Romaniote American Oral History Project
A community-sourced archive for preservation, research, and inspiration
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What does it mean to be a Romaniote Jew in the US in the 21st Century? After more than 100 years in America, Kehila Kedosha Janina is excited to launch this new research project to document our community today, exploring questions of identity, culture, preservation, and adaptation.
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We want to hear from you! Submit testimonies, family stories, recipes, photographs, traditions, songs, memories, and more. Contact Theo Canter at Theo@kkjsm.org to learn more and contribute your voice as we write the next chapter of our community’s story.
​Project Overview
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The Romaniote community has had a presence in Greece dating back millennia, with a rich, varied, and distinct Jewish existence despite their small size — both historically and especially after the Holocaust. There has been some historical and anthropological research on the community’s traditions and culture, both religious and social, but mostly focused on the community in Greece. There has been even less research produced to study the Romaniote community in America.
Kehila Kedosha Janina, the only Romaniote synagogue in the Western Hemisphere, is excited to launch the Romaniote American Oral History Project. KKJ will use the resources of our community network - numbering in the thousands, across regions and ages - to catalog highlights of more than a century of the Romaniote American experience. While remaining a strong community with links to our homeland across the ocean, Romaniote Americans have achieved a great level of both societal integration and economic success in a variety of fields, akin to other members of both the Greek-American and Jewish-American diasporas. Although many of our community members no longer have living family links to Greece, nor speak the Greek language of our ancestors, there remains a strong connection to our heritage, particularly the social and cultural traditions both inside and outside of the synagogue.
The following materials highlight common themes expressed by community members through dozens of interviews conducted for this project, including the themes of:
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Cultural Adaptation and Integration
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Language
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Food
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Passover
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Community Gatherings
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Religious Life
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These highlights reflect personal quotes, memories, family traditions, and facets of community members’ Romaniote identity.
Cultural Adaptation and Integration
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The Greek Jewish American community has been a part of, and reflective of, a parallel trajectory of the wider Greek-American community. From the early days on the Lower East Side, up to the present, members of our community maintained connections with their Greek Christian neighbors in New York as they all aimed to both integrate societally and preserve their native language, food, music, and way of life. Although over time the Greek Jewish community in America integrated within the larger society, in and out of the Jewish world, the memory of Greece remains a potent and inspiring force.
The first generation of Romaniote immigrants, who arrived with modest means in search of a better life, strove to assimilate into American society. In addition, they adapted to an American Jewish society dominated by Ashkenazi culture. As families moved beyond the Lower East Side, many attended Ashkenazi synagogues and schools, leading to the loss of some of the unique Greek Jewish traditions or their fusion with a new Americana.
​​“When they came to New York from Greece, my grandparents moved to Brighton Beach to be by water like they had been in Ioannina by the lake. When I was a child, my grandmother would take her coffee and sit in the living room, and I'd sit at her feet and say, ‘tell me stories of Greece.’ She painted a picture in my mind of what Ioannina was like. When my husband and I finally went there in 1972, a year after we got married, Ioannina was exactly as I had imagined it as a child.”
- Rhoda Elison Hirsch
Bar Mitzvah of Jimmy Ganis, 1952, Brooklyn
“We were a tight-knit family, though I didn't know much about my Greekness. My upbringing couldn’t have been more ordinary. My mom made a nice tri-tip steak, but we had no special Greek food as kids. I can’t think of anything in our home that was reminiscent of our heritage except for when we went to grandma and grandpa. Then it got ethnic and great. I loved my family, and I knew I was Greek, but it didn't mean very much to me when I was a kid. It sure as heck meant everything to my grandparents, especially around Passover when we’d all sit around and listen to my grandfather praying for hours and hours. We were just sitting there trying to understand how to get out of there.”
- Sid Ganis
“I used to live on the Upper West Side, and there was a Greek church on 91st Street around the corner. One time I passed by, they were having a big block party with live Greek music and dancing. Suddenly, I saw our Greek-Jewish family friend, Esther Cohen, dancing in the circle. She came up to me and she gestured around her and said, ‘Jimmy, we are all of this. And Jewish too!’”
