Salonica, City of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims and Jews

It must have been as much the sheer number of the newcomers as their behaviour which struck those who had known the town before their arrival. The once sparsely populated streets filled up and population densities soared. At first Jews settled where they could, renting from the Christian and Muslim landlords who owned the bulk of the housing stock. The very first communal ordinance tried to prevent Jews outbidding one another to avoid driving up prices. But the continuous influx led to many central districts becoming heavily settled. Muslims started to move up the higher slopes – enjoying better views, drainage and ventilation, more space and less noise – while the Greeks – mostly tailors, craftsmen, cobblers, masons and metalworkers, a few remaining scions of old, distinguished Byzantine families among them – were pushed into the margins, near Ayios Minas in the west, and around the remains of the old Hippodrome.22

South of Egnatia, with the exception of the market districts to the west, the twisting lanes of the lower town belonged to the newcomers. Here wealthy notables lived together with the large mass of Jewish artisans, workmen, hamals, fishermen, pedlars and the destitute, cooped up in small apartments handed down from generation to generation. The overall impression of the Jewish quarters was scarcely one of magnificence. Clusters of modest homes hidden behind their walls and large barred gates were grouped around shared cortijos into which housewives threw their refuse. As the city filled up, extra storeys were added to the old wooden houses, and overhanging upper floors jutted out into the street. Every so often, the claustrophobic and airless alleys opened unpredictably into a small placa or placeta. Rutted backstreets hid the synagogues and communal buildings.

These were the least hygienic or desirable residential areas, where all the refuse of the city made its way down the slopes to collect in stagnant pools by the dank stones of the sea-walls. The old harbour built by Constantine had silted up and turned into a large sewage dump, the Monturo, whose noxious presence pervaded the lower town. The tanneries and slaughter-houses were located on the western fringes, but workmen kept evil-smelling vats of urine, used for tanning leather and dying wool, in their homes. People were driven mad by the din of hammers in the metal foundries; others complained of getting ill from the fumes of lead-workers and silversmiths – like the smell of the bakeries but worse, according to one sufferer. Living on top of one another, neighbours suffered when one new tenant decided to turn his bedroom into a kitchen, projecting effluent into the common passageway. The combination of overcrowding – especially after the devastating fire of 1545 – and intense manufacturing activity meant that life in the city’s Jewish quarters continued to be defined by its smells, its noise and its lack of privacy. Why did people remain there, in squalor, when large tracts of the upper city lay empty? Was it choice – a desire to remain close together, strategically located between the commercial district and the city walls, their very density warding off intruders? Or was it necessity – the upper slopes of the city being already owned and settled, even if more sporadically, by Muslims? Either way, the living conditions of Salonican Jewry provoked dismay right up until the fires of 1890 and 1917, which finally dispersed the old neighbourhoods and erased the old streets from the map so definitively that not even their outlines can now be traced amid the glitzy tree-lined shopping avenues which have replaced them.

The Power of the Rabbis

Historians of the Ottoman empire often extoll its hierarchical system of communal autonomy through which the sultan supposedly appointed leaders of each confessional group [or millet] and made them responsible for collecting taxes, administering justice and ecclesiastical affairs. The autonomy was real enough, but where, in the case of the Jews, was the hierarchy? It is true that in 1453, after the fall of Constantinople, Mehmed the Conqueror appointed a chief rabbi just as he had a Greek patriarch: the first incumbent was an elderly Romaniote rabbi who had served under the last Byzantine emperor. But this position probably applied only to the capital rather than to the empire as a whole, did not last for long and was then left vacant. Once Salonica emerged as the largest Jewish community in the empire, dwarfing that in Istanbul itself, the authority of the chief rabbi of the capital depended on obtaining the obedience of Salonican Jewry. But this was not forthcoming. ‘There is no town subordinated to another town,’ insisted one Salonican rabbi early in the sixteenth century. What he meant was that his town would be subordinated to no other.23

