Συναγωγή Ετζ Χαγίμ

Despite the various conquests – Roman, Byzantine, Arab, Venetian and Ottoman – the Jews of Crete maintained an impressive continuity over time. During the late 19th century, the dispute between the European powers over the fate of the Ottoman Empire became clearer. Introverted rebellions were often noted, with the aim of uniting Crete with the Greek state. As a consequence of the above, the Jews of Crete began to emigrate, ending up in 1941 with only one community surviving - that of Chania - numbering approximately 330 people. This community had two synagogues dating back to the Middle Ages – Beth Shalom and Kal Kantos Etz Hayim.

In 1941, during the bombing of Chania at the beginning of the Battle of Crete, Beth Shalom was destroyed, leaving only one synagogue to serve the needs of the community. In May 1944 the entire community was arrested by the Nazis and, after a period of detention in nearby prisons, was sent to Heraklion, where they were put on the ship Tanais. In the early hours of the next day, in the middle of sailing to the port of Piraeus, the ship was torpedoed by a British submarine and sank within 15 minutes. There were no survivors.

The building dates to the 14th-15th centuries and was originally a Venetian Catholic church, the Church of St. Katherine, located in the heart of the small, centuries-old Jewish neighbourhood, Evraiki, situated behind the harbour-front along Kondylaki, Skoufon, Zambeliou and Portou Streets. The church was damaged in the 1540s during one of the Ottoman Turkish attacks on the city led by the Chief Admiral of the Ottoman fleet, Khair ad-Din Kapdian Pasha, otherwise known as Barbarossa. In the mid- to late 17th century, after the eventual Ottoman conquest of Crete (1669), the building was acquired by Hania’s Jewish community who then converted it into a synagogue. Prior to the Second World War, Kal Kadosh Etz Hayyim, a Romaniote synagogue, together with Beth Shalom (bombed in 1941), a Sephardic synagogue, served the needs of Hania’s Jewish community. Once this community was deported in 1944, Etz Hayyim was looted and desecrated and then occupied by squatters until the mid-1950s. From that time until the mid-1990s, the derelict synagogue served as a repository of neighbourhood rubbish, and invariably as a chicken pen, dog kennel and storeroom.

Having stood abandoned for almost 50 years following the end of the Second World War, the fortunes of Etz Hayyim were about to change as a result of the intervention by Hania resident, Nikos Stavroulakis (himself an artist, writer, academic and founding director of the Jewish Museums of of Athens and Thessaloniki) who wanted to rebuild and revive the synagogue after surveying extensive earthquake damage caused to the building in 1995. Soon afterwards, Nikos gave a lecture about Etz Hayyim at a symposium jointly sponsored by the World Monuments Fund and the Jewish Heritage Program in New York. As a result, Etz Hayyim was added to the prestigious list of the world’s “100 Most Endangered Sites” of international cultural concern compiled by the World Monuments Fund in 1996. With this recognition, Nikos acquired the funding to fully restore the synagogue, a process which took three years and was headed by Nikos himself under the aegis of the World Monuments Fund in cooperation with the Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece (KISE). Funding was provided by the Rothschild, Lauder, Rosenberg, Rose and other foundations and donations from interested individuals. The synagogue was officially rededicated on 10 October,1999 with Rabbis Jacob Arar and Isaak Mizan of Athens as the celebrants assisted by Rabbi Yacob Dayan of Salonika. Approximately 350 people were present including members of the various Greek Jewish communities, representatives from the Orthodox and Catholic churches in Hania and local and international dignitaries such as the Hon. Constantine Mitsotakis, the former Prime Minister and President of the New Democracy Party of Greece alongside the German Ambassador to Greece.

Since 2010, Etz Hayyim has been operated by a non-profit organisation in cooperation with the Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece (KISE). This non-profit organisation is registered as a charity in Greece and, because Etz Hayyim does not receive any public funding, it raises funds for the maintenance of the synagogue and for the various religious and cultural events to ensure its long-term preservation. Two decades after its rededication, Etz Hayyim has become a fixture in the religious and socio-cultural life of Hania as a place of prayer, study, recollection and reconciliation. It is an active, non-denominational synagogue used for celebrating various Jewish holidays and non-religious cultural events including lectures, concerts and exhibitions. Its small team of staff and volunteers undertake ongoing research into the history of Cretan Jews at the same time as engaging both local and international school groups and teachers as part of the synagogue’s educational outreach program. The synagogue today welcomes Jews of all different backgrounds, as well as non-Jews and as such, Etz Hayyim stands as perhaps the only active reminder of the once multifaith, multicultural society of Hania and Crete.

Etz Hayyim serves as a research and resource centre. At Etz Hayyim, we conduct ongoing research into the history of Cretan Jewish communities at our library, the Evlagon Institute for Cretan Jewish Studies, named after the last chief Rabbi of Crete, Avraham Evlagon (1846-1933). The Institute coordinates research projects, publishes research results and develops materials for the synagogue’s educational outreach program and exhibitions.

Etz Hayyim’s library evolved from the personal reference collection of Nikos Stavroulakis, the founding Director of Etz Hayyim Synagogue. In its original form, his collection comprised books, off-prints of articles and monographs concerning the Jews in the western Ottoman Empire, both Romaniote or Sephardi. . The collection also includes monographs on general Jewish history and volumes on related subjects such as theology, mysticism, and political identity. There are also some 250 CDs of music, liturgical and secular, of the Romaniote and Sephardi traditions.

In 2000, Nikos’ personal reference collection was relocated to the synagogue where it could be properly catalogued and added to with funding provided by private donors. Unfortunately, a considerable number of these books and monographs were destroyed or rendered unusable due to the two arson attacks in 2010 during which the synagogue’s archive containing documentation of the mid- to late 1990s renovation along with original records of the pre-1944 Jewish community were destroyed. Etz Hayyim was then offered the current library premises by the Archaeological Authority in Hania through the assistance of its then-Director, Michael Andreanakis, and numerous damaged books were restored by specialised staff.

In the aftermath of the two arson attacks, Etz Hayyim received an overwhelming response from all over the world to support the restoration of the library and its works. There were donations of Sephardi prayer books and newly-made liturgical texts from Israel and New York. The Yiddish Book Centre in New York also circulated our list of lost and damaged books and, as a result, Etz Hayyim was donated numerous books from across the US. We were particularly fortunate to receive more than 800 works from Mrs Judy Hetzler Humphrey of Manassa, Virginia. Those books not only replaced the ones we had lost, but expanded our library in other directions, for example, Africa and African Art.