For more than two thousand years Jews who have been living in Greek lands have been speaking Yevanic, a Greek language containing Hebraic and Aramaic words written in Hebrew characters.
Sadly, as a result of the Holocaust, many of these Yevanic speaking communities were decimated and the language has ceased to exist.
Thanks to the scholarship of Dr. Menachem Lazer Belleli, the first Jew to study Yevanic Translations, Judeo-Greek, has been saved for eternity.
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Lazer Menachem Belleli was born on the beautiful island of Corfu on Oct. 31,1862. We don’t know much about his family except it belonged to the Toshavim or Terrieri (Greek for Toshavim) community. which ancestors immigrated to the island of Corfu from Thebes on the Greek mainland. Like all Greek speaking Jewish communities, their liturgy was of the Romaniot Rite. This included special hymns and poems in Judeo-Greek that they would recite on certain holidays such as on Rosh Chodesh and Shavuos.
The Terrieri would celebrate Purim for two days; on the fourteenth day they would read Megillas Esther in shul and make a feast, and on the fifteenth day of Adar, they would read the scroll of Esther in Judeo-Greek and have a masquerade party.They recited special Kinnos in Judeo-Greek for Tisha B’av. Some of their minhagim were influenced by the Hellenistic culture. For example they would celebrate “Moirai.” This is the Greek name given to the three godessess or Fates, who according to Greek mythology are believed to pronounce the destiny of the baby on the third night after its birth. On that night many gold coins as well as rue twigs would be placed in the diaper of the baby as a propitiatory offer and to protect it against the evil eye. Visitors and friends would be treated to a plate of Kukkudi (a Yevanic word) consisting of grains of boiled wheat, pomegranates and currents, all fruits symbolizing abundance and wealth.
The other Jewish community on the island called the Italian community was established sometime during the thirteenth century. It was later joined by Jews from the Iberian peninsula who came as a result of the expulsions of Spain and Portugal, In about the year 1550, two wealthy Jewish bankers by the name of Menachem and Aaron Mozza, received permission from the Doge of Venice, under which sovereignty Corfu was at the time, to build an Italian or Apulian Synagogue on “Jews Mount” to replace the one destroyed during the siege of 1537. They also purchased a plot to serve as a cemetery for the Italian Jewish community.
It was since that time that the Jews were officially divided into two communities.
Lazer Menachem attended the only Jewish school in Corfu which catered to both communities. The curriculum at the school included in addition to Hebrew studies, subjects taught in both Greek and Italian. During the nineteenth century when Lazer Menachem was growing u,p Italian was considered the literary language of the Island while Greek served as its colloquial language
In the summer of 1865 when Menachem Lazer was almost four years old, King George I, King of Greece visited the island and the new rabbi of Corfu at the time, Rabbi Isaac Raphael Tedeschi (Ashkenazi) represented the Jews before the king. When Lazer Menachem was only seven years old, the King visited the main synagogue of Corfu and sat on a throne erected especially for him. The King of Greece developed a very close relationship with the rabbi who was a prolific writer and penned articles in Hebrew, Greek and Italian newspapers in all fields of Judaic studies from Biblical Exegesis to Jewish History and law. Lazer Menachem who was to become a prolific writer himself (he was to publish in Greek, Italian, French and English) was probably inspired by this rabbi.
.In 1877 When Lazer Menachem was fifteen years old, Joseph Nahamulli, a prominent Jewish communal leader and lawyer who had established the bilingual Cronica Israelitica brought Hebrew letter plates form Livorno and set up a Hebrew printing press on the island. It was then that fifteen year old Menachem published his Hebrew Greek dictionary on Chumash Bereishis with a sketch of Hebrew grammar entitled Ateret Bachurim,. While still a youth he published an article in Corfu’s Italian Jewish monthly, Mose Antologia Israelita, an article about an inscription on the Greek synagogue of Corfu.
Although he matriculated in the University of Athens, Belleli was forced to leave in 1883 because of anti-Semitic discrimination. He went to study at the Instituio di Studi Superior at Florence where eventually he obtained his doctorate in philology. He also received a special certificate in Hebrew and Aramaic. During that period he served for a while as principal of the Jewish school in Livorno and spent some time in France.
While in Paris in 1889, Belleli sent an article to the Corriere Israeliltico on the installation of Rabbi Tzadok Kahn as Chief Rabbi of France. He also published a Greek Translation of Theodore Reinach’s “Histoire des Juifs” (History of the Jews) in 1895.
During Lazar Menachem Belleli’s stay in France he studied the polyglot Pentateuch printed in Constaninople in 1547 by Eliezer Soncino. This Pentateuch in addition to Rashi and Targum also contained Judeo-Greek and Judeo-Spanish translations. Belleli published a study on these Judeo-Greek and Judeo-Spanish translations in Revue des Etudes Juives. He also contributed an article to Revue des Etudes Grecques in which he transcribed the first four chapter of the Judeo-Greek translation into Greek characters and discussed the linguistic structure of the verses. (2
In 1890 Belleli returned to Greece. In Athens he was promised a teaching position in a high school by a high government official. He was also told that he would be permitted to give a course in Hebrew at the University of Athens. Both promises did not materialize, Subsequently he served as secretary of the Corfu chapter of the Alliance Israelite Universelle.. In that capacity he reported to the Paris center the trials which took place in Patras following the disturbances engendered by the blood libel of Corfu of 1891.
In 1895 he resigned from his post in Corfu and settled in England. While there he contributed to the London Jewish Chronicle of July 26, 1901 an article entitled “Hebrew-Greek Jottings, in which he discusses among other things Judeo-Greek poetry. The following year in the issue dated September 19, 1902 , for the LJC he authored an important article on Corfu Jewry entitled “Glimpses of Ionian Jewries under the Angevine and Venetian Rules”.
The Jewish Encyclopedia which came out in 1907 contained Belleli’s entry entitled “Judeo-Greek and Judeo Italian.”
Two years later he published “An Independent Examination of the Assuan and Elephantine Aramaic Papyri (1909)
In 1929 he was called to Salonika to teach Jewish studies at the local university. He retired .in 1936.
There have been a number of scholars who have published articles on Judeo Greek literature since Belleli’s death. They were only able to do so because Belleli first laid the groundwork.
Thanks to the pioneering work of Dr. Lazer Menachem Belleli, Judeo-Greek has been saved for eternity.