Thessaloniki: Bringing it Home
December, 2016
Photo credit: Eyal Tagar
On December 2016, I went on a delegation of 50 Jewish leaders, thinkers and musicians, to Thessaloniki, Greece, led by the Jerusalem Secular Yeshiva in partnership with the Schusterman Foundation/ ROI Community. We went on to learn, explore and celebrate the story and culture of Jewish Thessaloniki. We sought to learn something wider about our Jewish foundations, to be inspired and to gain a sense of belonging, so we can return and help create a society that is proud of its rich cultural background. Thessaloniki, that was once known as the “Jerusalem of the Balkans”, was indeed the right place to do so.
Thessaloniki was once home to a thriving and ancient Sephardic community, who before World War II had a Jewish majority. The Jews were not a community, they were the city. The boatmen were Jewish and the rich merchants were Jewish. Ladino (Judaeo-Spanish) was spoken everywhere. It was during that time that David Ben-Gurion visited Thessaloniki in 1911 to study a functioning Jewish society that could serve as a model for the future state of Israel. Ben-Gurion, impressed by what he saw, called Thessaloniki “a Jewish city that has no equal in the world”, and where "the Jews were capable of all types of work”. It's fascinating to learn that Ben-Gurion was actually arriving to Thessaloniki on his way to Istanbul where he would study Law, at those days of the Ottoman rule.
Through a tour on Friday morning led by Nir Amit, co-director of the Jerusalem Secular Yeshiva, I learned that “Jerusalem of the Balkans" was indeed a source of Jewish revival and innovation. New ceremonies and prayers were composed there. We learned a beautiful prayer composed by the fishermen at those old days, praying for safe return from the sea and good living from the sea. We stood at the port, and allowed us to set sail to the world of the porters, imagining a place that used to be overflowed with boats, and Jewish fishermen, porters and dockers for five centuries until the mid-20th century. We then did a salute flotilla in memory of those fishermen - and folded their prayers into a boat shape and sent 50 small boats from the harbor to the sea. This was a special moment, a moment we not only could articulate melodies and prayers composed in Thessaolniki, but also articulate sounds of self expression that we can connect to today.
The fishermen’s prayer:
ברוך אתה ה' אלוהינו מלך העולם שבראת את הכל, את השמים ואת הארץ, את הים ואת כל אשר בים, ואתה מושל בכל ומפרנס את כל הבריות שבראת בעולמך. יהי רצון מלפניך ה' אלוהי ואלוהי אבותי שתשלח לי את מזונותי בידך הרחבה ולא מידי בשר ודם. ברוך אתה ה' שלא חסר מזונותינו ולא יחסרו גם להבא. אמן.
A salute flotilla in memory of the Jewish fishermen. Photos credit: Eyal Tagar
Welcoming Shabbat at the port, it seemed like time stood still and the whole city became quite as we sang Ladino melodies and shabbat prayers. Such was the influence of the city’s Jews that, before the Sunday rest was imposed by law in 1923 by the Greek government, all shops – both Jewish and non-Jewish – were closed on the Sabbath and during Jewish holidays.
Shabbat service at the port. Photo credit: Eyal Tagar
On Shabbat morning, Ariel Levinson told us about the role of Thessaloniki in Kabbalah, and that Thessaloniki became a renowned centre of Kabbalah where eminent rabbis were guided by heavenly voices and taught their pupils to comprehend the divine and reaching a personal Tikkun. "Tikun Leil Shavuot" that means so much for me as a secularIsraeli, was actually started in Thessaloniki in 1533! I couldn't ignore such a finding and further researched and learned that according to “Iggeret Alkabetz”, on Shavuot night of 1533, Shlomo haLevi Alkabetz, author of the liturgical poem "Lekha Dodi” and Rabbi Yosef Karo, the author of “Shulchan Arouch", met and decided to learn together with some companions, but failed to convince a full minyan to join them. They began to learn, stringing words of Torah together, until suddenly, when they began reciting Oral Torah, the “spirit of the Mishna” spoke up from Karo’s throat. Today, almost 500 years later, Tikun Leil Shavuot is a symbol of Jewish secular and religious revival in Israel.
Thessaloniki used to have about 80-100 synagogues. Today there are only two that survived the Holocaust. One of the synagogues we visited with Hela, a Jewish guide that was born in Thessaloniki, was also the place where her parents got married. Hela shared with us the moving story of survival of both of her parents, her father survived Auschwitz concentration camp because he knew German and was requested to serve as a translator. Only on Shabbat dinner, when her parents, along with several other community members, joined us for dinner, I realised I already met her father and her earlier this year during Gesher festival, where we invited them to speak about his story in commemoration of Yom HaShoah.
Photo credit: Eyal Tagar
Hela and her husband sing at the synagouge
At Thessaloniki, pieces of my year as JDC’s Ralph Goldman fellow came together. I started my year working on Gesher Jewish festival that took place in Thessaloniki, and I was working all year on helping to build thriving Jewish communities all over the world. Going back to Thessaloniki this time, it was time for me to take part in creating our own thriving community back in Israel. One that is proud of its rich cultural background, and which is counting on its rich past to create new models that celebrate both Jewish culture and identity. As a secular Jew that grew up without the Jewish library, the Secular Yeshiva allows me to access the books that were always out of my reach and to regain a sense of ownership on my Jewish identity. Many Israelis feel ambivalent about the Jewish aspects of their national identity - their relationship to Jewish wisdom, history, tradition and philosophy. Recently, there have been promising signs of change. New generations, myself included, have begun to explore expressions of Jewish identity that reject the longstanding religious-secular divide. We are discovering different ways of renewing our connection between secularism and Jewish heritage, tradition, culture and sources. We study Talmud and other Jewish sources in secular frameworks, reading traditional commentaries and then examining the texts from personal perspectives to explore what it means to us and to present day.
At Thessaloniki we embarked into a time-travel, via which we experienced a thousand years of community tradition and heritage, we reconnected with the lost Jewish roots and culture of diverse community that existed before the establishment of Israel, and we continuously looked forward to the future that we wish to create.
At an event organised in the Thessaloniki synagogue at Tel Aviv port, following our travel to Thessaloniki. Photo credit: Eyal Tagar