Ισραηλιτική Κοινότητα Ρόδου

By Esther Hecht

The city housed thousands of Jews before World War II. Today it again has something of a Jewish presence.

“The bride came out of the baths, the groom awaits her—she came out of the sea.” So the female relatives and friends of a Jewish bride in Rhodes would sing as she wound her way through the narrow lanes of this medieval walled city on her way to the prenuptial bath. There she would nibble on marzipan, symbol of a sweet life, and prepare for the sea change of marriage. The lives of Rhodeslis, as the Jews of this Greek island call themselves, have always been bound up with the sea. Their homes and synagogues were near the harbor; as silk merchants they sent and received exotic cargoes. And it was by sea that they left the Island of Roses to seek their fortunes in distant lands: the Belgian Congo (today Zaire), Rhodesia (which is now Zimbabwe and Zambia) and the United States.

Wherever they went they carried the memory of their close-knit community and their historic city, with its crenelated towers and its sculptures of a hart and a hind flanking the entrance to the harbor, just where the Colossus—one of the seven wonders of the ancient world—once stood. Because the memory never faded, Jeremy Gross, the Los Angeles grandson of Rhodeslis, came to celebrate his bar mitzva on July 13, 2001, in the sixteenth-century Kahal Shalom Synagogue. Bar mitzva visits like Jeremy’s breathe new life into this, the oldest functioning synagogue in Greece.

Samuel Modiano, one of the few Rhodeslis to have survived the Holocaust, was to have had his bar mitzva in Kahal Shalom in 1944, but instead “celebrated” it in Auschwitz. Today, at 71, Modiano leads tours of the synagogue and La Juderia, the neighborhood that housed thousands of Jews before World War II. “I am obligated to tell,” Modiano says sadly. “There is no one else.”

But in an odd twist of fate, Rhodes has a huge—if transient—Jewish presence. Cruise ships bring Jewish visitors from the United States and Europe; vacationing Israelis, just an hour’s flight away, come in droves. So overwhelming is the Israeli presence (52,000 in the year 2000) that shopkeepers in the island’s Old City are studying Hebrew, and for the first time in decades there is a kosher restaurant, run by an Israeli of Yemenite extraction who also leads Friday night services at Kahal Shalom.

History:
A Jewish presence in Rhodes may date back to the second century B.C.E. Jews are mentioned in 653 C.E., when the Arab conqueror Mu’awiya ordered the destruction of the remains of the Colossus, a gigantic bronze statue of Helios, toppled by an earthquake eight centuries before. The Jew from Edessa who bought the remains is said to have carried away 90 camel-loads of bronze.

In the twelfth century, Benjamin of Tudela found some 400 Jews when he visited. An Italian rabbi who visited Rhodes in 1467, then under the rule of the Knights Hospitalers of St. John of Jerusalem, wrote, “I have never seen a Jewish community where everybody…is so smart…. The leaders of the knights regularly visit Jewish homes to admire the handiwork of the beautiful embroiderers.”

But the knights were fickle. In gratitude for the Jews’ valiant defense of the city against the Turks in 1480, the knights allowed them to rebuild the Kahal Grande Synagogue, destroyed in the fighting, but ordered them expelled 20 years later, after a plague beset the island.

But soon Jews were again in Rhodes, this time as slaves captured at sea by the knights. The next time the Turks attacked, in 1522, the Jewish slaves sided with them. The Turks then welcomed Jews who had fled the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions, and their customs and language (Judeo-Spanish) quickly supplanted those of the earlier Romaniote (Greek-speaking) community.

The rabbinic and religious influence of this Sefardic center of Jewish learning—dubbed Little Jerusalem—was far greater than the community’s size, and by the nineteenth century there were four synagogues and many yeshivot. Though the community prospered, the rabbis exhorted Rhodeslis not to dress ostentatiously lest they draw envious notice.

Attempts at the turn of the twentieth century to introduce modern education were short-lived, but the Alliance Israelite Universelle school for boys, and then for girls, lasted. In 1912, after the Balkan Wars, Rhodes came under Italian rule. Around this time, Jews started to seek their fortunes in Africa, especially in the Belgian Congo. So many men left that the women would become engaged by mail, then leave to join their husbands. At its peak in the 1920’s, the Jewish population was about 4,000, one-third of the total.

In 1928 a rabbinical seminary was founded, but under the arch-Fascist governor Mario de Vecchi, the seminary was closed. Jews from Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey who had arrived after 1919 were expelled; racial laws came into effect; and the community was forced to move its cemetery outside the city. Some say de Vecchi used Jewish tombstones to build his own home.

