“At Home in Exile” : Ladino Music from Salonica, the Greek Jerusalem

 

Photo courtesy of: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Jews_of_Salonika-1917.jpg

Greece’s Jews and Greek Jews – A Brief History

It’s midnight Friday in Thessaloniki.  A heavy hip-hop beat reverberates under the sidewalks of Nikis Avenue, as posh and primped revelers stroll through the waterfront Aristotelous Square.  Colored lights illuminating the entryways of competing clubs reflect off of the central fountain and onto the vibrating tide.  Ouzerias serve glass after glass of pale, milky cocktails to crowds of young partygoers celebrating the weekend’s arrival.  In Greece’s “hippest city,” it’s all about the glitz and glam — even on the Sabbath.

What does Shabbat have to do with a city whose Jewish population constitutes less than .004% of the citizenry?  Nothing, if you consult the deficient histories provided by most travel sources.  But beyond the compulsory tributes to Thessaloniki’s ancient ruins lies the rich and tragic – and largely overlooked – history of Greece’s most sizeable and influential Jewish communities.

The formation of “a mother-city” in the Mediterranean basin

With the council and advice of the eminent men and cavaliers of our reign, and of other persons of knowledge and conscience of our Supreme Council, after much deliberation, it is agreed and resolved that all Jews and Jewesses be ordered to leave our kingdoms, and that they never be allowed to return (from the Alhambra Decree, 1492).

With these bitter words, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain expelled the Jews from their territory, handed them over to the Ottomans, and forever changed the landscape of Jewish diaspora.  The Turks welcomed these uprooted “People of the Book” with open arms and pragmatically ushered them to Salonica (modern day Thessaloniki) as an exploitative measure to undermine the Greek presence there (Mazower 2004:48).  In order to assert global dominance over the Christian realm, Greek Orthodox presence in the region’s largest port city – Salonica – needed to be undermined.  The mass exodus of Jews from the Spanish imperial helped to accomplish this goal by diffusing the influence Christians had on Salonican life.  For all intents and purposes, the Ottomans were successful:  By 1520, “more than half of the city’s thirty thousand inhabitants were Jewish” and it had become a key eastern European commercial spot (Mazower 2004:49).

Even more significantly, with the influx of over 15,000 Sephardic Jews, Salonica had become a “miniature Iberia” that operated around the Jewish holy calendar (Mazower 2004:51).  The defining characteristic of this transplanted Spanish enclave was the linguistic predominance of Ladino, a variant of Judaeo-Spanish that combines Hebrew, Old Spanish, Aramaic, Arabic, Turkish, and Greek.  The potency of Jewish culture in Salonica became so overwhelming that the city took the name “Jerusalem of the Balkans” to indicate the closeness of its ties to the “mother-city” (Fleming 2007:63; Mazower 2004:50).  Indeed, it was not until Salonica officially came under Greek sovereignty in 1912 that the Greek language even entered the vernacular of the Jewish community.

A fragmented wider Greek Jewish “community”

Salonican Jews differ significantly from Romaniote (Greek-speaking) Jews in other urban centers such as Ioannina and Athens.  Jews have been living in Greece, or what is now Greece, since the first century C.E., long before Iberian Jews had arrived or noteworthy Christian settlements had taken hold (Fleming 2007:8).  These Jews, though initially part of the Judaic diaspora, fully assimilated into Greek culture.  Their immigrant communities eventually disappeared as they morphed into the larger Greek society.  When Greek Jews from Ioannina immigrated to the United States in the early 20th century, they became part of the global Greek – not Jewish – diaspora.  A Greek tabloid, reporting on a Greek Jewish festival in Manhattan, described the “character” of the evening as wholly  “Greek…because Greek Jews speak, believe and feel as all Greeks and second, because they are Greek people” (Fromm 2008:15).  In 1935, when this article was written, Greek Jews in Salonica had only been learning Greek for twenty years.  (When Salonica became part of Greece in 1912, Greek language instruction became mandatory in all schools, even Jewish ones.)  Fluency in Ladino and Greek was common among the younger generation, but most Jews still only spoke Ladino.  In this way, the Jewish diaspora from Spain remained culturally isolated from the host country and managed to remain, in some way, non-Greek.

Further notes on diaspora

Certain elements of the Salonican Jewish community – namely the creation of a cohesive Sephardic community with its own language – mesh quite well with Turino’s discussion of diaspora (Turino 1994:5-7).  Others, however, due mainly to the finite nature of the exiling of the Jews from Spain, enter a gray area that renders the discourse on diaspora difficult to negotiate.  Jews of Thessaloniki kept as many ties to their “homeland” as logistically possible during the medieval period.  They “worshipped in synagogues named after the old long-abandoned homelands” and kept family names and traditions that “linked them to their past” (Mazower 2004:51).  Clothes, spiritual blessings, foods, business practices, and countless other ties preserved the bond between exiled Jews and the Spain they left behind.  One key element is missing: the desire to return to the homeland.  Sephardic Jews were much happier in a land that allowed them freedom to exist in (relative) peace than in one that expected them to adhere to religious and cultural practices that contradicted their own.  Mark Mazower expands the discussion to include the Jewish diaspora:

…only a few devout older people, usually men, were ever tempted to make the journey southeast to Jerusalem itself, even though it formed part of the same Ottoman realm.  As in Spain, the Jews came to feel – as one historian has put it – “at home in exile” and had no desire to uproot themselves once more, not even when the destination was the Land their holy books promised them (2004:50).

