ROOTS AND WINGS Iossif Ventura was thrilled that Rabbi Negrin took charge bringing authentic Greek nusach to his back-to roots celebration. We were happy to join the festivities (Photos: Ari Z. Zivotofsky & Ari Greenspan)

Although we’d never met the bar mitzvah boys or their parents before we were thrilled to receive an invitation to what was surely one of the most memorable affairs we’d ever attended. The bar mitzvah boys were first cousins — one from Israel and the other from New York — and the venue was a 500-year-old restored but barely-used shul on the Greek island of Crete. 

This was the birthplace of the boys’ grandfather and it was the first bar mitzvah on Crete since World War II. A historic synagogue a meeting of family from two ends of the world and a young rabbi from Athens pulling it all together was a combination we couldn’t resist. What other secrets would we discover on this once Jewishly vibrant island with nary a witness to its former glory?

The Last Survivor

While geographically distant from any Jewish community this affair was run in typical bar mitzvah style — held on a Monday so that all the friends and relatives could gather and be able to take pictures. As is true of the overwhelming majority of Greek Jewry today this family too is not regularly observant but Greece’s chief rabbi 27-year-old Athens-born Rabbi Gabriel Negrin had come prepared. He brought enough sets of tefillin for the two bar mitzvah boys their fathers and grandfathers and assisted all who were interested in putting them on. The rabbi wore his special Greek rabbinic vestments under his tallis and led a melodious Shacharis service — undeterred by the stifling heat (there was no air conditioning) and the people all around fanning themselves.

Rabbi Negrin who spent several years in a Jerusalem yeshivah training for communal leadership before returning to Greece as the Jews’ spiritual mentor read the first aliyah in the unique Greek nusach and each of the boys then read an aliyah as well — which Rabbi Negrin taught them via Skype.

While we and all the guests enjoyed the bar mitzvah by far the biggest smile was on the face of maternal grandfather Sifi (Iossif) Ventura who initiated the idea for the celebration. At 77 years he is possibly the last surviving Jew of the pre-war Crete Jewish community that was eradicated by the Nazis.

By the time the Nazis occupied the island in 1941 most of the Jews of Crete — which had Jewish presence all the way back to the time of the Second Temple — had either moved to the mainland cities of Athens and Salonika or left Greece altogether. But the Germans ordered a census of the remaining Jews and found 314 Jews in the town of Hania and 26 in the capital Heraklion. At first the Nazis made a relatively benign decree — the collection of all shechitah knives. Then the Jews of Crete seem to have been forgotten about — until May 1944 when all those who had not fled were rounded up and loaded into the hold of the Nazi steamer Tanais together with Greek and Italian prisoners. They were headed for Auschwitz but met their fate even sooner. The Tanais was spotted by a British submarine that launched two torpedoes and sank the ship within 15 minutes. No Jews survived. Among the victims were Rabbi Elias Osmos — the last rabbi of Crete — and 88 children of Hania.

Two other grandfathers came to share in the festivities — and the rabbi made sure to bring enough sets of talleisim and tefillin for everyone