Instilling Religion in Greek and Turkish Nationalism: A “Sacred Synthesis”

Turkey in the International System

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During one Passover Sabbath in Kastoria, Revisionist Zionists and General Zionists brawled in the synagogue and choked the cantor; a hundred criminal charges were filed. Aspiring for imperial grandeur, the Megali Idea imagined the formation of a Greater Greece, the revival of the Byzantine Empire, and the recreation of the Greece of Five Seas. The fundamentally Greek Salonica envisioned by the promoters of the Megali Idea , however, diverged greatly from the Jewish city that they ultimately annexed.

The pervasiveness of religious vocabulary in the dominant vision of Greek nationalism emerged with the war of independence itself — A myth of Greek national annunciation was now overlaid upon the foundational tale of Christianity. In the interwar years, during the Fourth of August Regime — that sought to fuse the values of classical Greece with Byzantine Orthodoxy, Prime Minister Ioannis Metaxas appealed to already-established tropes when he promoted his slogan of Greek nationalism: While a smaller Jewish population had inhabited largely Orthodox Christian Greece prior to , their numbers increased exponentially, from fewer than ten thousand to closer to ninety thousand with the annexation of Salonica.

Jews elsewhere in Greece were few, not very concentrated, and internally diverse. All chief rabbis of Athens during the first half of the twentieth century were native Judeo-Spanish speakers from Izmir, Salonica, and Hebron. Once Salonica became part of Greece, tensions between Jews and Orthodox Christians intensified due not only to their differing languages but also to enduring prejudices as reflected in continuing allegations that Jews killed Christ, periodic blood libel accusations, and economic competition.

Only when a Jewish teacher and several Orthodox Christian students at the university spoke out against the rumor was it put to rest. In addition to the thread of Orthodox Christianity, another aspect of Greek national identity drew on the mythologies of classical Hellenism and introduced another set of tensions into the prospect of harmonious relations between Jews and Greeks. In the philosophies of the Enlightenment and romanticism, Hellenism had been imagined as the antithesis of Judaism or Hebraism , as a world of knowledge in contest with a world of faith.

Within the European Jewish framework, these interpretations were superimposed over other long-remembered frictions. The Jewish holiday of Hanukkah, for example, commemorates the victory of the Maccabees over their Hellenic oppressors who sought to Hellenize the Jews and forcibly assimilate them by stamping out their religious practices. For Jewish intellectuals inspired by the Enlightenment, Judaism and Hellenism served in modern times as ciphers for the conflict between those Jews who sought to preserve Jewish difference versus those who favored integration.

Classical Greece symbolized the allure and challenge of secularism and modern culture. But in twentieth-century Greece, the encounter with the mythic notions of Judaism and Hellenism took on an entirely different layer of meaning initially quite removed from the European narratives.

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Orthodox Christian leaders in Greece preoccupied themselves not only with ideals of classical Greece but also with medieval and modern conceptions rooted in Byzantium and in Christian Orthodoxy. By appropriating European philhellenic sentiment, Greek Enlightenment thinkers developed a Greek national narrative that sought to wed the world of ancient Athens to Orthodox Christianity, Byzantium, and the Greek language in a contiguous thread of Hellenic history. The task at hand would be to discover ways to reconcile Judaism and Hellenism, both the mythologies and the twentieth-century realities.

Because the Megali Idea aspired to transform Greece into a new empire, Greek statesmen incorporated imperial sensibilities into their brand of Hellenism that, for practical reasons, relied on legal structures and categories bequeathed by the Ottomans. In effect, Hellenism incorporated elements of Ottomanism in order to accommodate Judaism.

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At the height of the hope for continued Greek expansion into Asia Minor in , the Greek state recognized the Jews as a religious minority and reconfirmed the status and structure of the Jewish Community of Salonica as it had existed in the late Ottoman era. Jews gained recognition as a kind of neo- millet , along with the Muslims in Thrace—a status now legitimized by reference to Hellenism and minority rights as promoted by the League of Nations.

Especially following the establishment of the Hellenic Republic in , the Greek state embarked on a more thorough and forceful nation-building project to Hellenize Salonica and all the New Lands acquired since But this nationalizing process coexisted with imperial-style dynamics as the Greek state continued to recognize the separate legal status of the Jewish Community.