Indeed, to borrow from the Marrano poet Samuel Usque, Salonica “received them [the Jews] with love and affection, as if she were Jerusalem, the old and pious mother of ours” (Mazower 2004:50).  Despite this major differentiation from the standard definition of diaspora, I cannot see the Greek Jews of Salonica as anything other than a quintessential diasporic community.

Tragedy strikes

On April 9, 1941, 450 years after the first wave of Judaeo-Spanish outcasts fled Spain, German troops occupied Salonica and promptly began the process of targeting and harassing the city’s Jewish population.  The city, which had been deemed “one of the main Jewish centres” by one of Adolf Hitler’s closest “researchers,” was soon emptied of 98% of its Jewish population (Mazower 2004:410).  Soon after, all but a handful of the 45,000 Salonican deportees died at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp (Mazower 2004: 411).  Upon release, most survivors immigrated to Israel or the United States.  The few who returned to Thessaloniki have tried to revive the city’s Jewish population by disseminating information about its vast, diverse Jewish history, but as can been seen (or not seen) from the cursory histories provided to modern tourists, there is still much of the story to tell.

A Salonican Musical History (Three selected pieces)

To Gri Gri – Tsifte Telli (The Little Fishing Boat) by Roza Eskanszi (Ρόζα Εσκενάζυ)

Roza Eskanszi (alternative spelling Eskanazi; née Sarah Skenazi) was a Greek Jew from Salonica who helped to shape Greek rebetiko music.  She also exemplifies the assertion of a Greek-Jewish ethnic identity within the context of a larger Greek nationalism that relies heavily on homogeneity.  The rebetiko movement in and of itself is based on a complex tradition of uniting “urban folk,” “proletarian” people in the artistic sphere (Cooper, Dawe 2005:50).  Eskanszi’s intimate involvement in furthering this movement is compounded by the fact that she herself was a member of an ethnic minority in Greece.  She was involved in providing shelter and food to Jews being pursued by the Nazis and was even involved in leadership positions in the resistance movement in Athens.

This song strongly alludes to the singer’s waterfront hometown through the extensive water imagery.  The tune is simple and structured squarely within the rebetiko mold, and Eskanszi’s performance outwardly reveals very little about a Jewish identity.  Eskanszi is considered “the Greek voice” (author’s emphasis) of her era but is consistently referred to as a “Jewish” singer even though there is scarcely any information about her involvement in the Judaeo-Spanish community (Nidel 2005:108).

Roza Eskanszi as a child with her family in Salonica

Photo courtesy of: http://www.btinternet.com/~judyin.london/rozaeskenazi/rozalife.htm

El Incendio de Salonica (The Fire of Salonica) by David Saltiel

This Ladino song tells the grievous story of the Great Fire of 1917 that destroyed nearly “three-quarters of the town within the city walls…and instantly created sixty thousand refugees” (Fleming 2007:76).  The entire city was in shambles, but the Jewish population was by far the most severely injured.

The Jewish community was worst affected for the fire had consumed its historic quarters: most of its thirty-seven synagogues were gone, its librarires, schools, club buildings and offices. … The damage was almost incomprehensible (Mazower 2004:300).

David Saltiel’s fervent baritone poignantly conveys the pain and suffering that Jews felt during that difficult time.  The Judaeo-Spanish text is a palpable medley of the requisite Hebrew, Old Spanish, and Greek, but the Greek infusion is highlighted by the bouzouki instrumentation.  Typically Ladino music is unaccompanied, but this song features both Greek and Sephardic accompaniment.  The steady hollow Sephardic drum provides a stabilizing contrast to the trembling bouzouki melody in a beautiful testament to the diffusion and mélange of musical flavors that make up the Greek-Jewish artistic identity.

Destruction from the Great Fire of Salonica

Photo courtesy of: http://www.mlahanas.de/Greece/Cities/Images/SalonikiFire1917.jpg