The usual rule among Jews was that newcomers conformed to local practice. But the overwhelming numbers of the immigrants, and their well-developed sense of cultural superiority, put this principle to the test. The Spanish and Italian Jews regarded the established traditions of the Griegos (Greeks) or the Alemanos (Germans) as they were now somewhat dismissively known, as distinctly inferior. ‘Ni ajo duke ni Tudesco bueno,’ – neither can we find sweet garlic nor a good German [Jew] – was a local saying. No one likes being condescended to. Outside Salonica, the French naturalist Pierre Belon witnessed an argument that flared up around a fish-stall. Did the claria have scales or not? Some Jews gathered and said that as it did not, it could be eaten. Others – ‘newly come from Spain’ – said they could see minute traces of scales and accused the first group of lax observance. A fist-fight was about to erupt before the fish was taken off for further inspection.24

Rabbis took the same unbending line over the superiority of the Sefardic way that their congregants had done in the fish-market. As early as 1509, one wrote:

It is well-known that Sephardic Jews and their hakhanim [rabbis] in this kingdom, together with the other congregations who join them, comprise the majority here, may the Lord be praised. The land was given uniquely to them, and they are its majesty, its radiance and splendour, a light unto the land and all who dwell in it. Surely, they were not brought hither in order to depart! For all these places are ours too, and it would be worthy of all the minority peoples who first resided in this kingdom to follow their example and do as they do in all that pertains to the Torah and its customs.25

Less than twenty years since the expulsions, this was a stunning display of arrogance – turning the Romaniotes [Greek-speaking Jews], who had lived in those lands since antiquity, into a subservient minority. Such an attitude created friction with Istanbul where Romaniotes were more numerous and not inclined to bow so easily. In Salonica itself, the argument for Spanish superiority was repeated over and over again until it needed no longer to be made. ‘As matters stand today in Salonica,’ commented rabbi Samuel de Medina in the 1560s, ‘the holy communities of Calabria, Provincia, Sicilia and Apulia have all adopted the ways of Sefarad, and only the holy community of Ashkenaz [Germany] has not changed its ways.’ Thus it was not only because of the lack of a Jewish hierarchy comparable to that which structured the Orthodox Church that the model of communal administration suggested by the patriarchate was bound to fail. Salonica’s largely Sefardic Jewry never for a moment contemplated allowing itself to fall under the guidance of a Romaniote chief rabbi.26

Yet not only did the Ottoman authorities apparently not bother with a centralized imperial Jewish hierarchy based in the capital, they scarcely bothered to formalize how the Jews organized themselves in Salonica either. Under the Byzantine emperors, there was apparently a Jewish ‘provost’. No such post was established by the Ottomans. The community could not fix upon a single chief rabbi, and its early efforts to set up a triumvirate of elderly but respected figures met the same fate as the chief rabbinate in the capital. There was thus not even a Jewish counterpart to the city’s Greek metropolitan. For a time, the local authorities appointed a spokesman for the Jews to act as intermediary between the community and themselves. But the only mention of this figure in the historical record paints him as an unmitigated disaster, who used the position for his own advancement, insulted respected rabbis and eventually, through his blasphemous conduct, brought down the wrath of God in the shape of the fire and plague of 1545. We do not hear about a successor: if he existed, he was of no importance. More or less all that mattered for the local Ottoman authorities was that taxes were regularly paid to the court of the kadi or to the assigned collectors. The community as a whole gathered as an assembly of synagogue representatives to apportion taxes. When there were difficulties it sent elders to Istanbul to plead at court, or contacted prominent Jewish notables for help.27

In fact, in many ways it is misleading to talk about a Jewish community in Salonica at all. From the outside, Jews could be identified by language and officially-imposed dress and colour codes. But with the exception of a small number of institutions which were organized for the common good – the redemption fund that ransomed Jewish slaves and captives, or the Talmud Torah, the community’s combined school, shelter [for travellers and the poor], insane asylum and hospital – what the Sefardim created for themselves was a highly de-centralized, indeed almost anarchic system, in which Jewish life revolved around the individual synagogue, and Jews argued bitterly among themselves as to what constituted right practice. Fifteenth-century Spain had in fact been not a unitary country so much as a collection of disparate cities, regions and states united eventually under the authority of a single monarch; it was this keenly local and often rivalrous sense of place that was reproduced in Salonica.

