Moises Constantinis, president of the Central Jewish Board of Greece has raised two concerns to the Greek government. The first is that the salaries of rabbis should be paid for by the state, in the same way that priests and imams are. At the moment, salaries and all costs of operating synagogues and cemeteries are covered by local Jewish communities or the CJBG.
We believe that rabbis should be paid by the Greek Government as well, for equality reasons, given that the believers of the Jewish religion are also tax-paying Greek citizens
Secondly, that the Jewish community should not have to seek the permission of the Metropolite, a high-ranking Orthodox priest, in order to build a new synagogue
The law was passed in 1936 during the dictatorship of Metaxa and Constantinis said the CJBG finds “unfair and anachronistic”.
Despite the concerns, he stressed that the Jewish community enjoys complete freedom of religion in Greece
The Jews do not face any problems in exercising their religious rights according to the constitutionally entrenched principle of freedom of religion
Full article from European Jewish Press
Like Karahasan, this issue cannot be understood outside of the context of Greek-Israeli relations. The Greek and ecclesiastical minority in Israel (there are approximately 12,000) has had their rights infringed for many years, particularly the illegal building on land owned by the Orthodox Church. Also, being the spiritual representatives of a significant number of Palestinian Greek Orthodox has put them under further suspicion.
The Greek government would probably like to see some progress on the Israeli side before moving on their side.
Could it be a sign of maturity to make the first move ? How on earth do we change situations for the better if we continually talk about the “other side” having to go first. This argument takes us nowhere.
Israel, is not a signatory to most of the international treaties which obligates nations to respect their minorities and their rights. Hellas is a signatory to nearly all of the treaties.
How can Hellas make the first move when Israel does not even respect international law? That would be folly, immature and provide no assurance that they would reciprocate.
I mean, to make the first move on the issue of Greek Jews asking for equality here in Greece which is what this post is about. This has nothing to do with the Israeli argument you brought up. That should be discussed separately to this issue. My point here is simple: Greek citizens are asking to be treated equally in their own country.
Funny how for a country that doesn’t like Jews so much, they worship the most famous Jew of all, “Mr. Jesus Christ”.
Diva, and let me repeat, “Like Karahasan, this issue cannot be understood outside of the context of Greek-Israeli relations”. It has a lot to do with this argument. On the one hand supranational obligations that Hellas must abide by (e.g. EU laws) are brought up, but then we ignore international issues that are a part of the Jewish religious issue in Hellas. There is an interconnectedness to these problems.
Personally, I believe no religious body should be supported with taxpayers money (I might make an exception for the Hellenic religion) and they should also be forced to undergo an audit.
Yes, I find that funny too. But they may change over time.
But the Jews do not worship a Jewish god either. Their god came from the Babylonians.
Individuals living in Greece and who are Greek citizens, just like anywhere in the world, should not be subjected to the difficulties between Greece and a third party. This kind of reciprocity demand does not speak well of an EU member. Greek Jews are not hostages.
Absolutely right, Mandos.
And Hermes – are you really calling for an audit of the Greek Orthodox church? Good lord. Better wear rubber gloves.
Well, while I think all religions should have equal footing in Greece, I’m not pleased to know that the state pays some religious leaders at all. But I guess I’m never going to get over the influence of the Orthodox Church on the Greek state, so I should give up the argument. So if they are going to pay priests and imams (really, they pay the imams too?) they should pay the rabbis. But I’d prefer they pay none.
I don’t see why a synogogue needs permission from the Orthodox to build. That is really quite strange. If you get your building permit and have the land, you should be able to get to it.
Mandos, you seem to have a lot of trust in the EU and the benefits of membership. The EU uses this diplomatic tool all the time. Also, there still is something called national sovereignty which still gives Hellas some control over how it treats some Jews that live within its borders.
I think you missed my point. I said nothing about the "benefits of membership." I’m talking about obligations here. In theory, the EU is supposed to be the light of civilisation or something. Does it really endorse taking out tit-for-tat disagreements on national minorities? Particularly on a religious basis?Of course, even if they do, it runs contrary to their claims, and by extention the claims of Greece as a member. But seriously: which other EU members use a national minority as a diplomatic hostage? Of course, I suspect not even Greece claims it does: it was you who surmised this, no? I really doubt that the Hellenic government would openly claim it.Also, there still is something called national sovereignty which still gives Hellas some control over how it treats some Jews that live within its borders. You are saying that sovereignty gives Greece the right to discriminate against a particular minority group for some political reason. Are you?I still fail to see how what Israel does should affect how the Greek government treats a minority of its own citizens, unless its own citizens really aren’t…
Mandos, the EU is just another governing body that has high minded principles but in reality very rarely lives up to them. If you believe that the EU is somehow more moral in theory and in practice than the Hellenic state then I believe you are sadly misguided. I’ll give you one example of its moral turpitude. How effective has it been in brokering a fair and just solution to Cyprus which I may remind you is now part of the EU and a non-EU is occupying 40% of the landmass? All the main actors in that situation still rely on the UN which is probably even less effective. These sort of actions do not seem like the light of civilisation.
