Elias V. Messinas, "Synagogues of Greece: A Study of Synagogues in Macedonia and Thrace" (Bloch Publishing, 2011)

Summary

Podcast Summary

Podcast Title: New Books Network
Episode: Elias V. Messinas, "Synagogues of Greece: A Study of Synagogues in Macedonia and Thrace" (Bloch Publishing, 2011)
Date: April 13, 2026
Host: Rene Garfinkel
Guest: Elias V. Messinas

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Episode Overview

This episode explores the forgotten and threatened Jewish heritage of Greece through the synagogues of Macedonia and Thrace. Host Rene Garfinkel speaks with architect, researcher, and author Elias V. Messinas, whose decades-long work has uncovered, restored, and preserved the architectural and cultural history of Greek Jewish communities, focusing especially on spaces left silent by the Holocaust. The discussion weaves together personal history, memory work, architectural methodology, and the broader question of what society owes to the remnants of erased communities.

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Major Discussion Points and Insights

The Emotional Landscape of Lost Synagogues

• Introduction to the atmosphere: Rene introduces the episode by describing Holocaust Remembrance Day and the evocative silence left in once-thriving synagogues across Greece. (01:44–04:25)
• Personal connection: Elias shares his earliest emotional experiences visiting synagogue sites, describing the unique sense of sacredness and absence present in places where prayer has ceased. He recalls searching for lost synagogues in cities like Demotiho, guided by the memories of local elders:
  • “I was walking around the city trying to listen, you know, trying to feel where the Jews were...The older people would remember, of course, and they would stop me and say, here, let me tell you, there were Jews and this and that...The process was so amazing to find these places...Every place had its magic.” (04:35–09:46)

Family Heritage and Identity

• Roots in Romaniote and Sephardi lineage: Elias recounts his strong Romaniote background on his mother's side and his father's Sephardi heritage, intertwining family history with larger currents of migration, survival, and memory after the Holocaust. (09:54–16:39)
• Discovery of Greek Jewish identity: A pivotal moment came during a Sephardi event in New York, where tasting familiar foods catalyzed his desire to understand his heritage:
  • “Once I tasted the food...I just realized that I’m connected to this. The food was exactly like my grandmother used to make it. So I realized there’s something there. Whoa. I was totally taken aback...” (15:19–15:42)
• Turning point in vocation: Inspired by a Metropolis magazine article on synagogue restoration, Elias shifted his career path to dedicate himself to the documentation and restoration of Greek synagogues. (15:42–16:39)

Multilayered History of Greek Synagogues

• Architectural typologies and cultural layers: Elias explains the coexistence and fusion of different Jewish traditions—Romaniote and Sephardi—in synagogue architecture. He describes architectural “typologies”: Romaniote (bipolar arrangement of ichal and bima), Sephardi (central bima), and German Reform influences (bima and hal adjacent). (16:59–22:33)
• Challenges in reconstruction: Detailed accounts are given of reconstructing synagogues no longer standing, using rare archival materials and oral histories. Surprising findings (such as synagogues with two bimot or two ehalot) raised new research questions about ritual and communal adaptation:
  • “We have a synagogue now in Castorial, which has two bima, one bima which is in the west and one which is in the center. Again, a mix between the Romaniotes and the Sephardi and here the question is, why do they have to be moat?” (21:45–22:33)

Restoration as Personal and National Memory

• Restoring Jewish history vs. restoring Greece to itself: Elias discusses whether his work returns Jewish history to Greece, or Greece to its Jewish history. He emphasizes that in small towns, locals see synagogue restoration as restoring the whole town’s story, not just its Jewish past. (25:36–31:12)
  • “A lot of Greeks understand, especially smaller towns, understand the value of the work as being basically telling the story of their town. It’s not only the Jewish history, it’s their town, it’s their only history.” (30:00–31:12)
• Effect of the work on Elias: Through engagement with destroyed and absent places, Elias has become more sensitive to heritage, preservation, and his own roots. Research into synagogues led him to explore his own family’s history of survival and hiding. (31:12–32:58)

