The Judeo-Greco Tradition We must close our eyes and imagine the ancient Roman Empire…at that time, one million inhabitants out of a population of ten million were Jewish. The majority of this vast number lived in cities founded by Alexander the Great (or his successors) or by Romans, who built upon the Greek urban model. These cities were international centers and while Latin was the language of the law and government, Greek was the language of the people and commerce. The empire included lands from Mesopotamia to Spain and within this Greek-speaking and Greek-thinking world, the Jews examined and re-examined their identity. It is no surprise that the first translation of the Holy Scriptures was from Hebrew into Greek. This translation, the Septuagint, became the common religious and literary document among Greek-speaking Jews and was the scripture from of which Christianity emerged. This time in history is both fascinating and important, as we witness one of the world's major religions being born from another, all under the veil of Greek culture and tradition. We cannot but agree that these sweeping events are the seeds from which our modern world grew. Many of the Jewish communities in the Greek and Roman Empires defined themselves largely by their "Greek-ness"...their Greek language and customs. "It is from the hellenized milieu", states Professor Steven Bowman, "that Greek-speaking Jews drew their outward identity. One of the major principles of the diaspora [a Greek term reflecting normal dispersion and colonization as opposed to the Hebrew 'galut' meaning exile] is the dominating influence of the majority population on the Jews in its midst. The tension between accommodation to local culture and rejection or adjustment of that which is forbidden by Jewish sources is the central question of the study of Judaism in its diaspora as well as in its homeland". To understand this phenomenon, and to see how the Romanitoes began, we must explore, as best we can, this time and place and create for ourselves a simple mental image of a very complex set of socio-economic and religious circumstances. In the time just before and following the birth of Jesus, we see a Greek Diaspora in Judea…many Greeks settled in these lands and at the same time, we see a Jewish Diaspora leaving its homeland and settling throughout foreign lands. Alexandria, Antioch and Damascus were major urban areas that attracted the Jewish Diaspora, along with Asia Minor, the Aegean and Greece. The Jewish Diaspora began to take on a form of its own. Many separate communities resembled one another by accepting similar institutions, such as the synagogue (as the center of religious and social life), burial societies, community services and ritually clean food. And by this time, most of these Greek-speaking Jews lost their proficiency in Hebrew. This was the time of Paul of Tarsus; he traveled into the heart of the Hellenistic world…Ionian Asia Minor, Ephesus, Sardes, Macedonia, Veroia, Athens and Corinth. Over the next three to four centuries, the Jewish sect known as Christianity grew and during the same time, the Roman Empire was in decline; Roman authority was weakened by the invasion of Germanic tribes and the Emperor, Constantine the Great, converted to Christianity. Constantinople became the 'Second Rome' and its diminished empire consisted largely of Anatolia and the Balkans. The great Greco-Roman world of antiquity was gone and what remained was now the Byzantine Empire. Its Jews spoke the official language of Greek…and these Greek-speaking Jewish communities of Rome (Roman citizenship) were the Romaniote Jews. Over time, in the western Germanic lands of the old empire, Latin replaced Greek and in the east and North Africa, Greek was replaced by Arabic. The Romaniote Jews were left in the remaining pocket of Greek speaking territory. This question of language is important, as it becomes one of the threads that create and hold the Romaniote communities together and is what also makes its liturgy, the Minhag Romania, so distinctive and unique. The communities of Thessaloniki, Chalkis and Crete are among the most ancient Romaniote communities...others include Arta, Patras, Preveza, Corfu, Istanbul, Attica and Corinth.