Jewish Karagiozis?

[Eva Broman <evbr4965...>]

Hi everyone,

Concerning Sandra's request, I don't know if the Jews of the Ottoman 
empire/Greece had their own Karagiozis tradition-it would be really interesting 
to know. One would imagine then that the quintessential "romaic" hero 
Karagiozis would be replaced by a Jewish counterpart...

As you probably already know, the "Evreos" (Jew), who could go under the name 
of Yakov or Solomon, was of course one of the stock characters of the Greek 
Karagiozis, along with Hatziavatis, Morfonios and the others. I think that he 
was usually described as coming from Salonica, Salonica being "the mother of 
the Jews". This was according to the tradition that the Karagiozis figures were 
often portrayed not only as representatives of various ethnic groups, but also 
as representatives of a certain region-for example, there is sior-Dionysios who 
represent the (somewhat downfallen!) Heptanese aristocracy.

Here's a link were you can see how the "Evreos" was portrayed by various 
Karagiozis players:

http://karaghiozis.net/figures/figures.html

All the best, Eva