fyromian Independence Day

[chequita guevara]

[Ned]This is all Britain's fault for supporting Greek independence in the first place![/Ned]

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Bereta_Eder
why dont u say God?

Its a custom, about not taking Her name in vain. Im not always consistent about it.

[Bereta_Eder]

i thought so. there's a similar tradition (amongst some believers) and the exact same phrase here.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Bereta_Eder
i thought so. there's a similar tradition (amongst some believers) and the exact same phrase here.

considering that on the one hand, the Orthodox church retains some Jewish practices, IIUC, and OTOH, there were strong Greek cultural influences in Israel during Mishnaic times, its not surprising there are customs in common.

[MarkG]

Originally posted by JimmyCracksCorn
See, how does it feel?

racism? i wouldnt know

[Cort Haus]

Originally posted by lord of the mark
markos

Trolls

property rights, which let a webmaster do whatever they want with THEIR site

Republic of Macedonia

Greek Province of Macedonia

Salonika, the Jerusalem of the Balkans


POTM's best friend, whose grandparents were Salonika Jews (and spoke Greek, BTW, not Ladino)

The Former English Colonies of America, G-d Bless Them!

Good post, LOTM.

Salonika : I like the spelling (isn't iki a Turkish diminutive?) and maybe a 'Jerusalem of the Balkans' in terms of all the claims, but is it also in terms of Religion? FWIW, Kosovo-Metohia, "land of the church", was seen by many Serbs as their 'Jerusalem'.

btw - Is the Muslim claim on (the real) Jerusalem a strong / valid one, in your view? Or did they build that Mosque to cover a Jewish site?

[MarkG]

isn't iki a Turkish diminutive?

The city was founded around 315 BC by Cassander, the King of Macedon, on or near the site of the ancient town of Therma and 26 other local villages. He named it after his wife Thessalonica, who was also the sister of Alexander the Great. She gained her name from her father, Philip II of Macedon, to commemorate her birth on the day of his gaining a victory (nike) over the Thessalians (in Greek).

[Bereta_Eder]

Originally posted by Cort Haus
Salonika : I like the spelling (isn't iki a Turkish diminutive?)

Well Thessalo-Nike simply means "the Victory of the Thessalians". I'm pretty sure it isn't turkish but the other names for it like Soloun etc are based on the greek name. And there was a huge jewish presence before WW2 there no doubt. I've heard it being refered to as the "second jerusalem"

[Ecthy]

Silly Markos, that doesn't explain where the -iki comes from.

[MarkG]

the "niki" part means victory (in ancient and modern greek)

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Cort Haus


Good post, LOTM.

Salonika : I like the spelling (isn't iki a Turkish diminutive?) and maybe a 'Jerusalem of the Balkans' in terms of all the claims, but is it also in terms of Religion? FWIW, Kosovo-Metohia, "land of the church", was seen by many Serbs as their 'Jerusalem'.

btw - Is the Muslim claim on (the real) Jerusalem a strong / valid one, in your view? Or did they build that Mosque to cover a Jewish site?

Salonica was called the Jerusalem of the Balkans because of its large Jewish population - at one point under the Ottoman empire, i believe it actually had a Jewish majority, or came close. And for its thriving Jewish culture - it was the seat of the Ladino cultural renaissance (Ladino is a language derived from old Spanish, with Hebrew additions, as most Salonica Jews were descended from refugees from the expulsion from Spain, who went to the OE for refuge) (the cultural revival was largely secular, IIUC)

As for the real Jerusalem, thats totally off topic to this thread - though a thread on the ME tends to be troll fodder.

Short answer - its certain, IMO, that there was a Temple on the the Temple Mount, and that IS a Jewish holy site. Whether the authors of Islamic tradition really beleived Mohammed ascended to heaven from there, or were just staking a claim to what Jews and Christians considered a holy spot, is not a question thats really worth addressing - the ME has been held back by everybody interrogating everybody elses religious traditions. The fact is that after 1400 years it has become a holy place to muslims, and theres no changing that. I think muslims have A claim to the city, but not the principle one - as to Jews its not only a holy site, its the site of the capital of ancient Israel, the only nation that made Jerusalem the capital. Jerusalem WILL remain the capital of Israel - however it is clear most Jerusalem arabs dont want to be Israelis, and that some acknowledgement of muslim rights on the Temple Mount is necessary to make peace. I think some compromise can be reached, but will depend on the overall context of any peace agreement.

