The Lifeworld of Etz Hayyim Synagogue, Chania, Crete
Part 1: Chania, Crete, a Pearl of the Eastern Mediterranean
The city of Chania is one of the oldest continuously occupied urban areas in Europe, arguably the oldest. A port city on the western side of Crete’s north coast, its origins date to around 3500 BCE, the earliest era of the Bronze Age civilization known as the Minoans. In Classical Greece, Chania was an important city-state (called Kydonia by Homer), and likewise functioned as a city-state after the Roman conquest in the first century BCE. Between the fourth and ninth centuries CE the city was part of the Byzantine Empire, then conquered by the Arabs, then again part of the Byzantine Empire from the 10th through early 13th centuries. It was part of the Venetian Republic from the 13th through the mid-17th centuries, and then part of the Ottoman Empire from the mid-17th through the early 20th centuries (with a short period of de facto independence). Since 1913, Chania has been part of the Greek State.
Like Crete itself, Chania has, in other words, been touched by—imprinted with—peoples and cultures from around the eastern Mediterranean. The old city strongly resembles Venice, with Turkish architectural additions, plus a dash of 20th century modernism, amid Minoan excavations and Byzantine walls. It is something like a palimpsest, a surface on which something has been written and erased repeatedly, with the erasures only partial, and the new inscriptions beginning from the remains of the old.
Its historical richness, its natural beauty, plus many other things about contemporary Chania—the excellence of its food, the hospitality of its people—have made the city increasingly popular with visitors. The lure of the city in all of these aspects has, in turn, been a critical factor in the renascence of Etz Hayyim, a small but remarkable Jewish community undertaking a daring experiment in the building of community after genocide. If Chania is a pearl of the eastern Mediterranean, Etz Hayyim is one of the pearls in the pearl.
Jason Francisco / View of the Venetian Harbor, Chania
Jason Francisco / St. Nicholas Church, formerly the main mosque of Chania
Jason Francisco / Fundaments of the Venetian city, Chania
Jason Francisco / Excavation of the ancient Minoan city beneath Chania
Jason Francisco / The old city, Chania
Jason Francisco / The seawall, Chania
Jason Francisco / The Venetian Harbor, Chania, looking north on a calm day in winter
Jason Francisco / Panorama of Chania looking south from the lighthouse in the Venetian Harbor
Part 2: Evraiki, the old Jewish Quarter of Chania
Jewish communities in Crete have existed since the fourth and third centuries BCE, when Jews from Eretz Israel/Palestine and Egypt first established settlements on the island (as elsewhere in Greece) following the conquest and Hellenisation of the Near East by Alexander the Great. Cretan Jewry is, in other words, one of the oldest diaspora communities.
By the time of the Roman conquest of Crete in the first century BCE, Jewish communities were thriving in most of the major cities including Gortyna, Kissamos, Chania, Rethymnon, Knossos and Sitia. This remained the case henceforth, through the short-lived Arab takeover of Crete (825-961 CE) and the second Byzantine period (961-1204 CE). Venice purchased Crete in 1204, coveting Crete (like every foreign ruler before them) as a naval base, and a strategic point from which they could control eastern Mediterranean trade routes. Venetian accounts tell us that Crete’s Jewish community grew significantly over the 14th and 15th centuries, especially after the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in 1453, and again in 1492 from the expulsion of the Jews from Spain. By the end of the 16th century, Crete’s Jewish population numbered about 1600, half of whom lived in Iraklio. The Jewish quarter in Chania—situated behind the harbor on the west side of the old city, along Kondylaki, Skoufon, Zampeliou and Portou Streets—most likely dates to the Venetian period. The Ottomans conquered Crete between 1645 and 1669, leading to a period of relative religious, political and economic liberty for Crete’s Jews. Crete was not part of the Greek state that gained its independence in 1832, leading to a series of Christian Orthodox rebellions in the 19th century aimed at incorporating Crete into that state. Crete’s Jews were caught between the contending majority groups and much like the Cretan Muslims, did not fit the increasingly Christian and exclusivist definition of Greek nationalism. As a consequence of political and economic pressure, many Jews left the island by the end of the 19th century.
