About This Course

In the first section of the course, we're going to talk about the introduction, about the Jews under Hellenism and the late Classical period in the Byzantine Empire. What is Romaniote culture? What is this Jewish Greek culture and prayer rite of the Jews in the Byzantine empire? Then we're talking about what happened with Sephardic Jewry, how they arrived in Greece and the Greek Peninsula. And we're going to talk about how Italian Jews were expelled from Sicily in Apulia. How they arrived first in Western Greece and Corfu and then Ioannina and then later in Salonika. And we'll talk about when the Sephardic Iberian expulsive arrived in Salonika and the various parts of Greece; when they came from Portugal especially when the Inquisition was initiated in Portugal, in 1536.

We're going to talk about the golden era of Salonika in the 16th century with all the great poets and rabbis and the luminaries. We will explore each of the individual communities and how they amalgamated with each other because it was just too much. Originally each community had its own yeshiva, own school, own fabric industry, own treasury, own printing press all that became one eventually. Then the religious fervor and ecstasy and despair led to the rise of Sabbateanism, the false messiah of Shabtai Tzvi and about what happened afterward when there were three sects of Sabbatian followers who became a significant minority in the city called the Dumay. Later on, in the course, we'll talk about when they were transferred to Turkey and Istanbul and the general population exchanged in 1922, 1923.