The Fate and Life of Restored Sites

• Current status of restored synagogues: Some synagogues serve living Jewish communities (Thessaloniki, Trikala, Kos), some are open museums (Veria), and others are tourist destinations or have regained religious functions (Rhodes, Corfu). (33:02–35:46)
• Architectural philosophy of restoration: Approaches vary from monumentalizing buildings (Thessaloniki) to preserving modest authenticity (Trikala). Each site, and each community’s wishes, require sensitivity:
  • “We try to keep that modesty...that’s the beauty of it, because it’s an historic building and keep that modesty and maintain that modesty.” (36:52–38:33)

Hopes for the Future Visitor

• Desired experience: Elias hopes visitors will feel part of both the historic process and the contemporary effort to honor and preserve these sites:
  • “We want the visitor to be part of that process...when they come into a building to read also the result, the building as it is, you know, from the effort that we make to bring that message across. And, of course, honoring, you know, the architecture of the historic structure.” (38:35–39:01)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the emotional resonance of synagogues:
  “There was a certain degree of sacredness in those places...Allah says that even when a synagogue is demolished, the place remains sacred. And you could feel that.” (05:09–05:33)
• On reconstructing vanished architecture:
  “All these pieces, it’s really like putting a mosaic together. And slowly this material grew.” (28:36–28:45)
• On community response:
  “I came in to say something and then I left the place by receiving so much from the people there. It was fascinating.” (30:34–31:12)
• On the impact on his own life:
  “It really connected me. I mean, it really helped me cast roots, deep roots... It made me more sensitive to cultural heritage, to historic buildings, to preservation, to the importance of monuments, even if they’re small, to a community, to a neighborhood.” (31:30–32:58)
• On architectural philosophy:
  “You can fall in the trap of wanting to make everything very extravagant. But Trikala, it’s a very modest building. And we try to keep that modesty, because that’s the beauty of it.” (37:51–38:10)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Opening narrative: Holocast remembrance and the silence of lost synagogues – (01:44–04:25)
• First emotional encounter with vanished sacred spaces – (04:35–09:46)
• Family heritage and discovery of Greek Jewish identity – (09:54–16:39)
• Synagogue typologies and architectural challenges – (16:59–22:33)
• Restoration and meaning for Greek history – (25:36–31:12)
• Personal transformation through heritage work – (31:12–32:58)
• Current functions and approaches to revived synagogues – (33:02–35:46)
• Philosophy of restoration and hopes for visitors – (36:06–39:01)

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Conclusion

This episode is a moving exploration of memory, place, and heritage, blending deep historical insight with personal journey. Elias V. Messinas’s work exemplifies an act of care—not only restoring buildings but reweaving the narrative fabric of communities that once were, and offering all who enter these spaces a chance to listen to their echoes. The conversation challenges listeners to consider the lingering presence of history and what it means to preserve more than stones: to tend to stories, silence, and the very notion of collective memory.

Transcript

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[Rene Garfinkel]

There are histories we inherit through stories, and there are histories we inherit through absence. Holocaust Remembrance Day in Israel we remember lives that ended families, communities, worlds interrupted. We speak names. We light candles. We try each year to bring presents back into places where violence created silence. Across Greece, in mountain towns, port cities and islands shaped by wind and sea stand synagogues that once held the rhythms of ordinary life. Children learning prayers, merchants arguing politics, weddings filled with music, the quiet murmur before Shabbat began. For centuries, Jewish life in Greece was continuous among the oldest communities in the world, Romaniac Jews who spoke Greek long before modern nations even existed, Sephardic Jews who arrived after exile from Spain and carried Ladino across the Mediterranean. And then, within months, during the Second World War, most of these communities vanished. Nearly 90% of Greek Jewry was murdered. Synagogues remained, doors closed, benches empty, dust settling where voices once rose together. What does a sacred space become when prayer stops? Is it a ruin? A monument? A witness or something waiting patiently for someone to listen. We are honored to have as our guest today Elias Macinas, an architect, researcher and author who has spent decades entering these quiet places, measuring walls, restoring roofs, recovering fragments of memory from stone and light. He describes his work in several volumes, including the narrative volume called the Synagogue. His work raises a question that belongs not only to Jewish history, but to all of us. What do we owe the past when those who lived it are no longer here to ask? This week, on this observance of remembrance, we begin not with catastrophe, but with attention to spaces that still stand and to the fragile persistence of human presence. Because sometimes remembrance is not only an act of mourning, and sometimes it's an act of care. I'm Rene Garfinkel, and this is the Van Leer Institute series on Ideas. Elias Macinas, welcome to the podcast.

