15 Facts About Romaniote Jews

Name Romaniote Jews refers to the medieval Byzantine Empire, which included the territory of modern Greece, and was for centuries the homeland of this Jewish group.

Romaniote Jews have lived in Greece since at least the Second Temple era.

Waves of Sephardi Romaniote Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492; many settled in Ottoman-ruled Greece.

Strong Romaniote Jews community was present in Corfu until the late 19th century, when a pogrom sparked by blood libel charges forced most of the Jewish community to leave the island.

Romaniote Jews is the author of the Lekach Tov, a midrashic commentary on the Pentateuch and the Five Megillot and of some poems.

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Today, the Romaniote Liturgy follows the mainstream Sephardic usage, while the Romaniotes and the Jews of Corfu have preserved their old and own Judaeo-Greek and Hebrew piyyutim, their own way of cantillation and their special customs.

Romaniote Jews Synagogues have their own layout: the bimah is on a raised dais on the western wall, the Aron haKodesh is on the eastern wall and in the middle there is a wide interior aisle.

Intellectual pursuits of Romaniote Jews reflected in their history their geographical location within the Jewish and gentile world.

Many Greek Romaniote Jews were forced to pay their own tickets to the death camps.

In Ioannina, the Romaniote Jews community has dwindled to 50 mostly elderly people.

The interior of the synagogue is laid out in the Romaniote Jews way: the Bimah is on a raised dais on the western wall, the Aron haKodesh is on the eastern wall and in the middle there is a wide interior aisle.

The names of the Ioanniote Romaniote Jews who were killed in the Holocaust are engraved in stone on the walls of the synagogue.

Ancient historic texts mention that Romaniote Jews lived in the region of Magnesia, Thessaly and in particular in neighbouring Almyros as early as the 1st century AD.

Romaniote Jews'storians argue that Jews have been living in ancient Demetrias since the 2nd century AD.

Only one Romaniote Jews synagogue is in operation in the entire Western Hemisphere: Kehila Kedosha Janina, at 280 Broome Street, in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, where it is used by the Romaniote Jews emigrant community.