I never said it endorsed tit for tat disagreements. But these actions happen all the time. And again, Hellas is an exception because no other EU countries borders a militarised managed democracy adhering to a neo-fascist Kemalist doctrine that has continually shown expansionist claims on its neighbours.
EU membership wins over national sovereingnty. Basic EU law – new legal order and all that stuff. I always see it as a country choosing to put its sovereignty in the freezer when it joins. It can defrost it if it chooses to leave the club and it will still be there intact, but until then…
I agree with Melusina. I don’t believe the taxpayer should foot the bill for the salaries of the clergy. But if my tax dollars are paying for Orthodox clergy and Muslim imams, the it is only fair that the rabbis should be paid as well. The only other way around this is if taxpayers are allowed to choose which religion they want that portion of their taxes to support.
Personally, the State (meaning the taxpayer) should not have to pay for any religion unless it is a state religion. There is no official state religion in Hellas although Orthodoxy does have a privileged status under the present Constitution.
The Imams and Rabbis get plenty of money from Saudi Arabia and Israel/United States/supranational Jewish organisations. Take a drive up to Kosovo and you will see gleaming new mosques and Islamic education centres mostly funded with Petrodollars. All of these sources have an almost endless supply of cash. The Greek government are fools, but not that foolish.
All funds to any religion should cease and they should be redirected towards encouraging Greek families to have more children and education for the young where should be a focus on the classical paideia (obviously there will have to be updated regarding science and technology). Eventually all Greeks will wake up, move out of the ‘cave’ and rid themselves of all intolerant, resentful, suspicious and dark Abrahamic religions.
Gosh Hermes, would you care to provide evidence of those assertions? It’s news to me that Greek Muslims are awash with petrodollars and that Greek Jews are subsidized by their rich American bretheren. As for your last statement, unless it was a joke, Greek Orthodoxy hardly qualifies as an enlightened, modern religion but its clerics are quite suspicious and resentful nevertheless.
How did the Kosovar Albanians find the money to build over 50 new mosques and gymnasia in the last five years? I thought they were destitute? There is definitely is not bundles of mineral wealth popping out of the Kosovar soil. And it is common knowledge that a lot of the funding for the resurgence of Judaism in Eastern Europe, Russia and many other places comes from worldwide Jewish organisations. I am not begrudging them this. Nearly every diaspora nation does it. Even the Greeks do this for the Pontian Greeks remaining in the Ukraine , Uzbekistan and Russia. And how do you think the Patriarchate survives in Constantinople? Turks are not donating money. So what makes you think that some of that largesse does not find its way into Jewish and Muslim hands in Hellas.
I do not believe the Greek taxpayers should be made to pay the bills where there is definitely enough money coming in from other sources.
Christianity, which includes Orthodoxy, is an Abrahamic religion.
ZARDOZ SAYS:
HERMES is right, i bear witness.
………….”The Imams and Rabbis get plenty of money from Saudi Arabia and Israel/United States/supranational Jewish organisations. Take a drive up to Kosovo and you will see gleaming new mosques.”
OF course he is not talking about greece , receiving funds.
take a trip sometime ,,albania,,kosovo,,etc..
youll get the picture.
Then again i think the greek orthdox church should be audited
taxed , and stripped of all lands , that are not used for philanthropical purposes,,,,and the land be used for public
use ,, funds that sit in the national bank of greece should be seized.
if they have money ,,to use with a good plan ,,
there should be committeesss of the faithful to use and oversee.
both economically and the FAITH they wish to keep.
=z=
Hermes, regarding your comment to me about Jews:
You said: "But the Jews do not worship a Jewish god either. Their god came from the Babylonians"
Well, Mr. Hermes, We are not talking about God (Whose worship comes from caveman times) but about Christ who was a Jew. You don’t see icons of God in Orthodox churches but we DO SEE Christ, the Jewess Miriam, and the twelve Jew disciples, all people who actually lived.
