The Jewish Community of Salonika

The Jewish community of Salonika (Thessaloniki), a port city in northeast Greece, certainly dates to the second century and possibly earlier. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Jews from various European countries began to settle in the city. After a brief period of Venetian rule, in 1430, Salonika became part of the Ottoman Empire. From the end of the fifteenth century, Jews and New Christians fleeing persecution took refuge in Salonika. These immigrants established thirty separate communities and by 1553 the Jewish population numbered approximately twenty thousand. Many Jews engaged in commerce, especially the silk trade, while others worked as weavers and dyers. The community enjoyed a golden age in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, becoming a major center of Jewish learning, kabbalah, Hebrew poetry, and secular study. An edict issued in 1568 guaranteed the privileges of the Jews, although nonetheless the Ottoman authorities often extorted large sums of money. Their community regulations, written in Ladino in a register that covers the years 1555 to 1676, reflect the attempt of the heads of the community to unify all the Jewish communities from different lands and traditions under one leadership.