Classify Romaniotes (Ancient Greek Jews)

[Scholarios]

The Romaniotes are the descendants of Jews settled in Greece during antiquity through the early Middle Ages. They are distinct from the Sephardic Jews that arrived in the 15-16th Centuries and spoke Spanish and Ladino. The Romaniotes inhabited several areas of Greece and were found mostly in Ionnanina and Rhodes in the early 20th Century. They spoke Greek and Yevanic, a Hebrew-Greek hybrid.

Many of them were assimilated by Sephards in the 16th Century and a huge portion never survived World War II. There are less than 60000 left worldwide.














Mordehai Frizis- Hero of the Greco-Turkish War and First Casualty in Greco-Italian War in Epirus. Who can say he isn't a Greek! Some Golden Dawn guys maybe...





American Actress Gabrielle Carteris

[Libertas]

They look East Mediterranean, partly dinaricised in some cases.

Are they so different from Gentile Greeks?

[Scholarios]

They look East Mediterranean, partly dinaricised in some cases.

Are they so different from Gentile Greeks?

I think they are not so different also, aside from I believe the distinct look of the Rabbis in those photos. The beards make them look like Orthodox priests, but there is something different about their faces. Since rabbinical vocation was inherited, it seems that their line may be somewhat more "pure" than that of the common Romaniotes who may have interbred with Greeks more.

Or the Rabbis could have more Sephardic influence for some reason.. or vice versa.

[Scholarios]

[Scholarios]

I know that this forum seems to be most interested in documenting the appearance of extremely attractive and young people with the most "beautiful" traits of their own people. However, consider that the Romaniotes are a dying near extinct community and that these photos are documenting the final true Romaniote Greek Jews before they will be gone forever and absorbed into Askhenazi population of New York and Israel.

[Sikeliot]

They have been in Greece for so long and so few in number that they had to have mixed with other Greeks.

[Scholarios]

They have been in Greece for so long and so few in number that they had to have mixed with other Greeks.

but do you think they are distinguishable from christian greeks in the same way that askhenazi are often distinguisable from poles, germans, russians?(who have also been mixing with europeans)

[Sikeliot]

but do you think they are distinguishable from christian greeks in the same way that askhenazi are often distinguisable from poles, germans, russians?

At least half of them look "Jewish" to me and not Greek. But others look mixed with Greek.

[Rouxinol]

Most of them look distinctively Semitic.

[Sikeliot]

This is an example of one that looks much more Jewish: