Romaniotes

Romaniotes

Ρωμανιώτες
Members of the Romaniote Greek Jewish Community of Volos: rabbi Moshe Pesach (front left) with his sons (back)
Regions with significant populations
Greece	1,500+
Israel	45,000
United States	6,500
Turkey	500
Languages
Greek, Hebrew, Yevanic
Religion
Judaism
Related ethnic groups
Greeks, Jews, Constantinopolitan Karaites

The Romaniote Jews or Romaniots (Greek: Ῥωμανιῶτες, Rhōmaniṓtes; Hebrew: רומניוטים‎‎, Romanyotim) are a Jewish community with distinctive cultural features who have lived in Greece and neighboring areas for more than 2,000 years, being the oldest Jewish community in the European continent. Their distinct language was Judaeo-Greek, a Greek dialect, and is today modern Greek or the languages of their new home countries. They derived their name from the old name for the people of the Byzantine Empire, Romaioi. Large communities were located in Thebes, Ioannina, Chalcis, Corfu, Arta, Preveza, Volos, Patras, Corinth, and on the islands of Zakynthos, Lesbos, Chios, Samos, Rhodes, and Cyprus, among others. The Romaniotes are historically distinct from the Sephardim, who settled in Ottoman Greece after the 1492 expulsion of the Jews from Spain.

A majority of the Jewish population of Greece was killed in the Holocaust after Axis powers occupied Greece during World War II. They deported most of the Jews to Nazi concentration camps. After the war, a majority of the survivors emigrated to Israel, the United States, and Western Europe. Today there are still functioning Romaniote Synagogues in Chalkis which represents the oldest Jewish congregation on European ground, in Ioannina, Athens, New York and Israel.