From the outset, congregations guarded their independence jealously from each other. Synagogues multiplied – a fundamental principle of Jewish life was that everyone had to belong to one congregation or another – and within half a century there were more than twenty. Not all were of equal standing or size and many of the larger ones were constantly splitting apart thanks to the factionalism which seemed endemic to the community: before long, the Sicilians were divided into ‘Old’ and ‘New’ as were the ‘Spanish Refugees’. But the congregation was, at least at first, a link to the past and a way of keeping those who spoke the same language together. No significant differences of liturgy or practice divided the worshippers in the New Lisbon or Evora synagogues; only the small Romaniote Etz Haim and the Ashkenazi congregations might have pleaded the preservation of their traditions. Nevertheless whether the differences were liturgical or purely cultural and linguistic, each group preserved its autonomy as passionately as if its very identity was at stake. ‘In Salonica each and every man speaks in the tongue of his own people,’ wrote the rabbi Yosef ibn Lev in the 1560s. ‘When the refugees arrived after the expulsion, they designated kehalim [congregations] each according to his tongue … Every kahal supports its own poor, and each and every kahal is singly recorded into the king’s register. Every kahal is like a city unto itself.’28

This then was what the city actually meant for most Jews – a kahal based in a squat and modestly decorated building, unobtrusive from the street and plainly adorned inside, from which they ran their charity funds, their burial societies and study groups. There they organized the allocation and collection of taxes and agreed salaries for their cantor, ritual slaughterers, the mohel [responsible for circumcisions] and rabbi. Since usually only the taxable members of the community voted on communal policies, the domination of the notables was a frequent bone of contention with the poorer members.

Not surprisingly, such a system was highly unstable. Indeed the Jews were well-known for their dissension and often bemoaned the lack of fellow-feeling. Acute tensions between rich and poor, extreme factionalism, and the lack of any central organization made wider agreement very difficult and delayed badly-needed social reforms: marriages took place with startling informality outside the supervision of rabbis, leading unfortunate girls astray; conversions – especially of slaves – to Judaism were perfunctory; moreover, any rabbi was free to issue ordinances and excommunications, and some on occasions evidently abused these rights. In 1565 it was finally agreed that an ordinance could be applied to the community as a whole only when it was signed by a majority of the rabbis in the city.29

Rabbis formed a privileged ruling caste free of communal or government taxes. There was, of course, an Ottoman court system, presided over by the kadi, an appointed official, who dispensed justice throughout the city. The kadi courts, though designed primarily for Muslims [who were treated on a different footing to non-Muslims], were considerate of Jewish religious demands: they never obliged a Jew to appear on the Jewish Sabbath, and sent Jewish witnesses to the rabbi when it was necessary to swear an oath. But the kadi did not try to monopolize the provision of justice, and it was the rabbinical courts which constituted the chief means through which Jews settled their differences. Because they were never given any formal legal recognition, these existed for centuries in a kind of legal limbo sanctioned by the force of custom. It was an extraordinary state of affairs and one which offers an important clue into the way the Ottoman authorities ran their state: strictly regimented where taxes and production were concerned, it was in other areas – such as law – almost uninvolved and only sporadically prescriptive.30

Interventions by the Ottoman authorities in rabbinical affairs were rare. It is true that a kadi would be deeply displeased to learn that rabbis treated his court with disdain, or to be informed that Jews were being urged by their rabbis not to use them. But only rarely did he stir into action. In one case, a dispute between two contenders for the position of rabbi in the Aragon synagogue led to the kadi stepping in and making the appointment himself; but this rendered the victorious candidate so unpopular with his congregants, who were after all paying his salary, that he was forced soon after to move on. Another kadi dismissed a rabbi for instructing his congregants not to have recourse to the Ottoman courts. But in this case it was the congregants themselves who had shopped their rabbi by bringing his alleged remarks to the attention of the authorities so as to get rid of him, and in any case he was employed soon after by another congregation.31

