Romanyoti

The Romaniotes are the Greek-speaking Jews of the Eastern Roman Empire, whose name for that empire, Rhomania, gave them their own. They count as the oldest Jewish community in Europe. The Romaniotes of Ioannina preserve a tradition that their ancestors arrived after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE. They developed their own rite and a Greek dialect laced with Hebrew called Yevanic.

In the twelfth century Benjamin of Tudela found their greatest settlement at Thebes, with some two thousand Jews working in dyeing, weaving, silk and silver. After Constantinople fell in 1453 Mehmed II forcibly concentrated most of the empire's Romaniotes in his new capital, where they formed a tenth of the population.

The Ladino-speaking Sephardic exiles of 1492 gradually absorbed the older communities in ritual and language. Distinct Romaniote congregations survived, notably at Ioannina and Chalcis.