Baron Hirsch ghetto

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Some scholars believed that Paul of Tarsus ' First Epistle to the Thessalonians mentions Hellenized Jews in the city about 52 CE. This is based on certain interpretation of 1 Thessalonians 2 :14 " For you, brethren, became imitators of the churches of God which are in Judea in Christ Jesus. For you also suffered the same things from your own countrymen, just as they did from the Judeans. " (NKJV). Others believe that this Christian community consisted only of gentiles (pagans) and others that Jews were a small minority in that church of Thessalonike. The Greek word for "your own countrymen" in the original text is "συμφυλέται" ( symphyletai, "of the same phyle [tribe/race/nation]"). The interpretation of "συμφυλέται" as "Jews" is debated by many scholars. Also, there is no firm archaeological and other written evidence for the existence of a Jewish community in Thessaloniki during the 1st half of the 1st century AD. However, the existence of such a community is considered as very likely, even if its character is not known. Researchers have not determined yet where the first Jews lived in the city.

In 1170, Benjamin of Tudela reported that there were 500 Jews in Thessaloniki. In the following centuries, the native Romaniote community was joined by some Italian and Ashkenazi Jews. A small Jewish population lived here during the Byzantine period, but it left virtually no trace in documents or archeological artifacts.

In 1430, the start of Ottoman domination, the Jewish population was still small. The Ottomans used population transfers within the empire following military conquests to achieve goals of border security or repopulation; they called it Sürgün. Following the fall of Constantinople in 1453, an example of sürgün was the Ottomans' forcing Jews from the Balkans and Anatolia to relocate there, which they made the new capital of the Empire. At the time, few Jews were left in Salonika; none were recorded in the Ottoman census of 1478.

In 1492, the joint Catholic Monarchs of Spain Isabella I and Ferdinand II had promulgated the Alhambra Decree to expel Sephardic Jews from their domains. Many immigrated to Salonika, sometimes after a stop in Portugal or Italy. The Ottoman Empire granted protection to Jews as dhimmis and encouraged the newcomers to settle in its territories. According to the historians Rosamond McKitterick and Christopher Allmand, the Empire's invitation to the expelled Jews was a demographic strategy to prevent ethnic Greeks from dominating the city.

The first Sephardim came in 1492 from Mallorca and Catalonia. They were "repentant" returnees to Judaism after earlier forced conversion to Catholicism. [ citation needed ] In 1493, Jews from Castile and Sicily joined them. In subsequent years, other Jews came from those lands and also from Aragon, Naples, Venice and Provence. From the documented life of a converso who arrived in Salonica in the early 16th century, we learn that most of the Jews he encountered were from Valencia and central Castile, including Toledo and Guadalajara, and included former conversos he had known from Valencia. In 1519, Ottoman census records list 3,143 (or 3,147) Jewish households and 930 Jewish bachelors in Salonika, indicating a Jewish population of around 16,500 residing in the city at that time.

Later, in 1540 and 1560, Jews from Portugal sought refuge in Salonika in response to the political persecution of the marranos. In addition to these Sephardim, a few Ashkenazim arrived from Austria, Transylvania and Hungary. They were sometimes forcibly relocated under the Ottoman policy of " sürgün," following the conquest of land by Suleiman the Magnificent. In 1523, the Ottomans resettled 150 Jewish families from Salonika in Rhodes. Salonika's registers indicate the presence of " Buda Jews" after the conquest of that city by the Turks in 1541. The Jewish population of the city was 20,000 in 1553. Immigration was great enough that by 1519, the Jews represented 56% of the population and by 1613, 68%.

Each group of new arrivals founded its own community ( aljama in Spanish), whose rites (" minhagim ") differed from those of other communities. The synagogues cemented each group, and their names most often referred to the groups' origins. For example, Katallan Yashan (Old Catalan) was founded in 1492 and Katallan Hadash (New Catalonia) at the end of the 16th century.

A government institution called Talmud Torah Hagadol was introduced in 1520 to head all the congregations and make decisions ( haskamot ) that applied to all. It was administered by seven members with annual terms. This institution provided an educational program for young boys, and was a preparatory school for entry to yeshivot. It hosted hundreds of students. In addition to Jewish studies, it taught humanities, Latin and Arabic, as well as medicine, the natural sciences and astronomy. The yeshivot of Salonika were frequented by Jews from throughout the Ottoman Empire and even farther abroad; there were students from Italy and Eastern Europe. After completing their studies, some students were appointed rabbis in the Jewish communities of the Empire and Europe, including cities such as Amsterdam and Venice. The success of its educational institutions was such that there was no illiteracy among the Jews of Salonika.

The Sephardic population settled mainly in the major urban centers of the Ottoman Empire, which included Salonika. Unlike other major cities of the Empire, the Jews controlled trading in Salonika. Their economic power became so great that the shipping and businesses stopped on Saturday ( Shabbat )—the Jewish sabbath. They traded with the rest of the Ottoman Empire, and the countries of Latin Venice and Genoa, and with all the Jewish communities scattered throughout the Mediterranean. One sign of the influence of Salonikan Jews on trading is in the 1556 boycott of the port of Ancona, Papal States, in response to the auto-da-fé issued by Paul IV against 25 marranos.