Administrative echoes of the Ottoman Empire persisted in the manner in which the Greek state simultaneously preserved the differentiated, collective, legal status of the Jewish Community while also seeking, however haltingly, to transform individual Jews into citizens. Although asked to serve in the military and increasingly to speak Greek, Jews were compelled to vote in a separate electoral college — in order to minimize their influence on Greek elections, were not permitted to marry non-Jews except through a ceremony abroad or following conversion civil marriage did not exist until , and remained under the surveillance of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Although the Greek foreign minister endorsed the creation of a Jewish national home in Palestine, the Greek state recognized its own Jewish citizens as a religious minority. Scholars typically identify three demoralizing turning points amidst this transition. Second, under pressure from Orthodox Christian refugees from Asia Minor, the Hellenic Republic introduced a Sunday closing law in allegedly to level the economic playing field. The law overturned the long-standing custom not only among Jews but the entire city to rest on Saturday in observance of the Jewish Sabbath.

The perpetrators were never convicted, and the series of events eviscerated the widely held image of Salonica as a Jewish safe haven. While the Sunday closing law of overturned the legendary status of Salonica as the Shabatopolis , or city of the Sabbath, Jewish leaders did not resign themselves to the imposition of the new law.

Finally, despite—or perhaps because of—the anti-Jewish Campbell attacks in , representatives of the Jewish Community, the Zionist Federation of Greece, and the Club of Liberal Jews joined rallies at St. A few thousand Romaniote Jews had resided in Greek-speaking lands—most notably Ioannina, in Epirus—since antiquity since the Roman era, hence their name , spoke Greek fluently, gave their children Greek names, and, as Venizelos saw it, expressed their Judaism exclusively as religious rather than national difference.

In this regard, Salonican Jewish Ottomanism and Hellenism diverged concerning the role of language: This language, it was hoped, would provide the glue to bind Jews to their Christian neighbors—many of whom, including refugees from Asia Minor, were also learning Greek—and to the state.

In place of the Ottoman-Jewish romance that revolved around , Jewish leaders developed new narratives about the centrality of Salonica to Hellenic history and the key role played by Jews in that history, dating back to the first century, when the apostle Paul preached at the Romaniote synagogue in Salonica. They emphasized the complementarity—rather than the antagonism—between Hellenism and Judaism, philosophy and monotheism, which they construed as the dual founts of modern civilization.

Endorsing nationalist narratives, they fashioned present-day Jews and Greeks as the cultural heirs and genealogical descendants of Moses and Plato.

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The Judeo-Spanish press even claimed, by reference to the fourth-century Greek historian Diodore, that Jewish presence in Greece dated to the era of Moses: Salonican Zionists did not consider their desire to create a Jewish state in Palestine to negate their simultaneous pledges of allegiance to Greece.

After Greece annexed Salonica, rather than abolish the Jewish Community, the state reconfirmed its legal status and ironically incorporated it into the process of Hellenization. In essence, the challenge posed by Jews in interwar Salonica was not that they unequivocally resisted Hellenization, as scholars often suggest; rather, they articulated a different vision of what Hellenization could become.

Journal of Social and Administrative Sciences

Was it in vain that, referring to mother Greece and her Christian and Jewish citizens, Bensanchi asked: The first chapter explores the creation and development of the institution of the Jewish Community of Salonica. Due to the largely self-governing status of the Jewish Community, everyday Jews relied upon it—as if it were a municipality or a state, as one commentator observed—to endure the tumultuous transition from Ottoman to Greek jurisdiction, including war, fire, and economic crisis. Sometimes in conflict and other times in partnership with the state, the Jewish Community defined its members, subjected them to Jewish marriage law, managed Jewish popular neighborhoods for the impoverished, and facilitated the induction of Jewish men into the army.

Allegiance to the Jewish Community and to the state sometimes complemented each other, whereas other times they stood in opposition. The ongoing debates over the role and nature of the spiritual and political leader of the Jewish Community, the chief rabbi, forms the heart of the second chapter.

Instilling Religion in Greek and Turkish Nationalism: A Sacred Synthesis

Deliberations among competing Jewish political factions over the nature of the position of the chief rabbi reflected their differing values and contested visions for the future of Salonica and its Jewish residents from the late Ottoman era until World War II. Jewish leaders also believed that the future of Jewish life in Salonica would be forged at school, a site that acquired a sacred aura for its crucial role in educating the youth. The third chapter argues that schools became sites in which to transform the children of the last generation of Ottoman Jews into the first generation of Hellenic Jews, conscious of their status as Jews and as citizens of their country.

