The Jews of Istanbul: A
Profile
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Reprinted from
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Last month, when I heard about how two trucks stopped simultaneously
outside two synagogues in Istanbul detonated explosives, killing six
Jews and 17 Muslims, I thought about what the community must have
been doing.
A year ago twenty Jewish children from Turkey's Jewish community
practiced singing Jewish songs and choreographing the annual Chanukah
children's pageant at the Caddebostan synagogue of which the old
ladino song "Ocho Candelikas" proved the most photogenic
with all the children raising their eight small fingers in the air
to symbolize the eights nights of Chanukah. Two blocks away from
the synagogue at the Guzteppe Jewish community center a disciplined
group of Jewish Turkish teenagers relentlessly rehearsed folk-dancing
routines to the beat of Israeli Mizrachi music for their annual
Chanukah festival. Beforehand, the group leaders of Istanbul's various
Jewish youth groups met to coordinate holiday events and plan the
season's activities. I observed the Jews of Istanbul last year in
a frenzy of activity, an enthusiasm for Judaism and Jewish communal
events, a well-organized and coordinated infrastructure of leadership.
| "... Living in Istanbul
I felt for the first time like I was a Jew in the Diaspora ..."
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The Jewish community in Istanbul has lived with its Muslim neighbors
in relative peace for the past 500 years. Descended from Spanish
Jews who fled the Inquisition, the Turkish Jewish community currently
numbers around 20,000 with the majority living in or around Istanbul.
After Istanbul, the coastal town of Izmir has the most notable Jewish
population of about 3,000. It is a challenge to preserve one's Jewishness
as a minority in any country, let alone a Muslim one. But the Istanbul
Jewish community is a significant achievement; a sleek Jewish private
school, active youth groups in many synagogues, kosher butchers
and restaurants.
Until last month, the Jews of Istanbul were content to operate
their well-organized community quietly. Now they have been forced
further underground, choosing to meet in ten secret locations for
Shabbat services, the 18 synagogues having closed for fear of further
attacks.
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| A youth group performs at a Tu Beshvat concert
at Kadikoy synagogue on the Asian side of Istanbul. |
When I volunteered to work with the Jewish community last year teaching
Hebrew and assisting with their youth groups, I was amazed at how
much they can do without drawing attention to themselves. For each
Jewish holiday there is at least three large community-wide and well-attended
events either involving children's productions or community gatherings
of some sort. When advertising is done through flyers or notices,
there is nary a mention of location or date. Usually, people who are
in the know, are aware of where and when to attend. To live within
such a contradiction -- where there is common knowledge yet, no one
can acknowledge it -- is to be a Jew in Turkey.
"Turks do not hate Jews, they hate Armenians," a friend
in the Istanbul Jewish community once explained to me, referring
to the mass genocide of Armenians in Turkey at the turn of the century
and the still rampant dislike between the two ethnic groups. He
went on to describe how anti-Semitism is not really a problem in
Turkey, it is simply that all religious groups in Turkey keep displays
of religiosity to a minimum -- whether Muslim, Christian, or Jewish.
This was a strange conversation to have with this individual considering
his father was one of the 22 victims that had been shot and killed
during the attack on the Neve Shalom synagogue in 1986. "That
was not Turks, that was Palestinians -- Abu Nidal," he drew
the distinction very simply. His country was violated by others
with malicious intent. His father's murder, complicated and painful,
was not a symptom of anti-Semitism among Turks; it was a result
of Turkey having "soft borders."
I first learned what "soft borders" meant when I met
with the head of security for the Israeli consulate in Istanbul.
As an employee of the Jewish Agency for Israel I was considered
an Israeli diplomat and so privy to the security briefings and measures
all members of the Israel's diplomatic team underwent while living
in Istanbul.
"You may think that because Israel and Turkey have good relations,
you are safe here. In fact, Turkey is one of the most dangerous
countries in the Middle East," the security officer in a stiff
blue suit explained. "Turkey allows in the country all varieties
of Arab and Muslim citizens. In the street you may be walking amongst
Syrian, Egyptians, Pakistanis, and you would never know it. These
people are not monitored and there is not much we can do except
take precautions to protect ourselves against unforeseen circumstances."