Michael, the worship of the specific ‘Jewish’ YAHWEH god is an amalgamation of a number of gods, that were consolidated into one, that came from Babylonia. The worship of god(s) (note with a little g) does go back to ‘caveman’ times. All people worshipped gods or divinity.
Christ was a Jewish Rabbi according to the Gospels (although John is more explicit on his divinity) who had a particular dislike of the Jewish authorities. According to the Jewish Talmud he was born illegitimately of a Jewish mother, Miriam, and a Greek soldier stationed in the Roman army, Panthera. According to Roman sources he was irrelevant. Accoring to Church authorities his ethnicity is not really irrelevant. ‘Neither Jew or Greek’ the the Gospels state.
You will not see icons of God because Orthodox teachings say that you cannot visualise the divine as you can Christ as it did not become flesh. The divine being cloud of unknowing which you might be familiar if you read Dionysius Areopagite, Gregory of Nyssa, Peter Damascene and so on.
Does the Pantocrater count as an icon of God?
Saudi Arabia does fund the building of mosques all over the world, not out of charitable largess, but as a way to spread their particularly strict version of Islam. While I don’t generally agree with governments footing the bill for any type of religious institution, I don’t see asking Saudi Arabia to foot the bill as a good option either. I discussed this issue with a group of Muslims at an informal basement mosque in Athens, and the people there all agreed that they would prefer funding from the Greek government than from Saudi Arabia (as I understand it, the Greek government pays for the religious institutions of the established Muslim minority in Thraki, but has not yet funded a mosque for the immigrant community in Athens).
[...] DeviousDiva: Jewish Rights In Greece Did you know that the Greek government pays the salaries of priests and imams – but not rabbis? That to build a new synagogue requires permission from a high-ranking priest? I didn’t, either. Holy crap. [...]
I don’t get why Greek government policies regarding Greek rabbis should have anything to do with the policies of Turkey or Israel. They’re Greek citizens. They’re not responsible for the legacy of Ataturk, or the invasion and occupation of Cyprus, and not even, just because they’re Jewish, for the policies of Israel.
I also question whether Greece is really basing its policies toward religious leaders on some kind of political dispute with Israel. Greece has never had separation of church and state (having gained its independence from an empire that tried to govern through the leadership of its religious communities and tended to judge nationality by religious affiliation), and the Greek Orthodox religion has long had a privileged status with the government (even though people have been free to practice other religions). If this law was passed during the dictatorship of Metaxas, it predates Israel. And, I know that during the Metaxas dictatorship my father got Greek Orthodox religious teaching at school, while his Jewish classmates were excused, and I’ve seen where civil registrations of births, deaths, and marriages during that period all recorded the religion of the person involved; there was simply no concept of separation of church and state, and it doesn’t surprise me that it would have extended to paying priests and not rabbis.
It does surprise me, though, that imams would be treated differently from rabbis (was some deal cut with Turkey about their respective religious minorities, or what?). Though I suppose, looking at what lavrentia wrote, I can see why Greek Orthodox and Muslims alike might prefer seeing imams get funding from the Greek government rather than Saudi Arabia. And it does surprise me to hear that a rabbi would still, even today, be needing the permission of a priest to build a synagogue.
On icons: in principle, they’re supposed to be allowed to depict Christ, because in Christ God was made flesh, but not to depict the persons of God the Father and God the Holy Spirit. So I think Pantocrator, if I’m understanding it right, is OK with that rule. I have an icon which isn’t (it shows an old man, a youth, and a dove, making it a representation of all three members of the Trinity, which I’ve found out since I bought it isn’t supposed to be kosher in Orthodox terms – but then I didn’t buy it from an Orthodox source, so they may not have known those rules).
Anyway, it sounds to me as if Moises Constantinis has fair points, regardless of what Israel may be doing.
Good post LG-S. I’d be interested to see if anyone can answer your questions. But here’s a couple of thoughts.
No one has ever described Greece as being free of contradictions. Then again, I don’t know of any country (nation-state!) that is entirely consistent in the way it treats religion and minorities. In the Balkans, though, these are red-hot issues that have an extremely complicated and bloody history, so the state does whatever it can to control their expression – like in the building of mosques and synagogues. The state cloaks its involvement by granting the national church certain powers over other religions. Quite often, the state gets bitten in the ass with this arrangement, simply because most priests & monks in the Greek Orthodox church haven’t quite entered the 20th century yet, let alone the 21st. Or even the 19th.