After the Italians capitulated in September 1943, the Rhodeslis thought they were saved, but the Germans occupied Rhodes. In July 1944 they ordered Jewish men to report to air force headquarters to present their identity cards. Then their families were told that if they ever wanted to see the men again, they should report too. Having learned of the Jews’ imminent deportation, the Turkish consul general, Selahattin Ulkumen, bravely demanded the release of Turkish nationals and their families, saving the lives of some 40 Jews from Rhodes and 13 from the island of Kos. But the rest of the Rhodeslis, together with Jews from Kos, were taken by boat to Athens and from there to Auschwitz. Only 151 survived.

Community:
The Jews of Rhodes are proud of their long heritage and quick to correct a visitor who mistakes a newcomer for a Rhodesli, the name by which the Jews of Rhodes refer to themselves. They speak Judeo-Spanish and have their own names for landmarks in the walled city. Today there are fewer than 40 Jews on the island, which came under Greek dominion in 1947.

Recently they chose Bella Restis-Angel as their first woman president. But under Greek law, the community is too small to be independent, so it is administered by the Central Board of Jewish Communities, in Athens.

The community’s patriarch is Maurice Soriano, 91, who was president for many years as was his father before him. Soriano’s yellow stucco home, at 23 Kos, opposite the Casino Rodos, was built by his father and is a rare flower among a forest of high-rises.

In 1960 the tiny community tried to rebuild itself by offering homes to poor Jews from other parts of Greece. Carmen Cohen’s family, from Volos on the mainland, was one of those that came and stayed. But after 1970, the community started shrinking again. “It’s difficult to remain Jewish here,” says Cohen, who sends her sons to a Jewish summer camp near Thessaloniki and who this year took her younger son, Simon, to Athens to study for his bar mitzva.

One way the Jewish communities of Greece maintain contact is by hosting the annual Greek Women’s International Zionist Organization meeting in rotation; last year it was in Rhodes. Youngsters meet through an organization called Tradition, based in Athens.

The office of the Jewish community is near the Archaeological Museum, at 5 Polydorou (telephone: 30-241-22364; e-mail: jcrhodes@otenet.gr). Inside the low yellow building with brown doors, community secretary Cohen is a mine of information, which she delivers in perfect English. The office has a list of graves in the cemetery and an archive for genealogical study. Open Monday through Friday 9 to 2.

Sights:
La Juderia and Square of the Jewish Martyrs La Juderia, in the eastern corner of the medieval town, was home to the Jews for centuries. Once young Jewish men and women would exchange admiring glances in the Calle Ancha (Broad Street), the central square of La Juderia. Here, too, laughing children in costume would celebrate Purim by buying a ride on a horse and buggy and bringing gifts—mantadas de Purim—to friends and relatives. The Calle Ancha was also known as Seahorse Square, for the fountain with iron seahorses that has stood there for decades. Today this busy commercial crossroads is Plateia Martyron Evreion: the Square of the Jewish Martyrs (of the Holocaust). Jewish homes and shops in the center of the square that was bombed during World War II have been replaced by shade trees. On June 23, 2002, Rhodeslis from around the world came here for the unveiling of a Holocaust memorial. The six-sided column erected by the Jewish community bears an inscription translated into the six languages spoken by Rhodeslis: “Never Forget. In memory of the 1,604 Jews of Rhodes and Kos murdered in the Nazi camps, July 23, 1944.”

Aristotelous, the road leading west from the square, was the main Jewish commercial street and the site of the Salomon Alhadeff’s Sons Bank, one of the most powerful financial institutions in the Levant. At No. 32 on the Street of the Jewish Martyrs (which appears on maps as Pindarou), leading east from the square, is the jewelry shop of Anna Cohen.

From the Plateia Martyron Evreion, walk up Dosiadou. At the bend, where it becomes Symiou, stands Kahal Shalom Synagogue, the most important Jewish building in Rhodes.

Kahal Shalom Synagogue
All day, every day, Holocaust survivor Lucia Sulam sits in front of the synagogue, near the marble plaque with the family names of community members who were murdered by the Nazis. Built in 1577, the synagogue is one of the oldest in Europe. Eight massive columns support painted arches. The black-and-white stone mosaic floor is typical of old buildings in Rhodes. There is a central bima; two Arks frame a doorway to the courtyard. The synagogue is badly in need of restoration.

In 1999 Kahal Shalom was included on the list of 100 Most Endangered Sites by the World Monuments Fund, a New York-based nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving and protecting endangered works of historic art and architecture around the world. Open daily 10 to 5. Check with the Jewish community office regarding High Holy Day and Friday evening services.