The German occupation of Greece began in April 1941 and lasted until 1945. The Germans attacked Crete in May 1941, and the three main cities of Chania, Rethymno and Iraklio were badly bombed. The attack was met by fierce resistance from the local population and by the Allied forces, but the island eventually fell in the twelve-day Battle of Crete. As in other areas under German occupation, the island’s Jewish population was required to provide detailed lists of its members, almost all of whom lived in Chania. In the early summer of 1944, the Germans implemented a plan to round up and deport the Jews of Crete to Auschwitz. On 21 May 1944, Chania’s Jews were arrested and taken to the Ayias prison near Chania for two weeks, then loaded onto cargo trucks and taken to the Makasi Fortress prison near Iraklio for several days, then loaded onto a steamship called the Tánaïs, along with Cretan resistance fighters and Italian prisoners of war. In the early morning hours of 9 June 1944, as the Tánaïs sailed for Athens, a British warship torpedoed it some 60 km northeast of Iraklio. All prisoners onboard drowned, including approximately 269 Jews, the last members of a community whose history stretched back almost 2500 years. For the half-century following the Holocaust, Jewish life was defunct in Chania and all of Crete, and by anyone’s best guess, would remain so. In fact something else was to be the case.
Jason Francisco / Panorama of Evraiki looking north. The photographs below explore the streets of Evraiki, Chania's old Jewish quarter.
Jason Francisco / View from the window of the erstwhile home of Chania's rabbis on Kondylaki street. Before the Holocaust, Chania's largest synagogue, Beth Sholom, stood precisely where building with the grey roof now stands, blocking the view of what is today the terra-cotta colored building with the green windows.
Part 3: Etz Hayyim and its Rebirth
The Etz Hayyim synagogue dates to the 14th century. The building was originally a Venetian Catholic church, the Church of St. Katherine, located in the heart of the small, centuries-old Jewish neighbourhood, Evraiki. The church was damaged in the 1540s during one of the Ottoman attacks on the city; a century later, after the Ottoman conquest of Crete, the building was acquired by Chania’s Jewish community, which then converted it into a synagogue. Prior to the Second World War, Kal Kadosh Etz Hayyim followed the Romaniote rite, and served the city’s Jews along with with Beth Shalom (bombed in 1941), a Sephardic synagogue. After the Second World War, Etz Hayyim was extensively damaged, first by squatters and then as a dumping ground for neighborhood garbage, as a chicken pen, dog kennel, and storeroom.
In the 1990s, the fortunes of Etz Hayyim changed through the vision and leadership of a Chania resident, Nikos Stavroulakis (1932-2017)—an artist, writer, academic, and founding director of the Jewish Museums of Athens and Thessaloniki. In 1995, an earthquake caused extensive damage to Etz Hayyim, and Stavroulakis recognized that action had to be taken, or the building would be lost. In 1995, he gave a lecture about Etz Hayyim in New York, resulting in Etz Hayyim being added to the World Monuments Fund’s prestigious list of the world’s “100 Most Endangered Sites.” With this recognition, Stavroulakis acquired the funding to fully restore the synagogue. The process took three years and was headed by Stavroulakis himself under the aegis of the World Monuments Fund in cooperation with the Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece (KIS). Funding was provided by the Rothschild, Lauder, Rosenberg, Rose and other foundations and donations from interested individuals. The synagogue was officially rededicated on 10 October 1999. Approximately 350 people were present, including members of the various Greek Jewish communities, representatives from the Orthodox and Catholic churches in Chania, and local and international dignitaries, including Constantine Mitsotakis, the former Greek Prime Minister.
