Romaniote Jews

Specifically, see the Jewish-Greek culture and food and life that persisted for hundreds of years.

On previous episodes, especially the one about Thessaloniki, which was released last year, I mentioned that Thessaloniki was the centre of Sephardic Jews for nearly 500 years.

More than 50% of the total population of Thessaloniki, as Thessaloniki was then known, colloquially, until 1920s, was Jewish.

In that decade, basically 1920s, in the latest census, this vibrant Jewish community gave Thessaloniki the nickname of Jerusalem of the Balkans.

And alongside them, the other largest communities were Greek, Christian Orthodox, of course, the Turkish or Ottoman and Muslims, Armenians, Bulgarians, and of course, many European merchants who made the city their home, with many others from all across the Balkans too.

making it a melting pot of cultures which, in my opinion, we have not seen in Greece again until very recently and possibly only Athens the last decade or two.

So the vast majority of Jews were Sephardic Jews in Thessaloniki.

And this is where the recipe is today coming from, from the Sephardic Jewish community of Thessaloniki.

The other piece of the

ancient foundation is the Romaniote community.

After the Romans destroy the Second Temple in 70 CE, Jewish populations scatter across the Greek-speaking eastern Mediterranean.

These communities, in Ioannina, in Thessaloniki, in Chalkis, become the oldest continuous Jewish presence in Europe.

Greek.

And they developed their own liturgical tradition, the Romaniot rite, which is distinct from both Ashkenazi and Sephardic practice.

When Sephardic Jews arrived after the expulsion from Spain in 1492, they largely absorbed the Romaniote communities in the major cities.

But, in places like Ioannina, the Romaniote identity held on.