About | AFJMG

About the AFJMG

115 West 29th Street, Suite 1103
New York, NY 10001
Phone (212) 972-1550
E-mail: [email protected]

The American Friends of the Jewish Museum of Greece (AFJMG) was founded more than 40 years ago to lend support and sustenance to the Jewish Museum of Greece, based in Athens. At that time, the Museum’s presence centered on a small collection on display in the backroom of the Synagogue on Melidoni Street, in the heart of downtown Athens.

In the immediate aftermath of World War II, memories of the Nazi occupation, the Holocaust, and the subsequent Greek Civil War were still very raw and people were reluctant to proactively bring back painful memories. But that begun to change in the mid-1970s when the Bulgarian government returned to Greece a bag full of valuable items—mostly watches—that had been confiscated from Jews in the Greek regions of Macedonia and Thrace.

Our Museum started with tiny tentative steps like these, and was able to grow into what it is today thanks to a handful of believers in Greece and the US. The AFJMG was founded in 1982 by Dimitri Molfetas, of blessed memory, to raise the funds needed to ensure the Museum’s survival and growth. During those early years, an art historian and artist, Nicos Hannan Stavroulakis, also of blessed memory, was the Jewish Museum of Greece’s pioneer director.

For close to a quarter century, the AFJMG provided the bulk of the funds needed for the Museum to keep operating. Today, the Jewish Museum is counted as a major center of Sephardic and Romaniote culture in continental Europe. The expanding scope of its activities has meant that the funds needed to support the institution has grown substantially, and the AFJMG remains committed to helping raise those funds so the Museum can continue its essential work.

The AFJMG remains a not-for-profit organization, with no salaried staff, and we remain committed to our support of the Museum in Athens. At the same time, the AFJMG has also evolved over the last four decades to become a hub of Greco-Jewish activity in the United States and today has an effective voice and platform for Greek Jews in New York and the US.

Our group maintains excellent relations with key stakeholders across both Greek and Jewish institutions, as well as universities and other educational organizations—doing so has enabled and empowered us to organize the kinds of activities that showcase the history, the culture, and ongoing contributions of the Greek Jewish communities and their diaspora. We have sponsored a wide range of activities in the US which feature the Jewish Museum and showcase the revival of Jewish community life in all of Greece and beyond. Our efforts have brought successful exhibitions like Synagonistis, Hidden Children in War-time Greece and the Good Shepherd to New York, Boston, Chicago, Florida, Los Angeles and elsewhere following their original runs in Athens and throughout Greece.

We at the AFJMG believe that the Greek Jewish communities are truly unique, and that their histories should be preserved, celebrated, and passed on to future generations. Romaniote or Sephardic, Greek Jews represent a unique strand of Jewish religion and history that still has tremendous potential to enrich both Jewish and secular life in the US, Greece, Israel, and beyond.

Accordingly, we of the AFJMG welcome new members of all faiths who wish to join the Friends. We strive to continue building a vibrant and diverse community to take part in our activities and to contribute to the outreach and development of these historic Jewish communities, projecting them into the 21st century and beyond.

Our Board

Executive Board Members

Solomon Asser

President

Leon M. Levy

Secretary

Evelyn Mordechai

Treasurer

Rabbi Diana S. Gerson

Spiritual Leader of AFJMG

Mimis Cohen, MD

Executive Board Member

Ninette Cohen, PhD

Executive Board Member

Yasmine Ergas

Executive Board Member

Mimica Hyman

Executive Board Member

Neil Solomon Levy

Executive Board Member

Jackie Matza

Executive Board Member

Board Members

Our Board

Executive Board Members

Solomon Asser

Leon M. Levy

Evelyn Mordechai

Rabbi Diana S. Gerson

Mimis Cohen, MD

Ninette Cohen, PhD

Yasmine Ergas

Mimica Hyman

Neil Solomon Levy

Jackie Matza

Board Members

Demetrios Argyriades

Stefanos Becharas

Mathilde Benveniste

Saranna Biel-Cohen

Steven Bowman

Annette B. Fromm

Sheldon Goldman

Joe H. Halio, MD

Judith Mazza

Lily Recanati

Clifton S. Russo

Founders

Dimitrios Molfetas *

Eileen Molfetas

Honorary Council

Hon. Aghi Balta

Isaac Benmayor *

Richard Ben-Veniste

Hon. Catherine Boura

Rabbi Martin A. Cohen

David E.R. Dangoor

H. E. Archbishop Demetrios

Andre Gregory

Hon. Georgios Iliopoulos

Hon. Alexandros P. Mallias

Vivian B. Mann

Elias Recanati *

Isidoros S. Tiano *

* Past Presidents of AFJMG

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