More on the Balkans is to be found at the Romanian minorities group: groups.yahoo.com/group/Rumanian_minorities. Here we have issues related to Sephardim (Sefardim), Ashkenazim (Askenazim) Romaniotes (or using Al Passy's slant, Romagnotes) of the Balkans (and maybe nearby).
The Balkan Sepharad countries are Albania, Bulgaria, FYR (Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia, Bosnia, and to a lesser extent, Slovenia), Greece, Roumania and Turkey. Added to these we may include, because of the borders' volatility, Moldova/Moldavia, Gagauzia, Hungary, Transnistria (Transdniester), Cyprus and parts of Ukraine. By extension we may look even at Italy, once a major presence in the Balkans (i.e., Crete, Cetatea Alba, etc.)
Posting languages are anything I understand well enough so I can moderate (English, Rumanian, some messages in Judeo-Spanish - that is less in dialects of the FYR which I tend to understand poorly, most anything in the Rumanian dialect) or other languages only if I know and trust the author (forgive me but my Italian, French, German and Hebrew are too poor to use when moderating). My Yiddish is limited to about 200-300 words, half of which are in its Rumanian dialect. Different from the Rumanian government and the official leadership of the Rumanian and Moldovan Jewish Federations, I do not promote non-native Yiddish dialects (i.e., Western (Polish/Latvian/...) and other Slavic).
In the mean time, please subscribe both here to Rumanian_minorities-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
There you will find among others a fairly heavy stress on minorities, including the Balkan Jews, Jews of the Romanian space, etc.
This is not a religion list for Jews, much less for Jesus freaks! On the other hand, sane people of any religion are welcome. We use English about 80% of the time.
Alin Sebastian, evreu din Romania, Rominia
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