Jerusalem Report

Members of the Israeli Olympic team and their fans who make the trip to Athens can use the Internet to find a synagogue if they deem it necessary to pray before events and give thanks for the outcome, or to locate some traditional Greek kosher cuisine in Athens. Probably the best place to start is http://www.kosherathens.com where, for example, we learn that they daven at Beth Shalom, a Sephardi synagogue at 5 Melidoni Street, on Monday and Thursday mornings at 8:30am, as well as Friday evening and Shabbat mornings. And that Kol Tuv, said to be Greece’s only kosher restaurant (also mentioned at the Chabad of Athens site, http://www.chabad.gr), temporarily located in the Monastiraki Quarter, near the flea market and the Plaka district, offers boxed lunches as well as regular meals.

More info on Jewish Greece, including a description of the Ancient Synagogue in the heart of the ancient Agora, is available at http://www.gogreece.com and http://www.greecetravel.com And at http://www.wujs.org.il you’ll learn that about 5,000 Jews live in Greece today, 2,800 in Athens (there were 77,000 before WWII), and that there is evidence that Jews have been in the country for over two millennia

More history is available at the website of the Jewish Museum of Greece (http://www.jewishmuseum.gr), founded in Athens in 1977. Most of Greece’s Jews are Sephardim, and have been since the influx after the expulsion from Spain in *2. But there is an older community as well - the Romaniote Jews. According to the “Romaniote” entry at http://www.kulanu.org Romaniotes were brought to the area by the Romans. Most absorbed the Sephardi tradition, but some have stuck to their own, older ways. Apart from their small communities in Greece, there is also a Romaniote synagogue on New York’s Lower East Side. An interesting account of the Romaniotes of Manhattan can be found at http://afubauonline.com

According to a brief entry at http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com the Romaniotes speak a kind of Greek-Hebrew called Yevanika. (The Hebrew name for Greece is Yavan). The Colchamiro family got to America from Greece around the turn of the century. Their website, http://colchamirofamily.tripod.com includes a discourse on the myths surrounding the family name. The majority view seems to be that paterfamilias Elias, a rag merchant back in Greece, would inspect every piece of merchandise he bought with the thoroughness he used in the search for leaven before Pesah. And when asked by U.S. Immigration for his last name, which he, like other immigrants, didn’t have, Elias repeated the first thing that came to mind - the Aramaic phrase used to certify that there’s no crumb in the house after the Biyur Hametz: “kol hamirah vehamiyah.” As often happened, that got mangled - into Colchamiro. It’s a nice story, which no one would be telling if Papa Elias had been a Cohen or a Levi.