[Elias Macinas]

Good morning.

[Rene Garfinkel]

Good morning. Elias, do you remember the first synagogue that felt personally significant to you? Not academically, but emotionally?

[Elias Macinas]

Well, many. First of all, I think what you said about violence creating silence and that there was a presence there. There was, and there was a presence for centuries, even to millennia, of Greek Jewish history within Greece, of course, then it became of the Ottoman Empire, but Jews remained there for centuries. Communities really are older even than Greek communities in many places within Greece. And it's true that within months, the Nazis and the Bulgarians who were occupying the Bulgarians were occupying Eastern Macedonia, the Greek part, of course, and part of Thrace, and the Germans, the rest of Greece, they deported and really exterminated almost completely those communities. And what, what one feels, I mean, I first visited those places in the 1990s. That's like 30 years ago and more than 30 years ago. And what blew me off was that there was a certain degree of sacredness in those places. You know, Allah says that even when a synagogue is demolished, the place remains sacred. And you could feel that? I could feel that. I mean, of course, those who came in and of course demolished the buildings and then built apartment buildings didn't feel that, but I felt that. And there was something very special about those places and all the process of finding those places. For example, in the Demotiho, which is in Thrace, it's about. It's a stone throw from the border with Turkey. And I was doing my army service in Greece at the time, and I was going out with the rest of my base. We're going out for the afternoon in the. For a cup of coffee or dinner, and I was walking around the city trying to listen, you know, trying to feel where the Jews were like, I wanted the city to sort of guide me to where I should go to find the synagogue. Because the synagogue, the site of the synagogue was still there, but the synagogue was already demolished. So I started to ask people, and people slowly were guiding me towards the right area. And I would try to find the older people because the younger people didn't understand what I'm talking about. So the older people would remember, of course, and they would stop me and say, here, let me tell you, there were Jews and this and that. They were telling me the story. I remember people in the market, and they would take me by the hand and they would take me to where the place was. So the process was so amazing to find these places and sometimes be a little disappointed to find just, you know, in the demotte, I just found an empty site covered with gravel. Underneath of that was the floor, the original floor of the synagogue, but it wasn't visible. And on top of it, the neighbors were parking their cars. So basically, the site of the synagogue, this sacred place, had become a parking space for the neighbors. Of course, now it has changed. They built a Holocaust monument. And so the site has regained some of its importance and significance for the Jewish history. But still that synagogue is not there while it could have been there. Each synagogue has its own, you know, its own special moments. Jannen, of course, was where my grandfather used to pray in the old synagogue. Even, you know, the old people from the community would also show. They showed me the seat where my grandfather was sitting in the synagogue. Because in those old communities you retain your seat for life and, you know, nobody dares sit there. So when I went to the synagogue and it was a prayer time, so they indicated me to go and sit at my grandfather. It was the right place to sit. Nobody else could sit there. And so every place had its magic. I mean, there were really magical moments in those places. Like in Komotini, the roof had collapsed, and there was a beautiful lantern on top of the roof. And I arrived there with my tools to measure, but they didn't have a ladder. So if the building was still standing, the roof was in place, the lantern would have been too high for me to reach to measure. So as I found the building with the roof collapsed, the lantern fell almost intact in one piece on the floor underneath where it was standing. So it was very easy for me to just take my measure out and just measure it in great detail. This beautiful lantern from the synagogue. Many moments. I mean, there were so many moments in those 30 years of reaching, touching this, the Sacredness. It was just amazing.

[Rene Garfinkel]

Before this became your life's work, what did Jewish Greece mean to you?

[Elias Macinas]

Well, I grew up in a family of, you know, both my parents were Jewish. My mother was Romaniote from a really Romanut background. I mean, my mother's father was Romana. My mother's mother, my grandmother was from both very hardcore Romano communities. And my grandmother's family came from Arta, which is northwest of Greece. Again, very Romanian community. And their wedding took place of my great grandfather from Cholkida and my great grandmother from Arta. The wedding took place in the Greca synagogue, which is a Romaniote synagogue in Corfu. So again, a Romagnote, you know, totally Romagnot.

[Rene Garfinkel]

You're Romaniote through and through.