- Jim Harris
“I go to a Greek restaurant in my neighborhood, and the owner’s parents are from Thessaloniki. Every time I go there, he seems to have another new Greek Jewish friend sitting there, and he’s so happy to introduce me, that we should all know each other just because we're Greek and Jewish. It makes me feel a strong pride. And at the same time, how our Romaniote culture is endangered. I want to protect it, to share our story. So many people, even in the Jewish world, don’t know we exist. And we are one big family, with a lot of love.”
- Lauren Meller
Lauren Meller and Liz Alderman in front of 295 Broome Street where the Ovadia family lived
Vintage Lower East Side Home Videos from the Eskononts Family 1950
“Of the kids that I went to high school with in Los Angeles, many of their parents were Holocaust survivors, and many of them didn't speak English. They were very nice people, but they spoke to me in Yiddish, and they seemed surprised, to put it nicely, that my family were Greek Jews. They tended not to understand. Growing up, I felt at least as comfortable with the Italians or the Greeks, having more in common with them in terms of food, tradition, and personality.”
- Kenny Solomon
Language
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The Greek language is a defining feature of the Romaniote community, both standard Greek as well as Yevanic, the traditional Judeo-Greek dialect spoken in Ioannina. A common theme expressed among many families is how the Greek language was used as a ‘secret’ language by the older generations to hide things from the children, as well as the increasing pressure of linguistic assimilation in America. With time, as it became spoken less as a native language in the home, Greek has remained a presence through words, sayings, and, in more recent years, as a language learned by descendants who want to reconnect with their roots. ​
“Both my parents grew up in households in which English was encouraged. My mother knew some Greek because she spoke Greek with her grandparents. My father knew less Greek than my mother. My parents would speak Greek when they didn't want us to understand. But my father would understand so little that he would say things like “Oh, you mean we're going shopping for the bicycle today?” So he would give away the secret.”
- Sandra Levy
“Romaniote, the word, comes from ‘little Romans.’ And our ancestors were spread not only in Greece but connected throughout the Mediterranean. My father spoke the Jewish dialect of Greek with his parents, which had influences from all around the region, and when he would speak to a Greek Christian, they would typically say, ‘boy, you have a very strange Greek.’”
- Kenny Solomon
“My father spoke Greek only off to the side with his siblings in a hushed tone, so we didn't know what they were saying. It was their secret language, but I loved listening to it. My father claimed there was a Greek word for every English word. And so growing up, I would ask him, What's the word for this? If he didn't know it, he'd make it up.”
- Mordy Eskononts
“The first Greek words that I learned were from my grandmother. She'd say to me, in Greek, “kalimera, thes kafe?” (good morning, want coffee?) And that's when I started drinking coffee. I was nine. I never learned to speak Greek as a child because it was a secret language. My mother's generation, although they understood Greek, didn't speak it because they wanted to assimilate. They were the generation who wanted to eat white bread sandwiches, to try and fit in, even though they didn't.”
- Ivy Sher
Ivy Sher’s mother, Becky Coffino, as a child, with her aunt and cousin
Food
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Whether for family gatherings, holidays, or daily life, the dining table serves as an important center of Greek-Jewish culture. Even as other cultural elements may have faded over time, food has remained a distinct way in which Romaniote Americans connect with their heritage, their past, and their community.
“On Thursday nights, we always had spaghetti and singatu. Friday night, we always had chicken. Since there was no cooking on Saturday, we always had lamb. I got some of those recipes from my sister. For many years, and I still do it now, when I'm together with my family, I always have a singatu dinner.”
- Rubin Battino
“My grandmother had her homemade phyllo dough hanging off her shower rod. She made fresh Greek yogurt in the fridge in little cups. There was always kouloria, those sesame pastries that look like pinwheels and kourabiés in tins in the house.”