Today, the fully restored Etz Hayyim Synagogue complex comprises the synagogue sanctuary positioned between two courtyards. Visitors enter the main gate into the pebble-paved northern courtyard, which functions as a forecourt for the synagogue sanctuary. The entire surface of the courtyard is covered by a mosaic that was discovered Nikos Stavroulakis under a layer of cement poured by squatters in the mid-1940s-1950s. This pebble pavement most likely dates to the 15th or 16th century, and is visibly flattened in areas from foot traffic over a long period of time. The interior of the sanctuary is laid out according to the tradition of Romaniote Jewish communities in Greece, which differs from that of Sephardi synagogues. In keeping with all synagogues, the Ehal is located on the eastern wall, but the Bimah is positioned axially opposite on the sanctuary’s west wall, typical of Greek Romaniote synagogues. The Ehal, Bimah, and benches are new constructions, handmade in rare Indonesian hardwoods, beautifully designed and exquisitely carved. The southern exit from the sanctuary leads to a memorial to the Cretan Jewish community, as well as one of the former women’s galleries, the restored Mikvah (the only one in Crete), and the southern garden, containing restored 19th century tombs.
Jason Francisco / View of Etz Hayyim synagogue, 2023
Probably Nikos Stavroulakis / Etz Hayyim before renovation, c. 1995. Below: Jason Francisco / Etz Hayyim's spaces, 2022-2023.
Jason Francisco / View toward the bimah in the Etz Hayyim sanctuary
Photographer unknown / Nikos Stavroulaikis, n.d.
Photographer unknown / Nikos Stavroulakis, Chania, n.d.
Part 4: Jewish Places in Contemporary Greece
Jewish history in Greece extends at least to the fourth century BCE—long before the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, Greece was the gateway for Jews to Europe. Traditionally, Greek Jews were known as Romaniotes—Greek-speaking, Hellenized, with a distinct liturgical tradition. Especially after the expulsion of Jews from the Iberian Peninsula (Spain in 1492, Portugal in 1536), a large number of Sephardic Jews also came to reside in Greece, as in other parts of the Ottoman Empire, building communities in the commercial cities of northern Greece and the Aegean islands, for example Thessaloniki, Kavala, and Rhodes.
On the eve of the Second World War, the Greek Jewish population numbered approximately 80,000—a vibrant community with a prominent role in the economic, social, political, and intellectual life of the country. Almost 90% of Greek Jews were murdered in the Holocaust. Today, some 5,000 Jews live in Greece, in nine formally recognized communities. The two largest are in Athens and Thessaloniki, with much smaller communities—some fewer than 30 individuals—in Larissa, Ioannina, Volos, Trikala, Chalkis, Corfu, and Rhodes. KIS defines former Jewish communities as Alexandroupoli, Arta, Veria, Didimoticho, Drama, Zante, Kavala, Karditsa, Kastoria, Komotini, Kos, Orestiada, Xanthi, Patras, Preveza, Serres, Florina, and (incorrectly) Chania.
For those interested to seek out Jewish patrimony in current and former places of Jewish life, the overall picture resembles the post-genocidal realities to be encountered in Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania and other eastern European countries. For example, intact and marked Jewish cemeteries exist in Athens, Alexandroupoli, Chalkis, Drama, Orestiada, Trikala, Veria, and Xanthi, while destroyed, unmarked, and overbuilt cemeteries exist in many other places. In Argostoli, Arta, Chania, Didimoticho, Florina, Kastoria, Komotini, Iraklio, Larissa, Nafpaktos, Paramythia, Patras, Preveza, Rethymno, Rhodes, Serres, and Volos, ordinary life plays out in streets, buildings and parks built on Jewish bones still in the ground. Some places—Corfu, Kavala, Thessaloniki, and Ioannina—have both types of Jewish cemeteries. (The ESJF European Jewish Cemeteries Initiative has in recent years done pathbreaking work not only in fencing and preserving existing cemeteries, but surveying, precisely geolocating, and creating online 3D interactive models of the destroyed, unprotected, and overbuilt sites.) Likewise, Athens and Thessaloniki maintain Jewish museums, and postwar commemorative monuments to Jewish communities exist in a handful of cities, against a dearth of public recognition in many others.
