‘There is not a Jew in Athens who doesn’t receive our help if they need it’

Greece has only 5000 Jews but the community is united, passionate and proud, as EETTA PRINCE-GIBSON discovered during a recent visit to the capital

“I AM GREEK and I am Jewish. These are the most important parts of who I am.”

Kelly Nemia, 31, who works with a Greek NGO supporting refugees, chooses to meet in an upmarket coffee shop on the outskirts of Athens to talk about the Jewish community.

“Young Jews in Athens are especially connected to each other,” she says. “We have been together all of our lives. Most of us went to the Jewish elementary school and then, in our teens, we went to summer camp together. We are a family, celebrating our history and traditions together, and proud to be part of such an ancient community.”

She says that the group meets often, mostly virtually since the pandemic. “Another big part of our togetherness is volunteering with vulnerable members of the Jewish community, especially Holocaust survivors.  It’s a meaningful way to express who we are, and our Jewish values, especially here in Athens.”

If Nemia marries and has children, she says, she would want to raise them as Jews, but she doubts that she will marry a Jew. “There are so few of us, and we all know each other, we do not have the luxury to choose within the community.”

Athens, once a powerful city-state, was merely a backwater for centuries and only began to expand and modernise after World War II. Since World War II, Greek history has been turbulent, with a civil war from 1946-49 and a military dictatorship from 1967-76. In 2009, the financial crisis nearly forced Greece out of the Eurozone and demolished the life savings of millions of Greeks.

Today, Athens is the political, social, and economic centre of the country, with a population of over 3.5 million, (approximately a third of the population of Greece.) Despite a big-city vibe and strong cultural scene, however, the economic struggle remains visible in the uninhabited and neglected once-grand buildings and the poor infrastructure.

The Athens Jewish community is composed of two main groups, both with long histories.  The Romanoites, the oldest community in Europe, date back to the third century BCE; they spoke Judeo-Greek and continue to observe a distinct  tradition. In the late 15^th and 16^th centuries, Jews and Marranos expelled from Spain and Portugal arrived; they spoke Ladino and follow the Sephardic liturgy and traditions.

Just before World War II, 52,000 of the 72,000 Jews in Greece lived in Salonika, which was the centre of Jewish life, known for its rich traditions and learning; the rest lived in Athens and some 30 smaller communities. Over 95% of the Jews of Salonika, and over 80% of all of Greece’s Jews, perished in the Holocaust, most in concentration camps. 

After the war, many Greek Jews emigrated and of those who stayed, most gravitated to Athens. Today, out of a total of 5,000 Jews in Greece, 3,000 live in Athens.

During the upheavals of the civil war and the military dictatorship, says Alvertos Taraboulous, President of the Jewish Community of Athens, Jews were aligned on both sides. “But we never let these political positions divide the community itself.  Throughout those years, our community was largely self-sustaining and able to provide for Holocaust survivors and other vulnerable members of the community.”

However, since the economic 2009 crisis, he continues, increasing numbers of Jews need financial and other forms of aid. “Today, wealthy families who were once the main supporters of the community are receiving aid and support from the community,” he says.

Victor Eliezer, General Secretary of the Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece,adds:“These are challenging times.  We have been able to provide for our needy, but I worry most about the younger generation.  How can they even dream when the economy is so bad, the job market is so poor, and the salaries so low.  Many of them go abroad, and I fear our community will dwindle.”

George Kallis Antzel, a 25-year-old Athenian, is studying marketing and works as a business analyst. He heads the Youth Committee of the Jewish Community of Athens, which sponsors regular events, often attended by 50-60 young adults.

Like Nemia, he says that his Judaism is a central part of his life, providing him with community and a sense of shared history and values.  But echoing Eliezer, he says, “I want to live here, but I don’t know if I can make it financially.  Next year I will be studying abroad.  I hope to come back, but I don’t know.”

Taly Mair is Director of the Jewish Community of Athens and talks about the community equipped with attractive printed brochures and data sheets in both English and Greek, and data sheets. Having lived in Israel for several years, she conducts the interview in fluent Hebrew and provides attractive printed informational brochures.

Registration is voluntary, and she assumes that a majority, although certainly not all, of Athens Jews are registered. The community is run by a board of directors, and some 14 committees, staffed almost completely by about 150 volunteers, carry out the community’s activities.  

Like most people who spoke to The Jewish Independent, she emphasises that the Athens Jewish community is not religiously observant, “yet is strongly united through history, culture, and tradition”.  

In addition to organising community-wide events, such as Holocaust Remembrance Day and Israeli Independence Day, the community runs a “warm house” several times a week providing food, company and services for the lonely or the elderly, including some 250 Holocaust survivors.

During the pandemic, the community volunteers have been monitoring these members through phone calls and virtual visits. The community also provides medical and psycho-social aid, including free doctors' consultations and food packages as well as monthly allowance and payment of utility bills.

Proudly, she continues: “there is not a Jew or someone who is related to a Jew in Athens who doesn’t receive our help it they need it.”

Furthermore, says Taraboulous, any child whose parents want them to can attend Athens’ sole Jewish school, and will receive a scholarship if needed. As Greek public schools require study of Greek Orthodox Christian texts and prayers, and excuse only those who declare a different identity, most of the children do attend the Lauder Athens Jewish School. Established in 1960, it is a private school that runs from pre-school to sixth grade and has graduated some 1,200 students.

Without enough students to make an independent high school viable, the community has also created a Jewish Studies Program within the American College of Greece, a well-regarded private high school.  A form of “school-within-school,” the program provides some three hours of Jewish studies and Hebrew language instruction a week, along with outings and holiday observances.

