Cherry Hill fest offers taste of Greece

When Roula Plexidas arrived in Cherry Hill in the early 1980s, she was surprised to find Americans spending so much time cooped up in their homes.

In her home village in central Greece, people were always on the streets, stopping to chat and socialize.

So it was with nostalgia - and anticipation - that she looked out across the street yesterday and watched the preparations for the Agora Greek Festival at the Greek Orthodox Church of St. Thomas.

"Every year I go, every day," said Plexidas, a Mercer Street resident. "Everyone comes."

The festival, which runs from today through Sunday, commemorates the death of St. Thomas, the church's namesake and an important figure in the Greek Orthodox faith. But the festival - now in its 36th year - has taken on greater meaning for South Jersey's Greek American community.

"As the area started developing, people started moving out of Cherry Hill and into the surrounding towns," said the Rev. Emmanuel Pratsinakis, rector of St. Thomas. "This has become a venue for all the families to come together and reacquaint with each other. They see each other at church, but praying is different than making a sandwich and knocking elbows with the guy next to you."

Yesterday, the church building buzzed as men sweated in the kitchen over platters of moussaka and pastitsio, and women laid out tables of religious icons and T-shirts commemorating the festival.

"All the ladies start baking in the spring," said Alex Mastoris, owner of a diner in Berlin.

The church is expecting as many as 40,000 people to attend the festival over the four days, to eat, drink Greek wine and ouzo, and watch the bouzouki band play late into the night.

Food is the festival's big draw, with Greeks and non-Greeks alike coming from all over to sit down to dishes that are now staples of America's multicultural cuisine, such as souvlaki and baklava.

"I used to go with my family when I was growing up," said Cherry Hill Councilman Dave Fleisher. "The Agora is an opportunity for everyone in town to embrace and celebrate the culture. But you have to go hungry."

The inclusion of non-Greeks in festivals such as St. Thomas' is a phenomenon that goes back to the 1970s, when Greek Americans began to take a more active role in American society, said Tom Papademetriou, a history professor at Richard Stockton College who studies the Greek American community.

"It's an opening in American culture that wasn't there in the early part of the century and through the 1950s," he said. "By the '70s, there was a feeling they had fully assimilated, and with that confidence came a feeling to reach out into the wider community."

As a result, an agora - the word means "marketplace" - has become the year's most significant fund-raising event for Greek Orthodox churches, Papademetriou said.

Beyond religious services and festivals, the churches often serve as the principal social centers for the Greek American community. St. Thomas, for instance, hosts dance classes, Greek language courses, youth groups, and even sports teams - the sorts of things that require significant revenue, Papademetriou said.

Theo Pagiavlas came to New Jersey from the small Greek island of Chios in 1976, taking a job as a dishwasher at a Cherry Hill restaurant and slowly saving and working his way up the ranks over the next 20 years to open his own restaurant.

He considers the church an intrinsic part of his life in America and said he supports it in any way he can.

"It's our religion, our culture. We're all working, trying to earn money to keep the church going," he said. "I work late to 9 o'clock this weekend, and then I go there and stay a little later."

Where: Greek Orthodox Church of St. Thomas, 615 Mercer St., Cherry Hill

When: Today through Sunday

Time: 11 a.m. – 1 a.m.

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