Etz Hayyim’s re-emergence is, in this sense, a defiant gesture, a finger poked in the eye of oblivion, not to mention a challenge to civic consciousness in Chania, especially to the forces of normalized forgetting.
Jason Francisco / Athens, Statue of Metropolitan Damaskinos in front of the city's main cathedral. Damaskinos was the only head of a European church who openly called for the end of Nazi persecution of Jews.
Jason Francisco / Left: The Acropolis and the Ancient Agora, Athens; Right: Tile from an ancient synagogue once located in the Agora, on display at the Jewish Museum, Athens.
Jason Francisco / Left: The bimah of a synagogue in Patras saved during the building's demolition, now in the Jewish Museum, Athens (this bimah served as the model for the reconstructed bimah at Etz Hayyim); Right: The destroyed and overbuild Jewish cemetery of Patras, the bones still in the ground.
Jason Francisco / Left: The destroyed and overbuilt Jewish cemetery in Arta, bones stil in the ground; Right: Memorial to the Jews of Arta
Jason Francisco / Left: Renovated but community-less synagogue, Veria; Right: The destroyed and overbuilt Jewish cemetery of Veria, bones still in the ground.
Jason Francisco / Left: The intact "new" Jewish cemetery of Ioannina; Right: The destroyed and overbuilt old Jewish cemetery of Kavala, bones still in the ground.
Jason Francisco / Left: Inside the Romaniote synagogue, Ioannina; Right: Street in one of three former Jewish districts of Ioannina.
Jason Francisco / The warehouse in which the Jews of Xanthi were imprisoned before their deportation and murder in the Holocaust (site unmarked).
Jason Francisco / Left: The site of the destroyed synagogue of Xanthi (next to which is a day care center, hence the capriciously dark mural of a train); Right: New memorial to the Jews of Xanthi, dedicated 2023.
Jason Francisco / Left: The synagogue of Larissa; Right: Memorial to the murdered Jews of Larissa.
Jason Francisco / Left: The main cathedral of Thessaloniki, whose construction utilized headstones from the Jewish cemetery, some of which remain in the side yard; Right: The ancient Jewish cemetery of Thessaloniki, now Aristotle University, bones still in the ground.
Jason Francisco / Left: Deportation platform from which the Jews of Thessaliniki were deported during the Holocaust; Right: Display in the Jewish Museum of Thessaloniki.
Jason Francisco / Serres, the destroyed and unmarked Jewish cemetery
Part 5: An International Havurah
The rebuilt synagogue complex—the sanctuary and mikvah, courtyard, exhibition spaces and tiny cemetery—is a space of startling emotional intimacy, and great physical beauty. It is also a place of a distinct spiritual beauty, bound up in its innovative approach to creating Jewish community.
Prevailing conceptions of Jewish community are based on residence, the expectation that people join together when they live near one another. The corollary expectation is that when Jews do not reside in a place in large numbers—or no longer reside there because of catastrophic loss—Jewish community is impossible, and a rededicated synagogue is merely a monument to a bygone era. Etz Hayyim was not created to be a pleasing cenotaph to the Jews of Crete. Rather it is a bold experiment in the reimagination of Jewish community after genocide: a gathering of people from around the world who have discovered and made a meaningful connection with the community’s values, and return to Chania as and when they can. The result is an international havurah, an ocean-crossing, border-crossing circle of friends. In a conventional residential community, people go to the synagogue to be with friends and neighbors they already know; in an international havurah, they go to be with people they do not yet know, whom they can anticipate are kindred spirits.
Etz Hayyim’s international havurah is rich in diversity: the community’s welcome is not conditioned by creed or doctrine or identity or ethnicity or background. Its doors are open to religious and secular, liberal and traditional, Jews and non-Jews alike. The result is an emphatically pluralistic approach to the Jewish, and a distinctly Jewish approach to the ecumenical. Pluralistic: Etz Hayyim is, depending on the frame, non-denominational, post-denominational, or counter-denominational. The community includes people from traditional Jewish backgrounds, as well as people who may have felt excluded or invisible in other communities, for example people from multi-faith families, people with little familiarity with Jewish practice, and people whose sexual orientation and gender identity is alternative to the majority. It includes many people who are not Jewish at all, but who find welcome and sustenance in this kind of Jewish world. It is not surprising that its ethos attracts a large number of writers, artists, musicians, and creative people of all sorts.