[Elias Macinas]

Yeah, through and through. You know, there was nothing, no mix, nothing. Everything was Romagnot. And of course, after the war, things changed. A lot of communities were almost destroyed. Arta hardly left anybody left Yan. And very few people. Today there are less than 40 people. Falkida the same. So after the war, there was a lot of mix with the Sephardi Jews. And my father's side was Sephardi. I found documents of my grandfather being born in Izmir. In Greek, they say Izmirni. In the Jewish community, his family came. Well, they came from Istanbul, from Costa Napoli, but there. And there in Constantinople, there was a community in a synagogue that was called the Synagogue of Messina. That means the people who left Messina, which means the family left Messina probably around the 15th century, came to Turkey, to Istanbul, left them, and then they moved. In the beginning of the 19th century, they moved to Izmir, where my grandfather was born. And then my grandfather left Izmir in 1923, a year after the destruction of the Greek community by the Turks. And that was probably because he was working as an accountant for Greek businesses. And so when the Greeks left, there was no business. So. So he left and came to Greece to work for the same business who moved their business to Greece. And that's how my parents met, basically. And. And I came to life. So. So the. The. At home, I mean, my grandmother would speak Greek and of course, Janiotika, you know, Greek, Hebrew words. But afterwards, when I learned Hebrew, I understood what she was talking about. That came into the dialect of the Greek, which is quite amazing. It's very unique for the Romanian communities. And my grandfather would speak ladino. And that was a little strange to me. I didn't know how to bring those two things together. And we kept the high holidays. And then I came To Israel to study, do my first degree. And then I went to the States to do my master's. And that's where actually I was exposed to the Greek Jewish miracle. You know, this beauty of Sephardi and Romaniote heritage. There was an event on Sephardi Jews, a Sephardi jury in New York in 1993, I think. And they had also food and music, et cetera. And once I tasted the food, that's what we say. I just realized that I'm connected to this. The food was exactly like my grandmother used to make it. So I realized there's something there. Whoa. I was totally taken aback. There was something there that I had to figure out what it is. And when I finished my studies at Yale, I was looking like everybody else in my classroom, what I'm going to do with my life. So some people went to fancy offices in New York to work for very important architects. And I was thinking whether I want to spend my life drafting corridors and offices for big towers in New York. Or maybe I should do something more meaningful. So I put down my cards. My cards was Greek, Jewish architect. And I'm looking for meaning. And at that time, I was in a big conference in Chicago. And I opened a Metropolis magazine. And it's like when something has to happen, it will happen. It's amazing. The signs come in and they tell you, this is what you have to do. And the minute you have the quest, the answers are coming. It's amazing. So I'm opening this Metropolis magazine. In a big architectural AIA American Institute of Architects conference about sustainable design. That was in 1993, a year after Rio. So it was very meaningful event. Nothing to do with synagogues, nothing to do with Jewish architecture. I opened the Metropolis, and there it is. Two pages full of an article by Samuel Gruber, who then became a mentor. And we had a very good friendship and mutual work. And there was an article by Sam Gruber, representing the World Monuments Fund. About how to restore synagogues. How they restored synagogues in Eastern Europe. And that's when one thing brought the other. And then I said, wait a second. Synagogues in Eastern Europe. There must be synagogues in Greece. So I then went home, called up Gruber. It was New York. I said, he's in New York. This is New York. I'm in New York. I can call him up. So I called him up and I spoke with him, actually. And he gave me a lot of insights and of ideas. And he was very happy that I was thinking about the synagogues in Greece. And Then I called the Jewish Museum in Greece and that's how this thing started to roll. And eventually I decided to go back to Greece and start the project. That's more or less how it started.

[Rene Garfinkel]

You mentioned the long history and the complex multicultural history of Greek Jews. When you study the synagogues, do you feel the layers of different Jewish histories as if speaking to each other?