Jewish Museum
The synagogue courtyard leads to a vaulted room that houses the Museum of the Jewish Community of Rhodes. Opened in 1997, it consists mainly of photographs, many of them depicting a more innocent period. A photo of Selma Franco Jaffe is captioned “Standing on my chair in front of my home in La Juderia, 1938, five years old, holding a doll.” Another photo shows 10 young men after their release from Auschwitz. Samuel Modiano is fourth from the left.

As you exit the synagogue, turn right. The brown metal doors with the Star of David mark the original entrance to Kahal Shalom. An arched alley opposite leads into Vizantiou where, at No. 4, the Hebrew inscription on a stone over the lintel indicates that the house was built in the Jewish year 5527 (1767). At No. 9, Jewish bakers prepared matza for Passover.

Salomon Alhadeff Avenue
In 1933 the family of Salomon Alhadeff donated a large park to the city, just north of Dosiadou, and the city named the main street of the park after him.

Alliance School, Notrica Foundation, Kahal Grand
A Talmud Torah for preschool boys was housed on the ground floor and a Jewish center for young adults on the upper floor of the Notrica Foundation building, the yellow structure at No. 28 Kisthiniou; today a Greek flag flies outside. Near it, the arched white entranceway over two thick blue columns and the inscription mentioning the donor, Baron Edmond de Rothschild, is all that remains of the Alliance school.

A right turn from Kisthiniou leads to Thiseos, on which a lone arch, behind a gigantic rubber tree, is the sole remnant of Rhodes’s first synagogue, Kahal Grande. La Puerta de la Mar is at the end of Kisthiniou. A little church stands just inside the gate and archaeological excavations can be seen nearby.

Cemetery and Holocaust Memorial
The Jewish cemetery is sandwiched between Christian and Muslim burial grounds on the road to Faliraki, on the southeastern edge of the city. A massive pointed arch marks the entrance, from which a path extends the length of the grounds. The graves to the right, some dating back to the sixteenth century, were moved there from the old Jewish cemetery. To the left, some graves have no stones. “The families did not manage to have a stone prepared before they were deported,” Modiano explains.

Hebrew poetry adorns some of the old graves; others are marked by carvings of scissors, a reminder that Rhodeslis were textile dealers and tailors.

A large neoclassical monument in Faliraki, inscribed in Greek, French and Hebrew, honors the memory of the Jews of Rhodes and Kos who were sent to their deaths in concentration camps. In the course of restoration work, some 200 old tombstones have been discovered.

Unlike most maps of the Old City, the “Rhodes map of Old Town New Town and Island,” available at Photo Kozas opposite the Archaeological Museum, shows all the streets of La Juderia.

Reading:
The Web site of the Jewish Historical Foundation of Rhodes (www.rhodesjewishmuseum.org/about.htm) offers a wealth of information, including a map of La Juderia and hotel recommendations, and some books. The Jewish Quarter of Rhodes, a self-published guide book by Aron Hasson, is available. Marc Angel’s The Jews of Rhodes (Sepher-Hermon Press) provides a history of the community and its customs, with fascinating social details gleaned from rabbinic responsa. For instance, under the tenure of Rabbi Mosheh Israel, appointed in 1714, Rhodes became an important Torah center in the Sefardic world. Israel wrote a spirited defense of eating dolmas, a popular dish of grape leaves stuffed with rice and/or meat. The objection of pietists was that vine leaves were infested with insects. Among the many arguments in Israel’s responsum was that “it is incumbent upon us to seek the benefit of the public.”

The Juderia (Praeger) is Laura Varon’s account of life before the German occupation and her struggle to survive in a concentration camp. Remember Rhodes (Sepher-Hermon Press) by Rebecca Amato Levy is a personal account of La Juderia.

Kol Hakehila is a quarterly offering information about Jewish communities and monuments in Greece as well as Jewish heritage tours (www.yvelia.com).

Recommendations:
The Israeli flag flies proudly in front of Haim’s Taverna, just west of the city. Proprietor Haim Kisra offers kosher Middle Eastern fare: home-baked pita bread, hummus, falafel, skewers of grilled meat and fresh fish. The kashrut supervisor is the rabbi of El Al Israel Airlines. The restaurant (12-13 Ialysos; 25473) closes for Shabbat but serves traditional meals on holidays.

Major hotels, like the Rodos Palace, can provide kosher entrées. Almost every restaurant in Rhodes offers vegetarian dishes, including Greek salad, tzatziki (cucumbers with yogurt) and eggplant salad. Most restaurants also offer a variety of fresh fish, from the crystalline waters of the sea that Rhodeslis can never forget.

source: Hadassa Magazine (August/September 2002 Vol. 84 No.1)