While today’s Etz Hayyim is in many ways unlike the prewar community, the memory of earlier generations is a core part of the contemporary community’s identity. For non-Jewish Greeks, the return of Etz Hayyim unavoidably tests the extent to which Greek national identity can integrate the Jewish into its own self-understanding, and the extent to which locals can and will remember their Jewish history as, indeed, theirs. By extension, the community’s return tests the memorial status of contemporary and historical difference beyond the Jewish, especially with regard to Cretan Muslims and the Ottoman period of Crete’s history. As a place of remembrance, Etz Hayyim is intrinsically also a place of reconciliation, beyond or at least apart from the familiar binaries of Greek and Turk, Christian and Muslim, and likewise the familiar program of seeking belonging in tribal membership and safety in parochial narratives.
As an active synagogue, Etz Hayyim is of course a place of prayer and the observance of the Jewish holiday cycle. The High Holidays and Pesach typically bring large numbers of people, and a wintertime Kabbalat Shabbat may have just a handful. As a cultural center, the community regularly hosts exhibitions, lectures, readings, films, and concerts, in addition to welcoming researchers into its extensive library and archive. Running through all of these activities are the informal dimensions of the community—perhaps the most vital thing of all—the conversations that roll more or less continuously through it, open to all who enter.
Anja Zuckmantel, Director of Etz Hayyim, leading a tour of Evraiki, the historic Jewish quarter of Chania.
Jason Francisco / Rosh Hashanah, Etz Hayyim 2022
Jason Francisco / Taschlich at the Venetian Harbor, 2022
Jason Francisco / Rabbi Dr. Nicholas Delange, rabbi of Etz Hayyim
Jason Francisco / Sukkot at Etz Hayyim 2022
Jason Francisco / A visitor shaking the lulav in the sukkah of Etz Hayyim, 2022
Jason Francisco / Volunteers at Etz Hayyim taking a break from their studies
Jason Francisco / Iosif Ventura, renowned Greek Jewish poet, Holocaust survivor originally from Chania, at Etz Hayyim's International Holocaust Remembrance Day events, 2023
Jason Francisco / Nick Germanacos, poet, 2023
Jason Francisco / Ruth Padel, poet and novelist, 2022
Jason Francisco / Beznik, the shammes of Etz Hayyim
Jason Francisco / A portrait of Thora, Etz Hayyim volunteer
Jason Francisco / Pesach at Etz Hayyim, the community seder, 2023
Jason Francisco / Shavuot at Etz Hayyim, study session with Rabbi De Lange and Father John Raffan, 2023. At the far left is the Metropolitan of Chania.
Jason Francisco / The dedication of a new Torah scroll in honor of Nikos Stavroulakis, Shavuot, 2023
Jason Francisco / Carrying the new Torah, Shavuot, 2023
Jason Francisco / Annual memorial service for the victims of the Tanais, with Rabbis De Lange and Gabriel Negrin, 2023
Jason Francisco / Anja Zuckmantel welcoming a group of visitors
Jason Francisco / Father John Raffan, longtime friend of Etz Hayyim and a personal friend of Nikos Stavroulakis, carrying the new Torah scroll dedicated in Stavroulakis' honor, Shavuot, 2023. This moment was, for me, an emblem of so much that is unusual at Etz Hayyim. and the community's soulfulness.
Acknowledgments
This project could not have taken shape without the assistance of the following members of the community at Etz Hayyim. In my year in Chania, they were the heartbeat of the international havurah: Thora-Marit Bilz, Christos Chatziioannidis, Konstantinos Fischer, Flora Gürth, Sifis Psaroudakis, Vasiliki Yiakoumaki, and Anja Zuckmantel.
Jason Francisco, Chania, 2023