- Renee Motola
“My mother was never a great cook. She was happy to put cornflakes and bananas on the table for dinner, and my father accepted it. But when it came to the holidays, she would make tomatoes yemistos (stuffed tomatoes with meat), fasoulakia (stewed green beans), bamia (okra), and keftedes (spiced meatballs). We would always start the Passover meal with minestra, which is an egg lemon soup. To this day, we always make it. And to break the fast after Yom Kippur we would have baklava and coffee.”
- Jim Harris
Koulouria
Rubin Battino cooking Singatu
Renee Motola as a child with her family
“Our father would make trips down to Halsted Street, in Chicago Greektown. He’d come back with loads of feta cheese, olives, olive oil, and other things — he definitely, like had a connection to the food. He was born right after his parents came from Greece, and didn’t have us until he was older, so he had a lot of traditions that he didn't fully pass down. But he talked about how his mother made challah every week, and he would talk about bourekas, chicken, and the little cookies that I only later learned were called bimuelos. He talked about this all so much that when my sister and I were kids, in the early 90s, sort of pre-internet, we went to the library and bought books to learn how to bake challah, because it just seemed like something so special that we should learn how to do. Kind of funny for like, two suburban kids at the time.”
- Alizah Salario
“From my childhood, I remember the foods quite vividly. My mother was a wonderful cook. One of the favorite things that she would make is yaprakia, which is like stuffed grape leaves and domates me kreas - meat and stuffed tomatoes. And all sorts of desserts: koulouria, baklava, kataif.”
- Sol Velelis
Stuffed Tomatoes
Passover
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While holidays provide a moment to gather in prayer in the synagogue, they are also marked by festive meals at home, a chance for family members and friends to reunite and reconnect. Chief among these is the Passover Seder, complete with many special songs, foods, and traditions in the Romaniote rite. Some of these foods closely parallel the Greek foods eaten the same week on Easter by Greek Orthodox Christians. With celebration in Hebrew, Greek, and English, the Seder serves as a forum for family cohesion, involving the children, those born in America, and those who have married in, to learn and experience the rituals together.
“My grandfather Jacob would lead the Seder. He would do it first in Hebrew, then he would do it in Greek, and then he would do it in English. He would do all three in one Seder. We would set up mattresses around the table so the kids could sleep. Before the Seder, we would put our hands on the table and say “ze ha shulhan asher lifnei Adonai.” We would sing Ehad Mi Yodea in Greek — "ena pios kserei, ena ego ksero." We would reach a certain point in the Seder, and my mother, who was no bigger than 4 foot 11, would burst out of the kitchen, booming 'Pesah! matza! u maror!'”
- Jim Harris
Menahem and Matza Families Passover Seder
“I remember my grandfather telling a story of how, for Passover, his father would roast a whole lamb in the backyard, on the Lower East Side. I guess to respect the animal, or it was Greek tradition, you ate every part of that animal, including the brains. But for me, it was just scary. And to this day, our family always has the hard-boiled egg fight at the Seder like they would do in Greece.”
- Lauren Meller
“We had very special songs we sang at the Seder. One time, we invited a non-Greek Jewish guest, and he was so confused. I especially remember the excitement of reciting the four questions in both Greek and Hebrew when I was the youngest child.”
- Rubin Battino
Community Gatherings
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As the Romaniote community spread out beyond the Lower East Side, some moved to areas where Greek Jews established communities in Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Long Island, while others assimilated into non-Greek Jewish communities. Despite this geographical spread, many maintained strong community links through family gatherings, religious events, and cultural events. This included engagement in broader Greek-American society’s food and music, as well as social organizations like the Pashas.
“My dad was big into the Pashas. He was at one point their president, and he loved that. In fact, he had a license plate, which my sister still has, that says “Pasha 27” (his birth year). We would have weekends at a hotel in the Catskills, and they would have all these Greek Jews, Romaniote and Sephardic, all centered around the music. The Mike Daniels band would play for the whole weekend, and the clarinet music was my favorite thing. In fact, that was the album that I stole from my dad. It was called “Mr. Greek Clarinet.”
