Remembering the Destruction, Re-animating the Collective

Abstract

As elsewhere in eastern and southern Europe, many Jewish communities in Greece were almost completely destroyed during the Holocaust, which resulted in the near erasure of many distinctive religious and cultural practices. Among these erased communities were the Romaniote Jews, an Indigenous Judeo-Greek population distinct from the Sephardic Jews who arrived in Greece following the Spanish Inquisition. The cultural losses included their musical practices, which were largely orally transmitted. A few Romaniote leaders and practitioners continue the musical-liturgical traditions today in Greece, as well as in the United States and Israel. The living practice of this musical liturgy that is ever-changing in the typical manner of orally transmitted repertoires arguably embodies a process of remembering destruction. This process is shown by the imprint of gaps in memory caused by rupture embedded in the repertoire. While remembering destruction is an intrinsically Jewish practice, it is of specific importance to the Jews of Ioannina (a city that once was, and arguably still is, the spiritual center of Romaniote Jews) and their descendants. In the past decade, an annual pilgrimage to Ioannina to attend a Romaniote Yom Kippur service has become a pivotal experience for both Romaniote Jews and others, enabling them to remember and mourn the pre-Holocaust community. This annual pilgrimage, at the epicenter of Romaniote religious and social significance, generates a new Jewish collective based on Romaniote identity and history that includes the restoration of distinct musical practices.