In fact Jews did attend the Muslim courts, despite rabbinical injunctions against their doing so, usually to register commercial agreements, or divorce settlements in case of future legal disputes [for which the rabbinical courts were useless precisely because of their unofficial status]. Jewish workers ran to the courtroom to disclaim responsibility when a soldier’s gun accidentally went off in their yard and killed someone: only a judgement from the Ottoman judge could help them escape paying a blood price for a death which they had not caused. Otherwise, the Ottoman authorities seemed happy for the rabbis to run the legal affairs of their community, cooperating with them and giving them support, for instance, in enforcing sentences, an area where the rabbis often felt their weakness. Without this backing, the rabbinical courts could not have functioned.32

For the main point about this system was the enormous power it gave to the rabbis themselves. Although they were appointed and paid by the lay notables who ran the synagogues, Ottoman practice in effect turned them into something approximating Jewish kadis – religiously-trained lawyers. But this is not really so surprising when one bears in mind how, over time, Salonica’s Jews were beginning to adapt some Ottoman legal institutions to their own needs – for instance, the charitable foundation [vakf ] and inheritable usufruct [yediki] – and starting to follow Muslim custom by growing their beards longer, wearing turbans, robes and outer cloaks, and making their women cover themselves more than in the past. In the law, as in other areas of life, the Jews of Sefarad were becoming Ottoman.33

The range of issues rabbis pronounced on was vast: tenancy disputes, matrimonial, probate and commercial law made up the bread and butter business, but there were also medical matters – what kinds of venereal disease justified a woman in divorcing her husband; or when abortion was permissible. The traumatic rupture of family life experienced by the refugees was reflected in various dilemmas: Could the son of a Jewish man and a black slave inherit his father’s estate? What was the situation of women whose husbands had converted to Christianity and had remained in Spain? How many wives was a man allowed to take? To help decide, entire libraries were brought over from Spain and Italy, and merchants paid scribes and copyists to transcribe rare manuscripts and translate Hebrew texts into Ladino. In fact, rabbis felt at a disadvantage when forced to rule without the judgements of their predecessors to guide them. One, caught outside the city by a supplicant at a time when the plague was raging, apologizes in advance for offering an opinion without having his books at his elbow.34

Controlling power and resources unmatched by their peers elsewhere, Salonica’s rabbis possessed a degree of training and a breadth of outlook which made the city a centre of learning throughout the sixteenth-century eastern Mediterranean. A centre of print culture too: Jewish books were printed there centuries before any appeared in Greek, Arabic or Ottoman Turkish where religious objections to seeing the sacred texts in print held things back. Equipped with the wide-ranging interests of the Spanish rabbinate, exploiting the familiarity with the holy sources that their availability in translation offered, these scholars simultaneously kept in touch with the latest intellectual fashions in western Europe and pursued extensive programmes of study that took them far beyond the confines of scriptural commentary. They applied Aristotle and Aquinas to the tasks of Talmudic exegesis, engaged with Latin literature, Italian humanism and Arab science, and were not surprisingly intensely proud of the range of their expertise. Insulted by charges of parochialism, for instance, one young scholar challenged an older rabbi from Edirne to an intellectual duel:

Come out to the field and let us compete in our knowledge of the Bible, the Mishnah and the Talmud, Sifra and Sifre and all of rabbinic literature; in secular sciences – practical and theoretical fields of science; science of nature, and of the Divine; in logic – the Organon, in geometry, astronomy Physics; … Generatio et Corruptio, De Anima and Meteora, De Animalia and Ethics. In your profession as well, that of medicine, if in your eyes it is a science, we consider it an occupation of no special distinction and all the more in practical matters. Try me, for you have opened your mouth and belittled my dwelling-place, and you shall see that we know whatever can be known in the proper manner.35

All this was not love of learning for its own sake – though that there was too – so much as the fruits of the sophisticated curriculum required by the city’s scholar-judges, and their response to the opportunities created by Ottoman policy.

