Romaniote Jews רומניוטים
The Greek-speaking communities of the Byzantine world, with a rite of their own—minhag Romania. The oldest in Europe; after 1492 they dissolved into the incoming Sephardim.
The communities of the Greek world, going back to Hellenistic and Roman times—that is, older than the Ashkenazi and Sephardi ones by many centuries. They lived at Constantinople, Thessaloniki, Ioannina, on Crete and throughout Greece.
Their language was their own—Yevanic, Judeo-Greek: Greek with Hebrew and Aramaic words, written in Hebrew letters. Their rite too was their own, minhag Romania, resembling neither the Ashkenazi nor the Sephardi; it is closest to the Italian. And their customs: hand-painted birth certificates, Torah scrolls in rigid cases read standing upright.
The break came in 1492. The exiles from Spain were more numerous, richer and more learned—and within two or three generations the Romaniote communities dissolved into the Sephardi ones: they went over to Ladino and to the Sephardi rite. Little survived, longest at Ioannina.
The Shoah finished the rest: about eighty-six per cent of Greek Jewry perished, and the community of Ioannina was deported to Auschwitz in 1944. Yevanic is today all but dead.
On the timeline
Related
Sources
Scholarship
- Encyclopaedia Judaica, "Romaniots" — Yevanic, minhag Romania, the dissolution into the Sephardim after 1492
Basis: documents and evidence.