It makes a difference that Turkey is next door and not Israel. Leaving aside all the historical grievances toward Islam, the Muslim minority is necessarily going to be treated differently just based on geography. Coincidentally, the Jewish minority has not had much of a voice in Greek affairs since WWII, when …its numbers fell…by something like 90% (I think that’s the largest percentage in Europe. That should tell us something). So comparing the two minorities is a bit like apples and oranges: there may be a symbolic effort to have a set of principles governing all minorities, but effectively the interests of Muslims and Jews in Greece are quite different. And the Greek Orthodox Church is top dog. (Does anybody know anything about the Armenian church?).
It ain’t right, of course. When the WWII/Civil War generation dies off, and even more when their deeply insecure children die off, the situation will probably relax a bit. It’s important that younger generations keep up some pressure for things to change. And as long as the Greek Orthodox Church insists on maintaining its medieval mindset it will surely diminish in importance (there is at least a small debate about the separation of church and state in Greece now; that qualifies as progress). With any luck the educational systems in all countries will stop equating necrophilia with national honour. But unfortunately a lot depends on what happens in Turkey and Israel (i.e. as long as the Turkish military keeps threatening Greek territory, as long as Israel keeps screwing the Palestinains and using its control over Jerusalem as a policy tool). It shouldn’t come as a surprise that people are pawns in the games of politicians.
As for the Pantokrator, I thought he represented the notion that the Father, Son and Holy Ghost were just different expression of the same being who happens to look like an old guy with a beard.
Another thing – the Muslim minority in Greece is changing extremely quickly. It’s quite likely that the Turkish-speaking & Pomak & Roma Muslim minorities are outnumbered by Muslim immigrants from outside Europe, whose agendas are very different.
I don’t know if the number of Jews in Greece is increasing or decreasing. But I think they should stand up for themselves a bit more.
Interesting comments from Lynn Gazis-Sax (welcome, by the way) and Scarf+. I am woefully ignorant about religious details so I cannot add anything about the Pantokrator, but would be fascinated to hear more? I do however agree that in Greece the crux of the matter is political game-playing and the need for separation of church and state. I think the necessity of recording religion on birth certificates changed about 10 years ago. My son who was born here has no religion recorded on his or on his school registration. We were asked what religion he was but no-one had a problem with us saying "none". It has also been many years since Orthodox religious instruction has been compulsory in school. There are however Greek Orthodox icons in all state work places, offices, classrooms and courts. There is still an incredible confusion with the general population who see religion and nationality as intertwined and inseperable. Some people have commented here and said, words to the effect of, there is no difference between being Greek and being Greek Orthodox. Anti-semitic feelings are absolutely rife here. It is common to here derogatory remarks made about Jews. Almost daily and quite openly and loudly. This is a major issue here that needs to be addressed. While there are still textbooks in school depicting "the sly evil Jew" I cannot see how this issue can be tackled. I agree Scarf+, the Jewish community could be more vocal. Perhaps they are not because of fear ? (cemmentries and synagogues are still being defaced and vandelised here). There is an Jewish organisation in Thessalonki that has a website but the last time I went there, it was full of dead links and hadn’t been updated for months. If I find it again I will post again.Thanks for the continuing discussion here. Always good to have something to think about.
I don’t think the Jews in Greece are fearful. The Jews I know here don’t really consider their Jewishness an issue. If there was active discrimination against them in business or the public sector, it would make a difference. But there isn’t much. There is a vocal minority of far-right bigots who love to provoke and score points based on half-remembered prejudice. Most Greeks couldn’t care less, and it’s considered extremely coarse to make Jewish jokes in polite company.
I don’t mean to minimize the anti-semitic jokes and grafitti and vandalism. They’re all real problems. Two things would help:
1. The Greek Orthodox church should stop describing Jews as the spawn of Satan.
2. School textbooks should reflect the enormous contribution Jews made to the city of Thessaloniki over 500 years, and there should be a serious examination of Greek collaborration in their extermination by the Nazis, the expropriation of their properties, and the complete disappearance of the Jewish cemetary in Thessaloniki.
"the spawn of Satan" I seriously didn’t know that. I know the Greek Orthodox church says some very unsavoury things but that…. ahhh. Is this a generally accepted description or is it just from the likes of the big boss man, what’s his name? Sorry, can’t bring myself to mention his name. He gives me the creeps.
Well, OK, so I exaggerrated a bit. But not by much. Depending on which archbishop you listen to, you’ll hear various descriptions of Jews, from ‘children of God’ to ‘fanged, horned, bloodsucking beasts from Hell.’ The general perception of Jews in the Church is not at all positive.