and yes, thats the short version

[lord of the mark]

'There was once a great city, a cosmopolitan center of commerce and culture. Its port welcomed immigrants fleeing terror and want; its dense, bustling streets presented a kaleidoscopic variety of native dress and hummed with the sound of the world's languages. Built on the twin pillars of tolerance and trade, the city was a beacon of pluralism, whose daily existence contradicted the modern siren songs of nationalism and ethnic hatred.

This great city is not New York but Salonika, "the Pearl of the Mediterranean." Located on Greece's northeast coast, along the Aegean Sea, Salonika (today officially known by the Greek name Thessaloniki) was once one of the most Jewish cities in the world. Though its population comprised a multitude of religions and ethnicities — Greek, Turkish, Armenian, Bulgarian, Serb and countless others — Jews were by far the largest single group in the city. Indeed, by the 16th century Jews actually constituted a majority of the population, although this percentage would later decline somewhat; according to the census of 1900 (a high-water mark of sorts for the city, before the tragedies that were shortly to arrive), of Salonika's 173,000 residents some 80,000 were Jewish, 60,000 Muslim and 30,000 Christian. The Jewish population in Salonika, in fact, was more than 10 times that of Greece's second-largest Jewish center, Athens.

Jews had lived in Salonika since the second century before the common era, but a significant community did not exist until the Byzantine period, when several hundred Jews lived there. According to information put out by the contemporary Jewish community of Salonika (available online at www.jct.gr), the first European immigrants to Salonika were Hungarians who arrived in 1376; a larger number of Bavarian Jews settled in 1470, founding the small Ashkenazi community there. The Jewish population of the city grew enormously during the 15th and 16th centuries, with the arrival of some 20,000 refugees from Spain, Portugal, Italy, Sicily and North Africa, fleeing the ever-expanding reach of the Spanish Inquisitions. This sudden influx would ineradicably shape the identity of the Salonikan Jewish community, which over time became a kind of Sephardic enclave on the Greek mainland.

As was true in many Mediterranean and Asian centers, the Jews of Salonika were largely involved in international trade, much of it in silk, cotton and grain; a sizeable number were craftsmen, who became well known in the region for their skill in weaving, dying and the manufacture of jewelry, while still others worked as fishermen, in tobacco production and in gold and silver mines. (The Salonikan port — the city's economic lifeblood — was almost entirely run by Jews and, like most of the city's businesses, was closed on Saturdays in observance of the Jewish Sabbath.) Commerce and all of the other daily activities of the Jewish community were conducted in Ladino, the language of Spanish Jewry, although by the early 20th century French had become the primary language of some of the wealthier families, who had been educated in the schools of the Alliance Israélite Universelle. Hebrew, of course, was reserved for religious activities, which flourished in Salonika. As has been noted by, among others, the Greek historian Nicholas Stavroulakis, the city had 32 synagogues, whose names reflected the origins of their congregants: the Aragonese synagogue, the Castille, Catalan, Majorca, Lisbon and so forth. Salonika was a center for the study of Torah and kabbala (the 17th-century false messiah Sabbatai Zvi found fertile ground for his ideas among the Jews of Salonika, and a sect of his followers survived there until the 20th century), as well as secular subjects including medicine and the natural sciences. As Vilna was long known as "the Jerusalem of Lithuania," so was Salonika known, even more expansively, as "the Jerusalem of the Balkans."'

[Cort Haus]

Thanks for those replies, all

[Asher]

Markos.

[Gangerolf]

Денес Над Македонија

Денес над Македонија се раѓа,
ново сонце на слободата !
Македонците се борат,
за своите правдини !
Македонците се борат,
за своите правдини !

Од сега веќе знамето се вее,
на Крушевската република !
Гоце Делчев, Питу Гули,
Даме Груев, Сандански !
Гоце Делчев, Питу Гули,
Даме Груев, Сандански !

Горите македонски шумно пеат,
нови песни, нови весници !
Македонија слободна,
слободна живее !
Македонија слободна,
слободна живее !