- Mordy Eskononts
“My parents really loved going to the Pasha gatherings, and even after my father passed away, my mom still liked doing that, and she would take me. I remember as a child it was so vibrant, with lots of music, full of warmth, people all so happy to see each other. My mother took the time to say, this is your father's aunts, sister-in-law, whatever. I remember as a child, asking my mom ‘are we just related to everybody here?’ Because it felt like such a loving, tight-knit community.”
- Sandra Levy
Mr. Greek Clarinet Album
Pasha Weekend videos featured in "The Last Greeks on Broome Street"
My mother was very proud of her Romaniote heritage, and we used to get together with her family. The Pashas had these Greek festivals at a park in Long Island, and she went to some of them, but she never really got me involved. We always had Greek food at my aunt’s. And often we went out to the Acropolis restaurant in midtown New York, along what they called back then ‘bouzouki boulevard’ and my family always loved the Greek music. My mother used to dance, I especially remember how she danced the misirlou at my wedding.”
- Deborah Schnapf
Nightclub on Allen Street, 1942. Library of Congress
“When I bring my family to the Greek Jewish Festival every year, it is our day of complete and total pride. It's beautiful, because some people walk around that festival and they don't even realize that Greek Jews exist. We had the biggest percentage lost in the Holocaust, but at the same time, here we are dancing and celebrating our heritage. It's the Greek spirit mixed with Judaism — have a good time, be a kind person, eat well. I love that feeling of being part of the community, something unique and interesting and different. It's almost obnoxious how much I love it.”
- Renee Motola
Greek Jewish Festival
Roza Eskenazi Album
“When my sisters and I had folk dancing class in junior high school, everyone asked me how we all knew the misirlou dance? I knew it because we danced it at all of our Bat Mitzvahs. We had that song at many family celebrations.”
- Liz Alderman
Religious Life
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While the community integrated into the American and Jewish mainstream and ascended the socioeconomic ladder, often moving to more affluent neighborhoods when given the opportunity, many maintained their connections to Kehila Kedosha Janina on the Lower East Side and to the other Romaniote synagogues that once existed in New York.
“When I was growing up, we were active at the East Midwood Jewish Center in Brooklyn, and sometimes the Sephardic Center of Mapleton. On special occasions, we would go down to Kehila Kedosha Janina. And those were always magical times for me: the sounds, the liturgy, were so different - not just the pronunciation of words, but the feeling hit me deep in my soul. So much so that when I would bring my wife and kids down to the city, they would also get so excited - for the prayers, the melodies, and of course for the food at kiddush.”
- Jim Harris
Jim Harris and granddaughter in front of Kehila Kedosha Janina
“I enjoy the services and the community, but especially it’s the feeling that I’m sitting in the very seat in the synagogue where my father sat, where my uncle sat - it’s that connection with the past, alongside the ritual, that gives me meaning.”
- Stewart Miles
“My father’s intonation of the Hebrew was distinctly Romaniote. On Shabbat, he would often go to the Rabbi Jacob Joseph minyan in the Mesivta Yeshiva building on East Broadway. The rituals were basically Ashkenazi around our house. But occasionally on holidays, he would also attend Kehila Kedosha Janina, since that was his special heritage.”
- Elliot Nachman
“I am very Jewish — in a secular way, not religious. And extremely proud to be Romaniote. Considering how few Romaniotes there ever were, and how few survived the Holocaust, I feel very special, chosen. Now, I never went to synagogue more than 3 or 4 times a year, and I don’t live in New York, but I still consider the Kehila ‘my’ synagogue.”
- Kenny Solomon
Bar Mitzvah of Seth Kofinas.
Photo by Vincent Giordano
“Our father used to attend a German synagogue in Chicago, where upstairs they had a separate Sephardic minyan. I knew that he felt different than the other Jews around us, but it didn't manifest explicitly that much in our day-to-day life, or even our Jewish life. It was clear it was very much a part of him and very important to him, and he certainly passed down a lot to us, but it wasn’t intentional.”
