What Happened to Berea?
I didn’t pack for Greece until the afternoon before I left.
After many childhood disappointments, I had concluded that God enjoyed denying me the things I wanted most. Now a young adult, I had excitedly signed up for a college trip to Greece…but I didn’t actually expect it to work out.
To my surprise, no disasters arose to cancel the trip. I boarded my first international flight half expecting the airplane to crash in the Atlantic. But once our group arrived safely in Athens, I had to accept that God had granted me one of my heart’s desires. Maybe He did know how to give good gifts (Matthew 7:11).
Those two months in Greece were incredible. Near the end of the trip, our group visited a synagogue in Veria (modern-day Berea). A Greek woman named Evi showed us around.
Acts 17 commends the ancient Jewish Bereans for being “noble-minded…for they received the word with great eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see whether these things were so” (v. 11). Though they are mentioned nowhere else in Scripture, the Bereans remain renowned among believers for their dedication to scriptural accuracy.
Until I stepped into the Jewish quarter of Veria, I’d never wondered what had happened to Berea in the centuries between Paul’s visit and mine.
The Veria synagogue is not the original structure that Paul and Silas visited (though some argue it stands on the same site). Nor does the original community remain – they were deported to Constantinople after the city fell to the Ottoman Empire.
Half a century later, a Sephardic Jewish community settled in Berea’s Jewish quarter. The new Bereans – and their synagogue – have an important history of their own. According to Evi, their small Jewish community thrived in Veria until World War II.
On May 1, 1943, as the community gathered for Shabbat, Nazis entered the Jewish quarter and imprisoned 300 men, women, and children inside their own synagogue. The Nazis encircled them for three days, denying food and water. Children died of deprivation. A few adults tried to escape by jumping out a window into the river far below. Injured in the fall, they were shot by the Nazis.
Although over a hundred people escaped Veria with the aid of their Gentile neighbors, the hundreds of Jewish residents who remained in the city were deported three days later. Their journey ended at Auschwitz.
“Very few returned,” Evi told us.
Seventy-six years after the Holocaust erased one of the oldest Jewish communities in Greece, my fellow students and I sat quietly in the peaceful synagogue and imagined the tragedy that had unfolded here.
As I gazed at the bright walls, the faux-marble pillars, and the vividly painted ark (where the Torah scroll is kept), I had a distinct impression of God’s love for Veria and His knowledge of each of its inhabitants – past and present – as intimate as His knowledge of me.
Before and after Acts 17, His purposes had quietly unfolded in this city. My presence here was an infinitesimal part of His plan – His purpose for Berea and His plan for me intersecting for an hour.
God brought me to Greece not just as a gift, but because my stay there was an important step in a plan that He alone knows. God has purpose in everything He does – the good He gives, the bad He permits. Each person and moment in history is important in His overarching purpose for the world. We may overlook ordinary people or forget about obscure places, but God never does.
Why did He allow the early Bereans and their successors to come to such tragic ends? I have no answers on this side of eternity. But God is still at work in Berea.
He works through two Gentiles, Evi and Nikos, who love the Jewish people. Evi fights to preserve the synagogue and the memory of the lives lived and lost there. Nikos, an elderly Greek pastor, welcomes visitors to the synagogue with copies of the New Testament in dozens of languages.[1] He and Evi maintain the synagogue together.
God works through the synagogue itself. A small but steady stream of people, Jewish and Gentile, come from around the world to see it. No one who hears Evi’s passionate retelling of the Verian tragedy is likely to forget the Holocaust’s impact on Northern Greece.
Evi told us about an elderly man who once visited the site with his son. Standing in the synagogue, he wept. He had been among the 300 imprisoned there, and one of the few who survived Auschwitz. His son had never seen him cry before that day.
God is at work in every place and every person. He still has plans for Berea, for the Jewish people, for me, and for you.
Written by Miriam, Life in Messiah’s Communications Assistant
How do you see God’s purposes at work in history, and specifically in Jewish history?
Are you familiar with your area’s history? How might this knowledge guide the way you share the gospel with the people in your community?
How does the existence of evil influence your view of God? Do you believe He can redeem tragedy?
Pray for God’s continued blessing on Evi’s work in the Veria synagogue. Ask God to use this site and others like it to counteract rising antisemitism around the world. To learn more about antisemitism and how to combat it, check out this page: https://lifeinmessiah.org/antisemitism
Endnotes:
[1] Our partners at City Bible provide personalized New Testaments in many languages, including Modern Hebrew, for distribution at places like Veria Synagogue. Check them out at https://www.citybibles.com.