This photograph was taken at Mario Modiano’s Bar Mitzvah in his home in Salonica in 1929.
“What I remember more vividly from my bar mitzvah is the hard time I had trying to learn enough Hebrew to be able to read the text. I had a teacher who came home and taught me how to parrot the text from the Torah that I was supposed to read at the service in the synagogue. I very much regret that I never really learned Hebrew. After the service at the synagogue there was a reception at home, and the whole family as well as many of my father's colleagues and employees came to celebrate with us. I also remember that on that occasion my maternal uncles gave me a bicycle as a gift, and that I fell in love with it. I just would never part with the bicycle so much so that the neighbors claimed I even went to the toilet with the bicycle.”
Would you like to know more?
Bar/Bat Mitzvah – Bar mitzvah for boys or bat mitzvah for girls refers to the ages, 12 and 13 respectively, at which a Jew becomes obligated to fulfil the Jewish commandments and is allowed to participate fully in Jewish ritual and law. Since the Middle Ages, Jewish families have celebrated this milestone with a variety of different ceremonies and celebrations that have developed over time and place. In the past only boys celebrated their coming of age, though in recent years almost all communities also celebrate the girls' Bat Mitzvah. Bar and bat mitzvahs may consist of the celebrant being called up to the Torah for an aliyah, reading the weekly Torah portion or Haftarah, giving a sermon about the Torah reading, or leading the prayer service. Parties are probably the most common way of celebrating this milestone with family and friends. In recent years, participating in a social action project has also become quite common in some communities.
Jews of Salonika (Thessaloniki) – Salonika (Thessaloniki in Greek) is an important port city in Greece that had a thriving Jewish community for hundreds of years. The first Jews to arrive in Salonika in 140 BCE were from Alexandria, Egypt. The community was relatively small until a large number of Jews expelled from Spain, Portugal, and other countries settled there in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The city became a centre of Torah and Jewish culture, and Ladino, the language of those expelled from Spain, flourished. The local Jews engaged in commerce and banking, and many worked at the port. Until 1912, Jews were the largest ethnic group in Salonika. In 1917, a large fire spread through the city destroying two-thirds of the city and leaving 52,000 Jews poor and homeless. Much of the infrastructure of the Jewish community was also destroyed. This destruction coincided with a rise in Greek nationalism which marginalized the Jews of Salonika; nevertheless, they managed to rebuild the community. The Nazis captured the city in 1941, and in 1943 the Jews were forced to live in a ghetto and were then deported, mainly to Auschwitz, where around 98% of Salonika’s Jews perished. After the war, 2,000 Jews resettled in Salonika, while many others moved to Israel. The Florentin neighbourhood of Tel Aviv was founded by Jews from Salonika.
