Romaniote Jews
Nation | Active
1 CE to 2215 CE
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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Ioannis Kapodistrias, his Westernizing initiatives opposed incessantly, responds, finally, by adopting an enlightened despotism that violates the constitution under which he had been elected.
However, Greece does grant citizenship to its Jews on July 20, 1830.Charles backs Russia during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78.
He allows Russian troops to transit Romania and personally leads the Romanian army to aid Russian forces bogged down before Plevna, in the north of present-day Bulgaria.
Finally, after the Ottomans' defeat, Charles proclaims Romania's independence, ending five centuries of vassalage.
Despite the Romanian army's heroism at Plevna, Russia refuses to allow Romania to participate in peace negotiations or in the 1878 Congress of Berlin.
At Berlin, Russia gains southern Bessarabia from Romania and as recompense offers northern Dobruja, a barren land between the Danube and the Black Sea south of the river's delta at this time inhabited mostly by Turks, Bulgarians, and gypsies.
The Congress agrees to recognize Romania's declared independence, but only if Romania accedes to Russia's annexation of Bessarabia and repeals laws that discriminate against Jews.
Romania agrees, and, though its amendments to the discriminatory laws leave many loopholes, the European powers in 1880 recognize Romania's independence.
The tsar later denies Romania the fortress of Silistra, the strategic key to Dobruja on the south bank of the Danube, thereby deepening Romania's distrust of Russia.