Nor did the rabbis, left to their own devices as they mostly were, ignore the fact that they lived in a state run on the basis of the shari’a: Jews might be represented by Muslims professionally if they lived in certain neighbourhoods or belonged to certain guilds; Jewish men [like Christians] converted to Islam for financial advantage or to marry – even on one occasion to get the help of the authorities in wresting another man’s wife away from him; some Jewish women married Muslim men, or converted to facilitate a divorce when their husband was reluctant to grant it. All these situations made a knowledge of the shari’a desirable on the part of the rabbi-judge. But if a degree of familiarity with secular Ottoman law, the Qur’an and the shari’a was common practice in many Ottoman Jewish communities, a few Salonican scholars took their interest in Arab thought even further. ‘I will only mention the name of Abuhamed and his book, because it is very widespread among us,’ notes rabbi Isaac ibn Aroyo, referring to the philosopher al-Ghazali. Rabbi David ibn Shoshan, blind and wealthy, was said to have been not only ‘a master of all wisdom, both Talmud and secular studies, astronomy and philosophy’, but also ‘very familiar with books on the Moslem religion to such an extent that Moslem scholars and judges used to visit him to learn their own religious tomes from him.’ When he moved to Istanbul, ‘the greatest Arab scholars used to honour him there greatly because of his great wisdom.’ One of his students, Jacob HaLevi, translated the Qur’an, a book which we know other Jewish scholars too kept in their libraries.36

Where Salonica was concerned, the Ottoman strategy proved highly effective, and by attracting a large number of Jews and Marranos, the sultans succeeded in revitalizing the city. By the mid-sixteenth century its population had grown to 30,000 and it generated the highest per capita yield of taxes in the Balkans and the largest revenue of any urban settlement to the west of Istanbul. It would not be going too far to say that this economic success provided much of the fiscal sinew for the sultan’s military triumphs. The Jewish immigrants embraced the opportunity Bayezid II had given them and brought an entrepreneurial and productive energy which astonished the city’s existing residents. The resulting Hispanization of its culture was long-lasting: although there were ups and downs in the state of the economy, and in standards of rabbinical learning, the cultural imprint of Judeo-Spanish was felt right up to the end of the empire. In 1892, on the four-hundredth anniversary of the edict of expulsion, Spanish journalists and politicians visited the Macedonian port. There they found a continuing link to their own past, an outpost of Iberian life which had been forgotten in the home-country for centuries. In the words of the Spanish senator Dr Angel Pulido Fernandez, they were Spaniards without a Homeland; but this was not quite true. Their homeland was Salonica itself.37

4 Messiahs, Martyrs and Miracles

‘When I was in Salonica the second time, I received an order to perform contrary deeds and so when I met a Turk on a Greek street I drew my sword & forced him to speak the name of the First and the Second and to make the sign of the cross, and then I did not let him go until he did it; similarly, having met a Greek in a Turkish street I forced him to say the words ‘Mahomet is the true prophet’, and also the names of the first two & ordered him to lift one finger upward according to the Mahometan custom. And again, when I met a Jew he had to make the sign of the cross for me, and also to pronounce those two names when this happened in a Greek street, while when I met him in a Turkish street he had to raise one finger upward & name those two names. And I was performing those deeds daily’

Yakov Frank (1726–1791), Autohagiography no. 151*

IN THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE religious affiliation provided the categories according to which the state classified its subjects. Muslims had to be readily distinguishable from non-Muslims, who existed in a position of legal inferiority. ‘Their headgear is a saffron yellow turban,’ wrote the French agent Nicolas de Nicolay of the Salonican Jews in the mid-sixteenth century, ‘that of the Greek Christians is blue, and that of the Turks is pure white so that by the difference in colour they may be known apart.’ Yellow shoes, bright clothes and white or green turbans were reserved for members of the ruling faith, as were delicate or expensive fabrics. A later traveller, Tournefort, found ‘the subjects of the Grand Signior, Christians or Jews, have [their slippers] either red, violet or black. This order is so well-establish’d, and observ’d with such Exactness, that one may know what Religion any one is of by the Feet and the Head.’2