The study of Byzantine Jewry – its political and social history no less than its cultural institutions and achievements – has long been the stepchild of Jewish scholarship. A further challenge is the continually shifting borders of the Byzantine world. For a few hundred years, Jews were granted freedom of settlement and movement within the Empire and were not excluded from the Christian socio-economic space. We will attempt to define Jewish life in Greece at this time and how Jews coped with their loss of the Holy Land. We will also look at the beginnings of the Karaite communities in Greece.
