|RHODES: (Dodecanese Islands)|
Galant, Abraham. Histoire des Juifs de Rhodes, Chio, Cos etc. Istanbul, Soci Anonyme de Papeterie et d'Imprimerie (Fratelli Haim), 1935. 177,ii p. p., facsims., 23 cm. Language: French. Jews -- Greece -- Rhodes (Island) -- History. Jews -- Aegean Islands (Greece and Turkey) -- History. Bibliographical footnotes.
Freedman, Warren. World Guide for the Jewish Traveler. NY: E.P. Dutton Inc, 1984.
http://www.rhodesjewishmuseum.org/plots.htm is burial index [September 2000]
http://www.isjm.org/country/greece/rhodes.htm [January 2001]
http://www.sephardicstudies.org/keridorhodeslis.html Names of those deported and killed by Nazi's from Rhodes in 1944
http://pw1.netcom.com/~valkana/rjm2.html [February 2001]
Synagogues Without Jews: photos. "
Rhodes was planned and built around 407 B.C.E. by Hippodamus, the foremost architect of his time. It became the most aesthetic city in the Mediterranean basin and a harbor for ships from the Mediterranean and Africa's west coast. Jewish traders settled in Rhodes as early as the second century B.C.E. Rome tolerated the Jews scattered over the empire until Christianity spread in earnest in the third and fourth centuries.
The crusaders ruled Rhodes during the 14th and 15th centuries. Jews lived peacefully under them, although they were confined to their own section of the city where they built their large synagogue in the 15th century. The Italian Jewish traveler, Meshoullam ben Menahem da Volterra described the Rhodians' struggles in 1480. Jewish men and women participated then in battles to repel a Turkish attack. Due to massive destruction and the earthquakes of 1481, many Jews left the island, leaving only 22 Jewish families in 1493. Despite their poverty, they led their lives with dignity. The kehillah followed the Romaniot Greek-language tradition, the liturgy of which differs from both Sephardic and Ashkenazic traditions.
As the 16th century opened, Cardinal D'Aubusson initiated forced conversion of the Jews to Catholicism and other persecutions. His intended expulsions were rescinded only because he died suddenly. Soon after, Christian pirates captured more than 2000 Jews and forced them to work on fortifications. When the Turks, under Suleiman the Magnificent (1520-1566) besieged the island, the Jews sided with the invader who was victorious.
The kehillah prospered under tolerant Ottoman rule for nearly 400 years until 1912. Suleiman had encouraged exiles from Spain to settle in Rhodes and gave them favorable conditions, such as autonomy and religious freedom, housing and certain tax exemptions. Jews outnumbered the Turks and created in Rhodes a major Sephardic center that absorbed the earlier Romaniot kehillah and led them to adopt Sephardic customs and Ladino.Community life centered around the synagogue. There was the large Romaniot synagogue, Kahal Gadol dating from 1480 and the Sephardic synagogue Kahal Shalom built in 1577 that is the only one still standing. There were two other smaller synagogues and several houses of study.Reveling in the epithet "Little Jerusalem," the kehillah was well organized and the Jewish quarter hummed with Jewish life. The upper echelons of Rhodian Jews were bankers, diplomats, doctors and international traders. The majority of the Jews, however, remained poor and worked as peddlers, tailors, blacksmiths and fisherman.
After the Balkan wars in 1912, Rhodes and its 4500 Jews came under Italian rule. The last great chief rabbi Reuven Eliyaahu descended from a line of Rhodian rabbis, aimed to confer Jewish values on the younger generation. As twentieth century ideas and contact expanded, many of the young Jews went abroad to study and sometimes to settle in foreign lands. While some were leaving the island, newcomers arrived during the war for Turkish independence from allied occupation. In 1931, the new Fascist governor, Mario de Vecchi, introduced anti-Semitic laws and closed the yeshivah. Those Jews who could afford to escape, fled to Palestine, Tangiers, or Rhodesia. The Germans took control of the island in 1943. In 1944, the Gestapo entered and began mass deportation without any intervention by British forces. As the Nazis rounded up Jews, compassionate Muslim neighbors helped to hide Judaica and Liturgical articles. The objects were returned after the war and are now on display at the Jewish museum in Athens. Of the 1,641 Jews deported, only 179 survived. Few retuned to the island after the war. There were 40,000 Jews in Rhodes before the war. Now, only 35 remain." [February 2009]
|Last Updated on Monday, 16 February 2009 21:53|