A synagogue, also called a shul or a temple, is a place of worship for Jews and Samaritans. It has a place for prayer where Jews attend religious services or special ceremonies such as weddings, bar and bat mitzvahs, choir performances, and children's plays. They also have rooms for study, social halls, administrative and charitable offices, classrooms for religious and Hebrew studies, and many places to sit and congregate. They often display commemorative, historic, or modern artwork alongside items of Jewish historical significance or history about the synagogue itself.
The Romaniote Jews or the Romaniotes are a Greek-speaking ethnic Jewish community native to the Eastern Mediterranean. They are one of the oldest Jewish communities in existence and the oldest Jewish community in Europe. The Romaniotes have been, and remain, historically distinct from the Sephardim, some of whom settled in Ottoman Greece after the expulsion of Jews from Spain and Portugal after 1492.
Ioannina, often called Yannena within Greece, is the capital and largest city of the Ioannina regional unit and of Epirus, an administrative region in northwestern Greece. According to the 2021 census, the city population was 64,896 while the municipality had 113,978 inhabitants. It lies at an elevation of approximately 500 metres above sea level, on the western shore of Lake Pamvotis (Παμβώτις). Ioannina is located 410 km (255 mi) northwest of Athens, 260 kilometres southwest of Thessaloniki and 80 km east of the port of Igoumenitsa on the Ionian Sea.
Yevanic, also known as Judaeo-Greek, Romaniyot, Romaniote, and Yevanitika, is a Greek dialect formerly used by the Romaniotes and by the Constantinopolitan Karaites. The Romaniotes are a group of Greek Jews whose presence in the Levant is documented since the Byzantine period. Its linguistic lineage stems from the Jewish Koine spoken primarily by Hellenistic Jews throughout the region, and includes Hebrew and Aramaic elements. It was mutually intelligible with the Greek dialects of the Christian population. The Romaniotes used the Hebrew alphabet to write Greek and Yevanic texts. Judaeo-Greek has had in its history different spoken variants depending on different eras, geographical and sociocultural backgrounds. The oldest Modern Greek text was found in the Cairo Geniza and is actually a Jewish translation of the Book of Ecclesiastes (Kohelet).
The history of the Jews in Greece can be traced back to at least the fourth century BCE. The oldest and the most characteristic Jewish group that has inhabited Greece are the Romaniotes, also known as "Greek Jews." The term "Greek Jew" is predominantly used for any Jew that lives in or originates from the modern region of Greece.
Synagogue architecture often follows styles in vogue at the place and time of construction. There is no set blueprint for synagogues and the architectural shapes and interior designs of synagogues vary greatly. According to tradition, the Shekhinah or divine presence can be found wherever there is a minyan, a quorum, of ten. A synagogue always contains an Torah ark where the Torah scrolls are kept, called the aron qodesh by Ashkenazi Jews and the hekhal by Sephardic Jews.
Rachel Dalven, also known as Rae Dalven, was a Romaniote writer who came to the United States as a child. She is best known for her translations of Cavafy's works, poems by other Romaniote Jewish writers, and for her books and plays about the Jews of Ioannina.
In Judaism, Nusach is the exact text of a prayer service; sometimes the English word "rite" is used to refer to the same thing. Nusakh means "formulate" or "wording".
The Bialystoker Synagogue is an Orthodox Jewish synagogue at 7–11 Bialystoker Place in the Lower East Side neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City, New York, United States. The building was constructed in 1826 as the Willett Street Methodist Episcopal Church; the synagogue purchased the building in 1905.
Beth Hamedrash Hagodol is an Orthodox Jewish congregation that for over 120 years was located in a historic building at 60–64 Norfolk Street between Grand and Broome Streets in the Lower East Side neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. It was the first Eastern European congregation founded in New York City and the oldest Russian Jewish Orthodox congregation in the United States.
Ahrida (Ohrid) Synagogue is one of the oldest synagogues in Istanbul, Turkey. It is located in Balat, once a thriving Jewish quarter in the city.
The Haidari concentration camp was a concentration camp operated by the German Schutzstaffel at the Athens suburb of Haidari during the Axis occupation of Greece in World War II. Operating from September 1943 until it was shut down in September 1944, it was the largest and most notorious concentration camp in wartime Greece, becoming known as the "Bastille of Greece".
This article deals in more detail with some of the notable synagogues of Jerusalem that do not have their own page as yet.
Congregation Tifereth Israel is an Orthodox Jewish congregation and synagogue, located in the Corona section of Queens, in New York City, New York, in the United States. It was founded by Ashkenazi Jews who had moved to Queens from Manhattan's Lower East Side. Estée Lauder and her parents were early members.
Magen David Synagogue is a historic Orthodox Jewish congregation and synagogue, located at 2017 67th Street, in the Bensonhurst neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York City, New York, United States. The congregation comprises mainly Sephardic Syrian-Jews.
Sephardic Bikur Holim Congregation (SBH) is an Orthodox Jewish congregation and synagogue in the Seward Park neighborhood of Seattle, Washington, in the United States, that practices in the Sephardic tradition.
The Syrian Jewish communities of the United States are a collection of communities of Syrian Jews, mostly founded at the beginning of the 20th century. The largest are in Brooklyn, Deal, New Jersey and Miami. In 2007, the population of the New York and New Jersey communities was estimated at 90,000.
The Podhajcer Shul is a former Orthodox synagogue, now private residence, located at 108 East First Street, just north of Houston Street, in the Lower East Side neighborhood of Manhattan, in New York City, New York, in the United States.
The Etz Haim Synagogue is located in the Thiseio area of Athens, at Melidoni Street 8, across from its largest and youngest Sephardic synagogue, Beth Shalom. It was built in 1904 by Greek Romaniote Jews who came from Ioannina, and for this reason it is also called the "Romanian" or "Yannonian" synagogue by the oldest members of the community.
