Page 10-The Ganadiai^ewishNews;Thursday,^M 17,1984
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Synagogue rebuilt six times
By
SHELDON KIRSHNER CHAI2KIS, Greece—
Sixty njles northeast of Athem^^ the Island of Evia [or Eoboea], is a Jewish commnnity that is reputedly die oldest cratinoonsly-inhabited one hi all of Eorope.
It is quite a distihctibn for the 100 Jews of Gialkis, the capital of this green, pleasant island which has been ruled by the Persians, Thebians, Romans, Grusaders, Venetians, Turks and Nazis,
But Leon Levy, the 48-year-old president of Chaltis Jewry, takes it all in his stride. By now, he is accustomed to the Jewish visitors from abroad who come here to be at one with history.
A merchant, Levy has no idea how long Ills lainUy has lived in Chalkis, which is also known as HaOddav and has a popubtion of 60,000. Bat Levy says the Jews here can trace thefa: roots back^ at least 2,250 years. Local records indicate that Jews were bron^t to ChaUds as eaptiVes of Antiochos^ bat some schdars believe they arrived as followers of the retamlng soldiers ;of Alexander the • ■Great.;,
Levy, whose family survived the German occupation by going _ into hiding with Christians, directs a traveler to the town's museum. And there, in an ancient tome, is a record of a conversation between Gaius, a Roman emperor, and Philo of Alexandria, a, vJew. ■ ■■■
Philo, in reply to a question from Gaius, observes that Jews can be found on "the celebrated islands of Evia, Cyprus and .Crete.....:"'.
Gaius' exchange with Philo occurred around the time of Christ.
In 1165, Benjamin of Tudela, a noted Jewish wanderer, passed through Chaikis and encountered Jews. From the Middle Ages to the 19th century, Chaikis was often called Little Safad because of tfie rabbinical; sages who studied here.
Chaikis' white-washed synagogue, the foundations of which go back some 1,500 years, has been rebuilt six times. On Good Friday, 1845, a Christian fanatic set fire to the buliding and it was not reconstructed until 1849.-.:'
Strangely enough, the walls of the synagogue, on Kotsou St., are embedded with ancient Jewish gravestones. During the Venetian era, the Italian overlords used the Jewish cemeteiy as something of a quarry to build castle walls. \
And when the ruined walls were demolished 23 years ago, the stones y/ere returned to the Jews. They, in turn, placed them into the synagogue walls.
In the cool courtyard of the synagogue is a 12th century mikveh, a very tiny one, and on the far side of the walled enclosure are fragrant lemon and mandarin trees. With Levy's permission, I pluck two bright orange mandarins and down them. Oh major' holidays, when the citrus is blooming, congregants pick them off the boughs and nibble oh them.
Chaikis' Jewish communal centre, adjacent to the mini orchard, is small, and replete with framed photographs of Herzl, the Viennese founder of modem political Zionism; Ben-Guripn, Israel's &st Prime Minister, and three Israeli presidents.
There are also WIZO posters and a glassed-in map of Israel on the wall.
Inside the synagogue, on a white marble slab, are etched three names:.Ferdinand de Rothschild, Damaskinos and Gregorious.
Rothschild, of the famoas European banking dynasty, berthed his yadit in ChaUds' harbor bi the bite 19th century. So
impressed was he by the darabliity and anity of the Jews here that lie donated money towards ihe construction of a protective wall aroond the Jewish cemetery.
Rustic in appearance, the cemetery is filled with tombstones, some of which are .extremely old. Beautiful red, yellow and blue wildflowers grow in the high grass-, and graceful pines and cypresses abound throughout, forming shady pathways.
Damaskinos, the Greek archbishop dui?ng Worid War 11, is honored because he tried — but failed-T to step the deipo^ Poland Vdeathbampsi
Gregorions, ChalUs* mpnsignor wheh t^^ Germans niiuvhediiiifi iremenibered because he hid the Torah scrolls and other religious artifacts in the crypt of a chnrch.
In 1939, two yearsbefore the Nazi invasion, Chaikis was home to about 250 Jews.
