The municipal elections of a small city may seem like an unlikely way to make history after 2,300 years of history, but that’s what happened in June when the Greek city of Ioannina elected a Jew as mayor — the first ever in Greece, despite widespread anti-Semitism. The mayor-elect of Ioannina, from a region subject…
I say, “Jewish Lower East Side.” You say, “Bagels.” Or perhaps, “Katz’s corned beef.” But what if I told you, “Bourekas”? What if I told you, “Baklava”? Those foods, as Jewish and as native to LES as schmaltz and herring, were on sale by the thousands at the fifth annual Greek Jewish Festival, hosted by…
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. If you enjoy strenuous physical activity in your free time you’ll be happy to know that the Yiddish world recently ran its own marathon. A Yiddish marathon is a bit different than the others, though. Here, it’s not feet but time that flies, even if the exertion…
There’s a “Schindler’s List”-themed escape room in Greece — and it’s in a city that lost 96% of its Jewish population in the Holocaust. In escape rooms, participants are locked in a room and tasked with finding clues to break out. Freelance writer Margarita Gokun Silver wrote about her experience at one such room, in…
(JTA) — A memorial to the Jews of a Greek town who were sent to Auschwitz by the Nazis was vandalized. The Memorial to the Jewish Martyrs of Kastoria, in the northern region of West Macedonia, was covered with black spray-paint on Tuesday, the state-run news agency ANA-MPA reported. “In this place, on March 24…
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. Although Greece has a venerable 2,400-year Jewish history, it’s certainly not the first place that comes to mind when you think of Yiddish. Although Yiddish was spoken a bit in Thessalonica before World War II, the Ashkenazi community there had, as in Cairo, a small and short-lived…
(JTA) — A Holocaust memorial was vandalized in the Greek city of Thessaloniki. The monument, located on the campus of Thessaloniki’s Aristotle University, was smeared in blue paint and a cross was painted on it. Tuesday’s attack is the second time that the monument has been vandalized in two weeks. The monument, a series of gravestones…
I remember sitting out on my terrace as a 7-year old girl, eating a bowl of plain yogurt, cucumber, dill, garlic and salt. Looking out at the Hudson River and Tappan Zee bridge, I’d crunch the chunky cucumbers in between my little, crooked teeth and smack my mouth together from the tart yogurt. I liked…
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