- Alizah Salario
Reconnecting to Heritage, Looking Forward
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Many Greek Jews sought to assimilate into American culture out of communal and individual pressure, and much of our culture has also been passively lost with time, assimilation, and migration. Despite this, many in the Greek American Jewish community have actively chosen to reengage with their heritage today. Often, this is after three or four generations in America, sometimes individuals who have only one Romaniote grandparent or great-grandparent.
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This renewed interest in reconnecting with Romaniote heritage includes all facets of spiritual and social life: learning the Greek language and visiting ancestral sites in Greece, recording family genealogy and reconnecting with extended family members, listening to folk recordings of Greek melodies and prayers, and much more. For those in the New York area, this renewal has been manifested in part by new generations attending services at Kehila Kedosha Janina and events hosted by the Greek Jewish & Sephardic Young Professionals Network, as well as museum exhibits, lectures, and educational programs that have grown in recent years.
“My grandfather would always stand by the bema at our Romaniote synagogue in Brooklyn, and he wasn’t a cantor, but he had an amazing voice. When I hear the Romaniote melody for ‘Az Yashir Moshe’ it’s like I’m back in synagogue as a child. I would be so proud, even as an adult, to come to services with my two brothers. I love how when they call you up for an aliyah, they mention your father’s name and your family name - it’s expressing that link of hundreds of years and generations. When I first started coming to the Kehila years ago, I was a young 'Turk.' Today, I’m the old guard. But I just love that feeling of community and family.”
- Jesse Colchamiro
Colchamiro brothers
Greek Jewish & Sephardic Young Professionals Network in Ioannina
“My mother really inculcated me with this sense of being different, being special, a minority within a minority within a minority. When I was growing up all of my friends were Ashkenazi, and they thought that I was Sephardic, and she would correct me, ‘no, we're Romaniote, it's different.’ In school, they taught us to say Shabbos or Shabbat. But my mother would say, No! It's Shabbath! A lot of linguists say that Romaniote pronunciation is probably the closest to biblical Hebrew, and that’s another source of pride for me. We've kept this light alive for 2,000 years, whether or not you believe the story of the slaves coming to Greece on the ship, and it’s made me feel that we just got to keep this light going. My wife is not Greek at all, so our children are only a quarter Greek. But my son and my daughter and their families all feel deeply Romaniote. They eat the minestra for the Seder, they sing the melodies for the holidays, and they call me Papou. So I guess I’ve been successful in passing this identity down.”
- Jim Harris
“Growing up, I just wanted to eat at McDonald's rather than enjoy my mother's wonderful yaprakia and yemista. I wanted to feel American like my classmates, whose parents were all born in this country. I just wanted to go out with friends, and I wasn’t interested in spending time with my parents. As I got older, I started to realize how much I could have gotten from them. My father died when I was just 21, and it’s my biggest regret not spending more time with him. When you start to have your own children, and you realize what it is to be a father, I just wish I had more time with him to learn from him and hear his stories. He was so outgoing and effervescent, especially considering he lost his entire family in Greece in the Holocaust. It’s because of the love I got from my parents that I'm very proud of being Romaniote. As far as passing it down, belonging to the KKJ community, and the warmth I feel there, really makes me feel proud of it, and makes me want to share it with my children and grandchildren.
- Sol Velelis
Get Involved
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For this project, we have gathered stories, memories, and artifacts from more than 35 individuals currently located across the world — more than we can include on this page. A common theme throughout these testimonies has been a significance and pride in the Romaniote identity, alongside a feeling of loss and curiosity.
As a synagogue and cultural center, Kehila Kedosha Janina strives to keep the flame of our Romaniote heritage alive and to provide a venue for all who are curious to come and learn. We welcome your contributions of stories, thoughts, and your active participation in our vibrant living community. Contact us at info@kkjsm.org to get involved today.