Unlikethemajority of "their fellow Jews m Greece, they spoke no Ladiho, but only Greek. Having settled in Chaikis centuries in
Leon Levy, right, younger brother Minos tmd father Ellas, In [Sheldon Klrshher photo]
of their shop in Chaikis.
advance of the Inquisition in Spain, the so-called Romaniot Jews of Evia had no knowledge of Ladino, a kind of Sephardic Yiddish which arose in the Iberian Peniun-
■sula;,
When the war broke out, Hias Levy, Leon's aged father, owned a drygoods shop — a store which Leon runs today with his brother, Minos (Menachem), who is 40.
Leon Levy was barely out of dli^rS when Italy invaded Greece, bat he knows that the
first Greek army officer to fafl in battle was CoL Mordechai Frizis, a Jew whose family has lived in Evia for reportedly 13 generations. A marble bast of Frizis stands today hi Chaikis' Military Square.
The war was a terrible time for the Jews, yet the Levys were lucky.
At first, Evia and environs were under Italian ciccupation — a fortuitous stroke of luck because Italy did not harass the Jews, nor attempt to ship them off to concentration
Cohen calls book-^a^
SHERYL HALPERN
MONTREAL -
"The publishers don't know how to describe my new book," says Montreal-bprn poet Leonard Cohen. His Book of Mercy (McClelland and Stewart, 112 pp.) is unusual
— not poetry, not quite prose, neither satire nor love song.
The jacket describes it as a collection of "contemporary psalms"; a reviewer found it full of "Bible-inspired images" and beatitudes. It has echoes of the Kabbala in its symbolism, and passages reminiscent of the Amidah, the Selichot services —■ sources Cohen readily admits using.
It's nothing like Death of a Ladies' Man, Cohen's last book of poetry, published in 1978. In fact, it's a prayerbook. As Cohen says, "I mean it as a prayerbook. It's hot meant to be poetry. It's an address to God, specifically... very much my prayerbook."
Cohen, 49 years old, does not look the part of a prayerbook writer. Dressed entirely hi black — black tie, black shfat, black leather bomber jacket, charcoal-striped salt, gray-streaked black hair slicked back, he looks more like the poet/songwriter he Is.
He commutes between Montreal and New York, he says; his new album. Various Positions, win be coming out this fall, and he'soff on a European concert tour.
He wasn't planning to write Book of Mercy
— or any prayerbook. But, he says, he was inspired: "I wrote the book from a position of trouble. . . . Nobody is going to come to this book unless they're in trouble — incapacitated, or cut down spiritually." The fact that he has "no credentials for prayer" doesn't matter, he says. "Prayer is when you have no credentials.
"Publishing a prayerbook is a curious activity," he adds, "but I wanted to affirm this activity."
His is no standard prayerbook. A collection of 50 short prose pieces, "definitely not poetry," it finds room for politics (Jerusalem of Washington/Jerusalem of Moscow goes one line), and for a mystic sort of sexuality.
Among its "givens" are Unbelief ("Though I don't believe in you, I conie to you now ) and Christianity (''From Abraham to Augustine," another phrase.)
It takes on Isreal — "Israel, and you who call yourself Israel, the Church that calls itself Israel, and the revolt,.. all of you are thieves of holiness."
It takes on "every nation chosen to be a nation" — all nations, the poet claims, have broken their covenant with God.Tt occasion-
Leonard Cohen
ally refers to' 'god" and' 'the name' 'in lower case.
But.-says Cohen, his book is ''not apostasy, not atheism, not anti -Zionism.''
He finds "most ridiculous" the charge by one critic that his pieces are atheistic: "Asking to have your faith strengthened is in the tradition — 'help thou my understanding.' " Nor is he anti-Zionist, (he feels, in fact, very much a Zionist) though he says he is a Babylonian, and that his particular destiny is to bea Jew in the Diaspora;— " Part of our destiny is to be scattered ... it was not a bad exile in Babylon; they wrote the Talmud there, too." -
The book, Says the poet, is "the most intimate expression of the heart in a condtion of asking." : ^
That it is a Jewish expression is clear from the symbol he designed for the cover — two hearts intertwined to form a Star of David. But it is also "a journey of sorts." The prayers from a personal-spiritual log of the journey from negation and disbelief to affirmation and belief — "in the devotional tradition."
