Before rapid and convenient means of communication Crete enjoyed its isolation as an island though at the same time was subject to its location as a crossroad in the eastern Mediterranean.  Not long after the death of Alexander the Great the interaction of Hellenic culture with the great oriental civilizations of Egypt and Mesopotamia saw the creation of Hellenism.  Jews very early began to settle in some of the great newly founded cities such as Alexandria and Antioch and It is most likely that the earliest Jewish communities in Crete were attracted by the globalism of Hellenism and very rapidly adopted the Greek language and to a degree culture.

These Hellenistic Jews were the beginnings  of Jewish communities   in Crete that endured for over 2000 years. Inevitably these communities were to benefit from and suffer under the geographic advantages of the island as being a crossroad but also its isolation.  Under Roman, Byzantine, Venetian and Ottoman Turkish domination Jewish communities developed a quite distinct character as remnants of antiquity but also absorbed to a degree the rich Sephardic identity widely dispersed throughout the eastern Mediterranean after the 15th century.

The last occupiers of Crete were the Germans who, in 1941 conquered the island and their Nazi  focused ideology resulted in the destruction of the last Cretan Jewish Community of Hania in 1944.  At the termination of the IInd World War over five synagogues had been  destroyed as well as cemeteries and schools and only the desecrated and ignored Etz Hayyim Synagogue was left as a witness to Jewish life in Crete.  In 1995 The World Monuments Fund initiated a work of renovation and it was re-dedicated in 2000 as place of prayer, recollection and reconciliation.