Sabbath morning. I didn’t know what head dress to wear – My regular hat, the “Kova Tembel” I had bought from Israel or a Yarmulke. I decided on the latter. It was a lucky choice. The Yarmulke helped me greatly in finding my way to Athens synagogue at Melidoni Street.
I had walked for half an hour from the hotel, had passed Sintagma (Constitution) Square and was in Ernow Street, when I asked passers-by for Melidoni Street. They shook their heads. Melidoni is a very small street and not many Athenians know where it is. Suddenly I was stopped by a man. “Shalom,” he said and continued in English: “You are looking for the synagogue. I am a Jew of Athens. I will help you.” He showed me the way.
After ten minutes’ walk, I had to ask again. Again my question encountered a blank stare. I crossed the road to ask another passer-by. By that time the first person must have noticed my skull cap. He ran after me calling: “Israel Ecclesia (Church)?”
“Yes. I want to go to the Synagogue,” I replied.
“It is here, around the corner,” he said.
After several minutes I found myself in Melidoni Street.
There are two synagogues on Melidoni, on opposite sides of the street, facing each other. “Beth Shalom” is a new synagogue. Its construction was begun in the late 1930’s. During my visit to Athens no services were held there, for the synagogue was undergoing repairs. It was to be reopened for the High Holidays.
Though the synagogue was closed, I was able to see its beautiful interior on Saturday night when a wedding was to be celebrated there.
The other synagogue is located on the second floor of a building, whose ground floor houses communal offices. It was built 65 years ago.
It is about 15 by 30 yards. The Almemor is situated at the rear of the synagogue and the space between it and the Ark is filled with eight rows of chairs. There are also chairs along the side walls.
About sixty men attended the Sabbath morning service. Some thirty woman prayed in the gallery. The service was led by the community’s two young rabbis, Rabbi Yaakov Arrar, who is thirty-four, and Rabbi Yitzcak Mezzan, who is thirty-five. They stood on the Almemor, clad in black clerical robes.
Both rabbis are natives of Greece. They were born in Larissa and studied at the Rabbinical Seminary in Paris and at the Beer Yaakov Yeshiva in Israel.
Rabbi Arrar has served the community for the last nine years. Rabbi Mezzan was for many years Rabbi of Larrisa and only last year joined Rabbi Arrar as his assistant. Rabbi Mezzan serves also as Mohel and ritual slaughterer.
Before World War Two, Greece had a Jewish population of 75,000. 60,000 were exterminated by the Germans. Several thousand immigrated to Israel. Now only five thousand remain, three thousand of whom live in Athens.
Athens’ Jews are well to do. Most of them engage in industry and commerce. Some are professionals.
Several Jewish shops are found right in the center of the city. A jewelry and souvenir store near Constitution Square carrying the name Leon Pessah attracts the attention of Jewish tourists. There is a sign in the window “Welcome Hadassah.”
Leon Pessah. The name sounded familiar to me. There is a Rabbi in the Bronx by that name. He hails from Salonika. Several years ago I phoned him in connection with a custom of Salonika Jewry.
I entered the shop. “Shalom,” I greeted the owner. “Do you have a relative in New York?”
“Shalom,” he answered with a smile. “You are not the first tourist from New York to ask me this question. Sorry. My countryman in New York and I, though we have the same personal and family names, are not related.”
With the exception of the rabbis, there are almost no strict Sabbath observers in Athens. Some of those who attended the Sabbath service came to shul by car; Jewish businesses are open on Sabbath. Only on Yom Kippur are most of the Jewish owned enterprises closed.
Synagogue services are held regularly on Sabbath and festivals, on Rosh Chodesh and on Mondays and Thursdays. On the High Holidays the synagogue are filled to capacity.
“On the High Holidays Melidoni Street overflows with people,” I was told. The community operates a kindergarten and an elementary school. They have a combined enrollment of 180. About seventy percent of all Jewish children attend the communal school.
In addition to general subjects, the pupils are taught Modern Hebrew one hour daily by teachers from Israel. In accordance with an agreement by the community with the Jewish Agency the teachers are provided by the Agency’s department of Education and Culture. Rabbi Arrar is not happy with this arrangement. He wants religious Hebrew teachers. He asked the Torah Education and Culture Department of the Jewish Agency to supply them – but thus far this department has not responded to his request.
“Write in your paper that I am very angry with the Torah Education and Culture Department,” Rabbi Arrar told me.
There is no Jewish butcher sore and no Kosher restaurant in the city. By an arrangement with the community, a non Jewish store sells meat carrying the Kosher seal. When my wife and I chanced to visit the King Minos, one of the largest and fashionable hotels of Athens, we were told that the hotel’s restaurant prepared kosher meals if given advance notice.
Hotel rooms, at this time of the year are difficult to come by in Athens. After a long search we found a modern “hotel apartment” complete with kitchen where my wife prepared our Sabbath meals with the aid of food and plates we had bought with us from Israel.
Sagarin Saramis, an Armenian, sells souvenirs at the entrance to the Acropolis. He has been there of twenty-five years catering to tourists from many parts of the world. During this long period he has developed a sixth sense – he can ”feel” a tourist’s nationality.
When he sights a Jew, he greets him with a loud Shalom. He offers him souvenirs, including Greek stamps, which he calls by their Hebrew name “bulim”. When you talk to him or buy something from him he will thank you with a resounding “Toda Rabba”.
Another “Hebrew speaking” gentile of Athens is the doorman of the famous Grand Bretagne Hotel. When my son Chaggai and I, both of us wearing Yarmulkes, passed the hotel, he greeted us, “Shalom! Ma Shlomcha? (Shalom. How are you?)”.
“Are you a Jew?” I asked him.
“No,” he answered in English.
“During World War Two I served with the Greek army in Palestine. I learned a little Hebrew, but now I have forgotten many words.”
He enumerated the cities of Israel he had visited and spoke with nostalgia of the beach of Netanya.
By: Tovia Preschel
Jewish Press
September 22, 1972