[Elias Macinas]

Well, first of all, we have the traditions, the different traditions, and we have the two, let's say primary traditions, the Romanut and the Sephardi. We have a certain typology which is dominance in terms of Romaniot. We have the bipolar arrangement of the ichal and the bima. And sometimes the dima is raised, sometimes it was not raised. And in the Sephardi we have the bima being in the center of the synagogue. Then in Greece, in the 19th century, we had the new movement that came in that was influenced by the Reform movement in Germany. And that was a new arrangement that the bima and the hal were adjacent to each other in the front of the synagogue. So this is what at least the three primary, let's say, typologies that are guiding us in Greece. What we find in Llanela we have the Romagna, in the Rhodes we have the Sephardi. Also in Kos, we have the Sephardi. And in the more modern, let's say more contemporary synagogues, we had the so called Reform in terms of architecture, but not in, of course in the rite and the liturgy in Thessaloniki, in Athens, in other places. Now this is the basics. But what happened is that we have a lot of variations and that's where things start to overlap. And that's where it's a little confusing, especially when we're trying to reconstruct synagogues, like what I've been trying to do for the past few years, where thanks to an archive that came to my attention by it was an archive by an architect called Saint of Samuel, who was born in 1939, passed away in 2009 and he as a student, Samuel went to Greece. He was a student in architecture in Thessaloniki, in the Aristotelian University, Aristotle University. And he was asked by his professoroulos, who also happened to meet him when I started my own research. He was a student of Mitsopoulos. And Mitsopoulos understood that Samuel is Jewish. So he told me. So he told him, why don't you create you prepare a lecture to the class about the synagogues of Greece. So Samuel went out and he measured some of the synagogues and it was so amazing that we found this archive because he measured a lot of the synagogues that I didn't find standing because they had been demolished before I started my work. So Samuel did. Did his work in 1960, 61. That's 30 years before my research and surveys. So we have suddenly material of art, of synagogues, very detailed surveys of synagogues that don't exist anymore and which now can be reconstructed in great detail. And that's what I have been doing for the past three years, using VR and using digital models, et cetera. Now, what is difficult here is when, of course, we left some service. So when you have a survey, it's very easy to reconstruct the synagogue. Everything is there. We know that the Bima in Kavala, for example, it wasn't underneath the dome, but it was a little further to the west of the center. But then we had Castoria and Kastoria in northern Greece. Samui didn't find the building because it had been demolished in the end of 1940s, early 50s. And so when he went there, he only find the Jews who told him how the building looked like. So he left a little sketch of the plan, but not a very accurate plan, of course. No measurements, no survey. And there I had to go into the mindset of those communities and of course go back to all the other examples that I had as solid evidence, you know, measured buildings to reconstruct a building that doesn't exist anymore. And Castoria was very complicated because there was a plan and a sketch of the interior published in 1994 by an architect called Tsolikis in Greece. But apparently Tsolakis didn't get enough information from the Jews that he spoke to, because a similar sketch that Samuel prepared, and the written text about the description of the synagogue from what he heard from the community, didn't just show the Dima in a romanute way that Tsurlaik is published, but he showed that there was an additional dhimma in the center of the synagogue. And that is something that came out from Samuel's work archive that we didn't know before. And now what happens, we have a synagogue now in Castorial, which has two bima, one bima which is in the west and one which is in the center. And if somebody has been in Trikala, in the Yavanim synagogue, which I was the architect, that also restored the synagogue there too, we have two Bimas. We have one Bima in the west and one Bima in the center. Again a mix between the Romaniotes and the Sephardi and here the question is, why do they have to be moat?

[Rene Garfinkel]

Yes, I was asked that question, right?

[Elias Macinas]

Yes. Why should they have to be moat? And of course, you know, there's another question now that I'm trying to investigate why certain synagogues have two echelot. There are synagogues in Greece, for example, in Rhodes, that they have two echelot. And we have at least two examples measured that we have to echelop. And this is something that comes from the Muslim world where we have a lot of examples and also here in Jerusalem of synagogues that had more than one. That's another question. That's a different research that I'm now starting to tackle, which is fascinating. But why do they have to be moat? And that's a big question. My take was that after the. In Tricol, for example, in Tricola, there were two synagogues, one which was a Sephardi and one which was the Romanote. And my take was that once the Sephardi was destroyed during, after the war, the years after the war, that the Jewish community created another bima in the center in order to accommodate also the Jews who were left without a synagogue. You know, the few survivors who were praying at the Sephardi synagogue. But when I went to the community, to Jacob's Venusio and asked him, you know, is that really after the. She said, no, no, no. This bima has been here before the war. And so the question is, why did they put it there? Did they put it for just functionality, just to make it easier for the older people to go up on the Teva instead of having to climb up the stairs to the Teva? So there's a lot of questions that I don't think we have exact answers, and that's one of them. The Double Dima K Pop Demon Hunters,

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[Elias Macinas]

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[Elias Macinas]

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[Elias Macinas]

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[Rene Garfinkel]

Elias, do you feel you're restoring Jewish history to Greece or Greece to itself?

