Greek City Elects Greece’s First Jewish Mayor

A small city’s municipal elections may seem like an unlikely way to make history, but that is what happened when Ioannina elected Moses Elisaf.

Greece’s first Jewish Mayor: Ioannina’s Mayor Moses Elisaf. (photo: Courtesy of the Campaign Press Office)

With anti-Semitism on the rise in the U.S. and worldwide in the past years, the news that a city in northwestern Greece elected the country’s first ever Jewish mayor, Moses Elisaf, was met with great delight by the international Jewish community.

At a time when antisemitism is on the rise in Greece, Jewish citizens are more in need of proper representation in government. This important milestone marks an improvement in the diversity of Greece’s political leaders.

Elisaf, 65, was elected mayor of Ioannina on Sunday in the second round of local elections, the local Ekathimerini newspaper reported.

Moses Elisaf ran as an independent and won by a close vote; garnering 50.33% of the vote, narrowly beating incumbent mayor Thomas Bega, who received 49.67%. Ioannina has a total population of nearly 57,000 people.

The election of Elisaf was not simply a statement favoring multiculturalism. Elisaf is independent financially and politically, and vowed to stand firm against government corruption and graft.

He emphasized how his political group “has unifying features and seeks a dynamic majority for a new era…