
By Connor Hayes
Director of Community Programming
In late March, the Lehigh Valley’s Partnership2Gether Committee will be embarking on a journey to Greece—only this odyssey won’t take 10 years, as the original did.
Over the course of a week, the committee, along with delegates from Yoav, Israel, will visit classic Greek sites like the Acropolis and the Agora, while also exploring an often unsung element of Greece’s history: its Jewish story. Arriving in antiquity, the first Greek Jews, or Romaniotes, gave rise to one of the oldest communities in Europe.
With the Alhambra Decree and the Spanish expulsion, Jewish life in Greece was infused with the Sephardic diaspora, who made their new home in the northern Greek city of Salonika (now called Thessaloniki). For nearly 500 years, Jewish life in Salonika flourished, leading the city to become known as the Jerusalem of the Balkans. At its height, it was home to dozens of synagogues and one of the most powerful textiles trades in the Mediterranean, largely due to Sephardic trading dynasties. The Partnership2Gether travelers will get the chance to explore this legacy, visiting some of the last historic synagogues as well as the Jewish Museum of Thessaloniki.
Delegates from the Lehigh Valley and Yoav will also meet with their Greek counterparts in Athens, a community that is still rebuilding from the Holocaust and from the financial crises that have affected their country in recent years.
Through this trip, the delegations hope to build new bonds with another part of the Diaspora, while also refining and developing new programming for their home communities.