The first prayer begins " I stopped to listen, but he didn't come;" the last proclaims, "I lost my way. I forgot to call on your name. But
camps. Later, the Germans replaced the Italians, and the tragedy began.
"When we learned that the Germans had deported the Jews of Salonika, we escaped to the mountains and found shelter with a priest," recalls L6vy.
By war's end, the Levys r- parents, brothers and sister — were in Athens, under the a.ssumed name of Papadimitriou. A sympathetic policeman, Levy explains, provided false papers.
All told, the Germans managed to kill two Jews from Chaikis and about 25 from the vicinity. Levy says.
In the wake of the war, 120 Jews emigrated, bound for Israel and the U.S. The Levys remained because they were not as; destitute as some of their fellow Jews.
Today, the Jews of Chaikis are "strong economically." Leon Levy himself seems quite prosperous, iand his shop at 42 Kriezotou stocks men's and women's garments and rolls of cloth.
Intermarriage is still an unknown phenomenon, and a chazan conducts regolar services. On the m^or holidays, a rabbi from Athens leads the congregation fai prayer. A
batcher in Athens supplies Chaikis with kosher meat.
Levy, the father of two, says thatlO Jewish^ students from Chaikis study at university six in Greece and four in Israel. Asked if they'll return after their graduation. Levy shrugs his shoulders.
However, he is 'confident that the community's continuity will not be affected by their decisions.
The Jews of Chaikis, he declares, do not intend to disappear—not after2,250years.
you are here. You have always been here . Blessed is the one who waits in the traveler's heart for the turning."
In between these are short kabbalistic-sounding parables— about an ape, or an "angel of song," or two scholars . . . and prayers,that are indeed "squarely in the tradition." ,
Prayer 10 reads like a psalm of David — '' You have sweetened your words on my lips . . . Who can tell your glory, who can number your forms...." Prayer 43 rings with kedushas — "Holy is your name, holy is your work, holy are the days that return to you." There's an echo of the Amidah in Prayer 48 — "Awaken me. Lord, from the dream of despair, and let me describe my sin."
Many of CDhen's prayers, have a Jewish cast: "My vocabulary hi^pens to be Jewteh; God Is not Jewish, help Is not Jewish." Direct and indirect references to minyans, Rashl, the "fence of the Torah,** the Sanhedrin, the "Law shhdng,** to Bathsheba, to Kfaig David, to Moses and Mount Morishj are every-where. ■
The best of the prayers have a lyric simplicity; the reader forgets, perhaps Cohen forgets, that these are prayers.
TTiere is poignancy to: "Not Jknowing whereto go, I go to you, Not knowing where to turn, I turn to you. Not knowing how to speak, I speak to you," of Prayer 45.
A few, too long to be quoted here, are as incantatory as Cohen's best poetry.
If this book has a flaw,..it is that it is too earnest — it ne^ds a bit more in the way of fantasy, or humor, even black humor of poetry. It is topical, it is contemporary — but its best passages are exultant, personal. The Leonard Cohen who wrote "God is alive. Magic is afoot,", in Beautiful Losers can still defy the doomsayers, can still declare, "You are with me still.... Even though I have been removed, and my place does not recognize ■ nie. , ■
But we" need more of that — more incantatory prose, that is, to give bite to the despair — a few more lightning flashes to the moments when faith andhope are found.
Cohen says-he believes in the Messiah, the ingathering of the exiles. He also belieyes — and it is the message of his book — that "there is mercy, there is a response to prayer." .■ ■
He feels that the heart has to be educated and "circumcised," that it should rule the questioning mind during prayer; the book is the story of such a "circumcision.''
And though he sees the search for God asa universal one, it is also, to borrow a phrase from Book of Mercy, "a Jew's business.''