[Elias Macinas]

Well, I can tell you that when I first started my research, there was nearly no material. There was a book that was published by Nikola in 1992, the Jewish sites and Synonyms of Greece. It was basically a photographic survey of all synagogues standing in the 1980s. He had gone out with Timothy Devini, the photographer, and they photographed all the Jewish sites in Greece. And they published a book which was very important as a starter. And before that there was a book by Belmazur, who was a female American archaeologist who came to Greece in 1932. I don't know exactly why she came, but she came to Egina, where there was a synagogue, synagogue, ruin of a synagogue, ancient synagogue. So it may be that she came exactly for the synagogue or she came for the. For the experience and she realized that there was also a synagogue. I'm not sure about that, but I know that also Elazar Sukenik was in Egina two years before Mazur, and his work was only published in 1934. So Mazur didn't know about the synagogue from Sukenik, so she may have known about it from other sources, but she tried to also go to Delos and to speak about Corinth and about others, mostly ancient sides of Jewish history and architecture. So we have those two works basically, and we didn't have much other than that. So when I first started, it was really uncharted grounds. I mean, uncharted waters. So I started from measuring the buildings. So this is the first evidence that we have. So survey the buildings. The second was to go into archives and dig out incredible information, especially about Thessaloniki, about Komotini, about Xanthi, about main communities, about the communities that use them, about dates, about the names of the synagogues, about many Many different details that you pick from, correspondence you pick from, I don't know, summaries you pick from, reports, all kinds of materials in the archives. And then slowly, material started to come. There was published photographs here and there, there was published texts there, visits the place, you meet people and you speak with people, survivors, neighbors who remember things, and they guide you. And you get more insights about how to read the site, how to understand the site, how then to reconstruct the site. So it's really a process. And all these pieces, it's really like putting a mosaic together. And slowly this material grew. And I've already about, I think, 10 or 11 books on the synagogues of Greece. Three of them, it's a trilogy I wrote in Greece. It came out in the last three years, four years. The first one was translated into English, the synagogue that you mentioned earlier. And there actually, it's really helped me because I put down on the paper not only the facts like the history of the community, the synagogue, the basics. I also put there a lot of dialogues and a lot of process of how this evidence came to light, how I came across, who I spoke with, dialogues between people. So the process of, let's say, reconstructing this richness of the Jewish heritage in terms of synagogue was revealed. Also the process behind it, you know, the work and the people and the discussion, etc.

[Rene Garfinkel]

So now tell us a little bit about what's in that book. How have the Greeks responded when they encountered their own history through your work? What kind of responses have you gotten during the time that you were working?

[Elias Macinas]

I think that, I mean, the responses were mostly positive to surprising. A lot of Greeks understand, especially smaller towns, understand the value of the work as being basically telling the story of their town. It's not only the Jewish history, it's their town, it's their only history. And at one town especially, it was fascinating in Preveza, where I presented slides about the synagogue and about the history and about the book. And then a lot of older people raised their hand and they're starting to tell their own story about how they related to the Jews. They remembered the Jews, they worked with the Jews, they lived side by side with the Jews, they remember the synagogue. And it was fascinating because it was almost like a public participation that I came in to say something and then I left the place by receiving so much from the people there. It was fascinating. So it's been a very positive experience, I must say, the response of people, non Jewish people.

[Rene Garfinkel]

And speaking of what you received from it, you've spent decades immersed in places marked by destruction. Places that once lived and were now demolished. How has the work changed you?

[Elias Macinas]

Well, it's changed me as an architect. Definitely has changed me as an architect. I've become more sensitive to heritage, to cultural heritage. Because I realized that this is also related to me personally. This whole process of digging about the history and architecture of synagogues. It also led me to start digging the story and history of my family. With a friend, we went to the neighborhood where my family was hiding. My father and his brother, I think. And we started to try to dig and to reconstruct the story there. So it really gave me a lot of. It really connected me. I mean, it really helped me cast roots, deep roots. And then from there to look for also other things that related to my own family, my family history. And in my architecture. It made me more sensitive to cultural heritage, to historic buildings, to preservation, to the importance of monuments, even if they're small, to a community, to a neighborhood. And to be more attentive to what's there before we start to demolish and build any new stuff.