Etsi In’ I Zoi (Έτσι είναι η ζωή) (That’s the Way Life Goes) by Marinella

Before World War II, Sephardic “otherness” and resulting distance from the traditional Greek Orthodox community characterized the Salonican Greek Jew identity.  Despite the fact that the Ottoman handover of Salonica to the Greeks resulted in a mass effort to “make the city Greek” in the years leading up to World War I, Greek Jews were never really considered fully “Greek” by their non-Greek counterparts (Mazower 2004: 377).  It was not until Greek Jews were sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau that their Greek identity usurped their Jewishness.   The vast majority of Jews interned at Auschwitz were Ashkenazim.  The linguistic commonalities between Yiddish and German facilitated communication with their captors, but Greek Jews who spoke a multitude of languages (Ladino, Hebrew, Greek, Spanish, etc.) but not the “mother tongue” faced increased hardship (Sevillas 1983:35).  While the Greeks suffered in trying to overcome the language barrier, “testimony after testimony indicates that the one thing about the Greeks for which the German guards had any appreciation was their music” (Fleming 2007:24).  German guards repeatedly requested impromptu performances from the Greek prisoners.  They sang Greek “folk songs, Greek patriotic songs,” and on one occasion even “Greek Christmas songs” to herald in the New Year 1944 (Fleming 2007:24).  The Germans enjoyed the spirited, “exotic” Mediterranean tunes without knowing that oftentimes the Greek singers would change the lyrics to “blow off steam” (Fleming 2007:24).  This song, the final track on the CD, was often sung in the concentration camp, sometimes with its original lyrics, sometimes with circumstantially altered ones.  The title, however, always remained the same: “That’s the way life goes.”  Indeed, for many Greeks, it was this music that kept life going.

Alternative lyrics:

Τη φυλακή εγώ δεν ήξερα / και τώρα τη γνωρίζω
Μες στο κελί γυρίζω / τους τοίχους αντικρίζω.
Όλα στο νου μου έρχονται: / τα γέλια κι οι αγάπες
Όλα γίνηκαν στάχτες στο τρένο της ζωής.

Έτσι είναι η ζωή, κορίτσια,/ πάντα έτσι είναι η ζωή
Νάμεστε κλεισμένες μες στο Αούσβιτς.
Νιάτα που περνούν, χαρές που φεύγουν / πίσω δεν γυρνούν.
Κορίτσια, κάντε υπομονή, θα βγουμε
Από το Αούσβιτς.

I didn’t know prison, now I do
Trapped in the cell, I stare at the walls
All comes back to my mind, the laughter and the loves
All became ashes, on the train of life.

That’s the way life goes, girls, that’s the way life always goes
For us to be closed up in Auschwitz.
Youth that passes, joys that leave and don’t come back.
Girls, be patient, we’ll get out
Of Auschwitz.

Translated by Katherine Fleming

Greek Jews forced to perform calisthenics by Nazi troops in Salonica

Photo courtesy of: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/sephardimsalonica.html

CD TRACKS:

1. Anixi Sti Saloniki/Primavera en Salonico (Spring In Salonica) by Savina Yannatou (Σαβίνα Γιαννάτου) [2:26]

2. Psila Ine to Feggari (The Moon Is High) by Savina Yannatou (Σαβίνα Γιαννάτου) [2:50]

3. Adonay Malakh – Psalm 93 by Congregation of the Ioannina synagogue [2:08]

4. Tora Ta Pulia (Now the Birds) by Anna Raphael [2:30]

5. Purim Purim by M. Cohen [1:25]

6. Thessaloniki mou (Θεσσαλονικη μου) (My Thessaloniki) by Vagelis Trikas (Βαγγέλης Τρίγκας) [3:37]

7. To Gri Gri – Tsifte Telli (Little Fishing Boat) by Roza Eskanszi (Ρόζα Εσκενάζυ) [3:22]

8. Tou Psara O Yios – Serviko (The Fisherman’s Son) by Roza Eskanszi (Ρόζα Εσκενάζυ) [3:15]

9. Miserlou by the Klezmer Conservatory Band [4:19]

10. Misirlou by Manolis Agelopoulos [3:59]

11. Nihtose Horis Fengari (Νύχτωσε χωρίς φεγγάρι) by Stela Haskil [3:30]

12. Et Sha’are Ratzon: A Moment of Grace (Time to the Gates of Salvation to Open) by A. Negrin [3:17]

13. Who Are You? by The Gerard Edery Ensemble [3:33]

14. Ya Salió de la Mar la Galana by The Gerard Edery Ensemble [3:17]

15. Morena Me Llaman by The Gerard Edery Ensemble[4:31]

16. El Incendio de Salonica (The Fire of Salonica) by David Saltiel [4:11]

17. La Galana y la Mar (The Bride and the Sea) by David Saltiel [2:31]

18. La Huérfana del Prisionero (The Orphan of the Prisoner) by David Saltiel [5:03]

19.  Etsi In’ I Zoi (That’s the Way Life Goes) by Marinella [2:25]

WORKS CITED:

Cooper, David and Dawe, Kevin.  2005.  The Mediterranean in music: critical perspectives, common concerns, cultural differences. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press.

Fleming, Katherine Elizabeth. 2007. Greece – A Jewish History.  Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Fleming, Katherine Elizabeth. 2007. “The Stereotyped ‘Greek Jew’ From Auschwitz-Birkenau to Israeli Popular Culture.” Journal of Modern Greek Studies 25.1:17-40.

Fromm, Annette B. 2008. We Are Few: folklore and ethnic identity of the Jewish community of Ioannina, Greece. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.

Mazower, Mark. 2005. Salonica, City of Ghosts. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

Nidel, Richard. 2005. World Music. New York: Routledge.

Sevillias, Errikos. 1983. Athens – Auschwitz.  Athens: Lycabettus Press.

Turino, Thomas. 2004. “Introduction: Identity and the Arts in Diaspora Communities.” In Identity and the Arts in Diaspora Communities. Warren, Michigan: Harmonie Park Press, 3-19.