"We don't try to make our students into observant Jews,” says Iakovos Atoun, the Jewish Educational Programs Director for the Athens Jewish community. “We hope that our graduates will know what it means to be Jewish, to be proud of being Jewish, and to become an active part of the community when they are adults.”

On most Friday nights, some 20 men and a very few women gather in sanctuary of the Beth Shalom synagogue, Athens’s only regularly functioning synagogue.  It is a tall and imposing building, constructed in the Greek Revival style in 1935, located on a pedestrian walkway lined with potted trees and plants. Uniformed security guards and an unarmed security officer check the IDs of anyone attending services who isn’t a regular.

The blue-painted Etz Hayyim synagogue, the last Romanoite synagogue in Athens, is directly across the street. The building houses the offices of the Jewish Community, but the synagogue is open only on Yom Kippur.

Rabbi Gabriel Nechin, in his early 30s, wearing traditional robes and a high hat, conducts the Sephardic liturgy.  Born and raised in Athens, Nechin was ordained as an Orthodox rabbi in Israel. “It is very meaningful to come back as a rabbi to the community you grew up in. 

“It is challenging to find ways to observe halacha with the moderation and inventiveness that the situation requires – but Jews have been in Greece for more than two millennia, and we have always found the way to preserve our Jewish life.”

He notes, as an example, the decision, taken some 10 years ago, to open the Jewish schools to anyone with at least one Jewish parent.  Today, he says, over half of the school’s students come from interfaith marriages.”

Zanet Battinou, an archaeologist by training, is director of the national Jewish Museum. Battinou explains that the museum is an historical and ethnographical museum, with more than 8000 rare religious and domestic artifacts, that illustrate Jewish life in Greece since its beginnings.

The museum is not a Holocaust museum per se, but does devote much of its efforts towards Holocaust education, in cooperation with the Greek Ministry of Education, creating curricula for schools and providing training for teachers and educators. 

“Most young Greeks know nothing about the Holocaust,” she says.  “We want them to understand what happened, and Greece’s part in it. We also want to teach them compassion and tolerance.” Quoting the museum’s guidebook, she adds, “We want each student who comes to our programs to think what he or she, as a person and citizen, can do to make the world a safer and more just place.”

During the Holocaust, Greece initially was under three zones of occupation – Italian, Bulgarian, and German. Salonika was under the German occupation. “Salonika was such a thriving Jewish city, and yet, even today, we find tombstones that were used by the Nazis to build public sidewalks and churches,” explains Taraboulous. “The very existence of Jews in northern Greece was annihilated and, like Jews everywhere, we have no answer, why.”

For most of the war, Athens had been under the Italian occupation, and the situation of the Jews in Athens was very different than in the north. Two thirds of the Athens Jewish community survived.  This was because, says Eliezer, the large size of the city, but also the intense mobilisation of the resistance and the partisans, who helped to hide Jews and with whom the Jews fought side-by-side, the national authorities and the Church, which issued fake Christian documents.

Yet today, according to the Anti-Defamation League, according to a 2017 survey, Greece has the highest level of antisemitic attitudes in democratic Europe. Anti-Semitic attitudes are particularly prevalent among people with strong affiliation with the Greek Orthodox church, and those inclined towards conspiracy theories.  

At the same time, these antisemitic attitudes rarely lead to violence, due, saysTaraboulous, both to recent strong efforts by the national authorities to combat antisemitism and the absence of radicalised Muslim communities, like those in France or Belgium.

None of the people interviewed for this report expressed any sense of personal fear or concern.  But they are also cautious, the rabbi says, recalling the particularly heinous attack on the Jewish cemetery in Athens in May 2018. 

Eliezer says: “If you ask me if Greece is an antisemitic country, I will say no, even though, of course, there are antisemites. And Greece has a history of a strong fascist right, which, in times like these, with the economic crisis and the pandemic, that is a very strong concern.”

In 2012, the New Dawn, a self-defined neo-Nazi party, was the third most popular party in the Greek parliament.  But its popularity dwindled and it failed to gain any representation in parliament in the 2019 elections. The party was banned in October 2020 and most of its leadership was imprisoned on counts of murder, attacks on migrants, illegal possession of weapons, and racketeering.

Eliezer, however, warns that the Jewish community must not become complacent. And while he says that the current government is working avidly to combat antisemitism and racism, the current Prime Minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, is a member of New Democracy, a right-wing party that has also been home to some with strong xenophobic and antisemitic views.

Although Greece did recognise the State of Israel in 1948, relations between the countries were cold and even hostile. It was only in 1991 that then-Prime Minister Konstantinos Mitsotakis - the father of the current prime minister – established full diplomatic ties. 

Even when the Left returned to power in 1993, diplomatic and economic ties with Israel remained fairly strong, especially since by then the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, with whom Greece allied itself since WWII, had broken up, and Turkey, Greece's long-standing rival, was becoming increasing assertive.

The Left, says Eliezer, is still anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian, but currently has little power.  Furthermore, the two countries are expanding cooperation across numerous arenas, most notably in the areas of strategic and military cooperation, and this is creating a more positive attitude.  The decline in Israeli-Turkish relations is also seen very positively by many, he adds.

Eliezer concludes: “Our community faces threats from the outside, but I believe we can handle them. We have a wonderful, close community, but I hope that we will be able to handle the threats of emigration and intermarriage, that come from within.”

Photo: Communal Seder in Beth Shalom synagogue in Athens (supplied)