Salonikan Jews were unique in their participation in all economic niches, not confining their business to a few sectors, as was the case where Jews were a minority. They were active in all levels of society, from porters to merchants. Salonika had a large number of Jewish fishermen, unmatched elsewhere, even in present-day Israel.

The Jewish speciality was spinning wool. They imported technology from Spain where this craft was highly developed. The community made rapid decisions ( haskamot ) to require all congregations to regulate this industry. They forbade, under pain of excommunication ( cherem ), the export of wool and indigo to areas less than three days' travel from the city. Salonikan sheets, blankets and carpets acquired a high profile and were exported throughout the empire from Istanbul to Alexandria through Smyrna. The industry spread to all localities close to the Thermaic Gulf.

This same activity became a matter of state when the Ottoman Sultan, Selim II, chose the Salonican Jews to be exclusive manufacturers of uniforms for the Ottoman Janissary troops. This made the city one of the most significant textile producers and exporters in the eastern Mediterranean. His Sublime Porte issued a firman in 1576 forcing sheep raisers to provide their wool exclusively to the Jews to guarantee the adequacy of their supply. Other provisions strictly regulated the types of woollen production, production standards and deadlines. Tons of woollen goods were transported by boat, camel and horse to Istanbul to cloak the janissaries against the approaching winter. Towards 1578, both sides agreed that the supply of wool would serve as sufficient payment by the State for cloth and replace the cash payment. This turned out to be disadvantageous for the Jews.

The increase in the number of Janissaries contributed to an increase in clothing orders putting Jews in a very difficult situation. [ citation needed ] Contributing to their problems were currency inflation concurrent with a state financial crisis.

Only 1,200 shipments were required initially. However, the orders surpassed 4,000 in 1620. Financially challenged, the factories began cheating on quality. This was discovered. Rabbi Judah Covo at the head of a Salonican delegation was summoned to explain this deterioration in Istanbul and was sentenced to hang. This left a profound impression in Salonika. Thereafter, applications of the Empire were partially reduced and reorganized production.

These setbacks were heralds of a dark period for Salonican Jews. The flow of migrants from the Iberian Peninsula had gradually dried up. Jews favored such Western European cities as London, Amsterdam and Bordeaux. This phenomenon led to a progressive estrangement of the Ottoman Sephardim from the West. Although the Jews had brought many new European technologies, including that of printing, they became less and less competitive against other ethno-religious groups. The earlier well-known Jewish doctors and translators were gradually replaced by their Christian counterparts, mostly Armenians and Greeks. In the world of trading, the Jews were supplanted by Western Christians, who were protected by the western powers through their consular bodies. Salonika lost its pre-eminence following the phasing out of Venice, its commercial partner, and the rising power of the port of Smyrna.

Moreover, the Jews, like other dhimmis, had to suffer the consequences of successive defeats of the Empire by the West. The city, strategically placed on a road travelled by armies, often saw retaliation by janissaries against "infidels." Throughout the 17th century, there was migration of Jews from Salonika to Constantinople, Palestine, and especially İzmir. The Jewish community of Smyrna became composed of Salonikan émigrés. Plague, along with other epidemics such as cholera, which arrived in Salonika in 1823, also contributed to the weakening of Salonika and its Jewish community.

Western products, which began to appear in the East in large quantities in the early-to-mid-19th century, was a severe blow to the Salonikan economy, including the Jewish textile industry. The state eventually even began supplying janissaries with " Provencal clothing", which sold in low-priced lots, in preference to Salonican wools, whose quality had continued to deteriorate. Short of cash, the Jews were forced into paying the grand vizier more than half of their taxes in the form of promissory notes. Textile production declined rapidly and then stopped with the abolition of the body of janissaries in 1826.

Ottoman Jews were obliged to pay special " Jewish taxes " to the Ottoman authorities. These taxes included the Cizye, the İspençe, the Haraç, and the Rav akçesi ("rabbi tax"). Sometimes, local rulers would also levy taxes for themselves, in addition to the taxes sent to the central authorities in Constantinople.

Jewish Salonikans had long benefited from the contribution of each of the ideas and knowledge of the various waves of Sephardic immigration, but this human contribution more or less dried up by the 17th century, and sank into a pattern of significant decline. The yeshivot were always busy teaching, but their output was very formalistic. They published books on religion, but these had little original thought. A witness reported that "outside it is always endless matters of worship and commercial law that absorb their attention and bear the brunt of their studies and their research. Their works are generally a restatement of their predecessors' writings."

From the 15th century, a messianic current had developed in the Sephardic world; the Redemption, marking the end of the world, which seemed imminent. This idea was fueled both by the economic decline of Salonika and the continued growth in Kabbalistic studies based on the Zohar booming in Salonican yeshivot. The end of time was announced successively in 1540 and 1568 and again in 1648 and 1666.