Focusing on the contested role of language and its relationship to questions of identity and belonging, the chapter also emphasizes the unexpected ways in which the Jewish Community and the state partnered to develop new Jewish educational opportunities. The final chapter interrogates the place of the Jewish cemetery of Salonica—once the largest in Europe—within the spatial, political, and cultural landscapes of the city from the late Ottoman era until World War II.

It focuses on the tactics that representatives of the Jewish population deployed to safeguard their burial ground in the context of nineteenth-century Ottoman urban reforms and then in the face of expropriation measures endorsed by the Greek state and the local university. Could a Jewish necropolis remain in the center of what was supposed to be a Greek metropolis? The participants in the ensuing campaign sought to demonstrate that the tombstones spoke, that the inscriptions narrated the integral role played by Jews—as indigenous Salonicans—in their city, and by extension, in the broader Greek world.

The attempt to safeguard the spaces of the Jewish dead constituted an effort to secure the place of the Jewish living in Salonica and all of Greece—and reveals the ultimate fragility of the effort. Since Babel, one can say, God never created anything better. Salonica—like Greece, Europe, and the Middle East more broadly—continues to wrestle with the legacy of that transformation today.

A Documentary History Stanford, , — Rebel and Statesman New York, — , 1: Its Races and their Future London, , Jewish Chronicle , May 16, ; Richard E. The Eastern Question Reconsidered , ed. Kozelsky Madison, , — Memory, Conflict and Exchange , ed.

London, , 92— Kevin Featherstone, et al. Aron Rodrigue, Jews and Muslims: Ottoman Nomads, Migrants, and Refugees Seattle, Nielsen Boston, , 29— Joseph Uziel, ha-Migal ha-Lavan: Reshamim, zikhronot ve-sipurim me-haye 'ir 'ivrit ba-golah Tel Aviv, Multiethnic Societies and Nation-Building: Bernard Wasserstein, On the Eve: Thessaloniki Chronicles , trans. Among the publications that appeared in connection to the celebrations was I.

The historiographical essays in a recent issue of Jewish History 28, no. Elements for the Destruction of the Minorities of Greece: Jews and Chams] Athens, ; Aristotle A. Michael Molho, In Memoriam: While offering a seemingly convenient explanation, this interpretation requires further evaluation given that the few thousand Romaniote Jews who had been living in Ioannina for generations spoke Greek exclusively but nonetheless suffered the high mortality rate of 90 percent as a result of the Nazi deportations.

For Ioannina Jews, being assimilated did not improve their fate. A Vindication of Assimilation? Mark Mazower, The Balkans: A Short History New York, , My framework is informed by scholarship in modern Greek studies on the development of Greek nationalism and the place of minority populations.

Peter Mackridge and Eleni Yannakakis, eds. Minor States in Northern and Eastern Europe, — , ed. Cambridge Papers in Modern Greek 13 Cambridge Papers in Modern Greek 18 Nationalism and Nationality , ed. Ricks Burlington, , 95— I compiled the figures for from Manolis Kandylakis, Efimeridografia tis Thessalonikis: Simvoli stin Istoria tou Tipou Thessaloniki, , 3: Kaye Waltham, , — Sidur Sha'are Tefila Thessaloniki, , — Articles 49, 50, Aron Rodrigue and Sarah Stein, eds.

Lewis New York, 1: Jews, States, and Citizenship , ed. Cicek Ankara, , 2: Kastoryano New York, , 36—46; Benjamin C. Orthodox and Muslims, — , ed. Fortna Hoboken, , 1— Hassiotis Thessaloniki, , — Genders and Identities in Peace and War — , ed.

Modernizing Geographies in Greece and Turkey, ed. Keyder London, , 11— Sacred Synthesis New York, , 30— Braude London, , —, esp. Yaacov Shavit, Athens in Jerusalem: Culture, Identity, and Ethnicity from Antiquity to Modernity , ed. Zacharia Burlington, , — Fallers Sullivan, et al. Chicago, , — On the fire and its consequences, see, inter alia: Alexandra Yerolympos, Urban Transformations in the Balkans — Hassiotis Salonica, , — Rivlin Jerusalem, , 18 Hebrew.

A Collection of Documents , ed. Identities, Perceptions and Cultural Encounters since the Enlightenment , ed. Tziovas Burlington, , —; Gougouris, Dream Nation , 74— Romanso inedito sovre la vida a Saloniko en los anyos de la gera mondiala Salonica, , 2. Introduction Is Salonica Jewish? Boz del puevlo, boz del sielo.

The voice of the people is the voice of the heavens.

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