jews to Nazi concentration camps.

After the war, a majority of the survivors emigrate to Israel, the United States, and Western Europe.

Today there are still functioning Romaniote Synagogues in Chalkis that represent the oldest Jewish congregation on European ground, in Ioannina, Athens, New York and Israel.

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