[Rene Garfinkel]

And how are those sites treated now?

[Elias Macinas]

What.

[Rene Garfinkel]

What happens around those sites? Are they memorials? Are they tourist sites? What. What is the life around the sites that you've restored?

[Elias Macinas]

Well, as an architect, I was involved. I mean, I was the head architect of a few projects. One was in. Two were in Thessaloniki, the Central synagogue. So these are two functional synagogues that the community uses. And of course, a lot of visitors come then. I also was in charge with a big team of experts in Trikala, where we restored the Yavanim Synagogue, which is again functioning synagogue and receives also a lot of tourists. And I also was asked to restore the interior of the Kos synagogue, which is near Rhodes. Because the building, the structure was preserved from the Holocaust until today. But the interior had lost its Jewish function. There was no echala, there was no bima. And so I was asked to restore this. And of course, that was a very difficult process. Because I had to go back to the 1930s. Because the building was built in the 1930s by. To Italian architects. Because the island was under Italian rule at the time. And tried to find precedence from Italy of how a synagogue in the 1930s looked like. In order to restore the furnishings of the synagogue in Kos. And of course, that's also a building that is in use. They receive a lot of tourism. And of course, the tourists now the Jewish tourists can also hold services, weddings, bar mitzvah, everything. Other sites, like Veria, which the synagogue has Been preserved. There's no longer a community to use it. But there's a lot of groups coming in almost daily to visit the building, the site, the Jewish Quarter, which is quite preserved. And so it's like an open museum. And these are more or less the sites. And then, of course, all the synagogues which are functioning in communities, which are still. They still have people like in Yanena, in Al Qida, in Athens, Thessaloniki, Crete. Now, the synagogue was restored by nikosafnaikis in the 90s. So that synagogue is also functioning now. Rhodes, of course, is a synagogue in its functioning Corfu and some other places.

[Rene Garfinkel]

Finally, Elias, after all these years and delving so deeply into the history and the architecture and the challenges, when you enter a restored synagogue today, what do you hope the next visitor will feel?

[Elias Macinas]

Well, it's a good question. Each building requires a different approach. And the approach also has to do with the community itself. For example, in Thessaloniki, the central synagogue, we were asked to refresh its monumentality. To refresh, to, like, wake up, waken up. Its importance as a monument and as a synagogue. And so there we looked at synagogues in the Balkans and tried to get this feel of how a synagogue would be, let's say, painted, colored to give an impression, this awe of spirituality, of public building, of a monument in the city. And that was in Thessaloniki, where we preserved the actual details. But we gave them a little push in terms of color, in terms of we refreshed the building. We didn't touch. We didn't change anything. In Trikala, it was a different story. Trikala, it's a historic synagogue. Of course, it was rebuilt in art in the 1930s because of some damage. But it was an historic synagogue. And it had this historic feeling to it. So we were very, very accurate to repair it. We had to do some structural reinforcements and some waterproofing, et cetera. But when we brought back the finishes, we didn't deviate almost at all from how the synagogue looked like. So we wanted to maintain the exact values and historical, historical, even modesty, in a way, because it's a very modest building. You can fall in the trap of wanting to make everything very extravagant. But Trikala, it's a very modest building. And we try to keep that modesty, because that's the beauty of it, because it's an historic building and keep that modesty and maintain that modesty. And that's what we did. And that's why the building still looks like an old building, like an historic building, although it's been really restored. Elias. So.

[Rene Garfinkel]

I'm sorry. Please.

[Elias Macinas]

No, no. Yeah. So we want the visitor to be part of that process, you know, when they come into a building to read also the result, the building as it is, you know, from the effort that we make to bring that message across. And, of course, honoring, you know, the architecture of the historic structure. Of course.

[Rene Garfinkel]

I'm really glad that the young Elias made the choice to look for something meaningful instead of just an ordinary architect work. Your career has really had an important impact, and I thank you for sharing your experience and your thoughts about them with us today. Thanks so much for coming on the show.

[Elias Macinas]

Thank you, Renee. Thank you very much for the invitation,

[Rene Garfinkel]

and thanks to our researcher, Bela Pasakov.