The security chief then proceeded to explain to us how to check
our (nonexistent) cars for explosives each time we used it, how
we should take a different route to the grocery store each week,
how never to open the door if someone tries to deliver an unsolicited
package. We were told to have our mail delivered to the consulate
office. Each time our care packages from home were checked, even
the Bamba, a popular Israeli snack.
Despite all this we felt relatively safe in our quiet suburb of
neatly arranged apartment buildings with the pleasant Bosphorus
shore a stroll away on the Asian side of Istanbul. The sprawling
city is divided by the Bosphorus Sea into two sections named for
the continents they are on -- Europe and Asia. The European side
is older, more devoutly religious, and contains most of Istanbul's
commerce and history. The Jewish community used to be centered on
European side, mainly in the neighborhood where Neve Shalom is located,
and in a few other locations (there were many phases of activity
and many times when the community relocated itself for economic
and security reasons). There used to be a small Jewish school near
the synagogue before it moved to its larger, more modern campus
in Ulus, a posh suburb north of the old neighborhood. Now most of
the Jewish community lives in the nicer neighborhood near the school,
or on the Asian side, where the Jews settled about 15 years ago,
it being newly developed more modern, and less traditional than
the European side. For instance, during Ramadan it is not unusual
to see cafes open and operating during the day on the Asian side,
and the muezzin's call to prayer is less prevalent walking through
Asia than on the European side.
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| Galata Tower, visible in the background, is
in the Tunel neighborhood of Istanbul, near the Neve Shalom
synagogue.. |
On the European side, down the street from historic Galata Tower,
amidst densely packed electronics shops and classic Ottoman houses
slowly undergoing gentrification, Neve Shalom, like all Istanbul synagogues
is hard to find. When visitors to Istanbul's Jewish Museum ask for
information about Jewish institutions in the city they are given a
handsome pamphlet with very little information in it save the names
of synagogues and their phone numbers; all visits are made through
appointments only. Despite the fact that the Jews no longer live close
to the synagogue, Neve Shalom still maintained its status as the largest
and most famous synagogue in the city, often tightly booked on the
weekend with weddings, bar-mitzvahs, or community functions.
The Shishli synagogue, beautiful on the inside, is accessible through
a nondescript door next to textile stores on a stretch of Istanbul's
shopping district. It is more a local's synagogue with many community
members living within walking distance and populating its three
Shabbat morning services.
The Jewish community's secrecy and reticence has more to do with
them being Turkish than being Jewish. There are many customs that
the Jews have inherited from Turkish culture, not crossing one's
legs in synagogue, for both men and women, is one of them. It was
difficult to decipher the reason for this custom, some said it was
because you were creating a cross with your body, an allusion to
a Christian icon, others said it was because you would never sit
on your mother-in-law's house that way, in other words, with comfort.
Regardless, reverence for Ataturk, the famous Turkish reformer who
transformed Turkey from a Muslim monarchy to a secular republic,
is also a strong value among Turks, Jewish, and Muslim alike.
But above all, what the Jewish Turks have in common with their
Muslim neighbors is a laconic demeanor, allegiance to tradition,
and a resistance to change. This is when my Turkish friend would
remind me that things in Turkey happen "Yavash, yavash,"
slowly, slowly. Change would come only through a slow process, through
patience, by gently pushing through the haze of routine a shiny
new idea. Once, while teaching a weekly Hebrew class to women of
the community, they were perplexed by the variety of Hebrew words
available to communicate the act of speaking or telling. In Turkish
there is simply one verb -- "soylemak," to say -- and
that, I explained, is because Turks rarely talk, but Israelis are
always talking, chatting, arguing.
For all its impressive discreetness, the Turkish Jewish community
has been remarkably active. Well-organized youth groups that meet
twice each week to study Hebrew and Jewish tradition, there is a
Jewish community center, upscale kosher restaurants, a Jewish museum,
a Jewish private school, and various synagogues both on the European
and Asian sides of the city that until last week had regular services.
For every Jewish holiday there are musical productions or festivals
starring the community children. On Tu B'Shvat alone I attended
five family Seders and three community-wide well-attended children's
pageants replete with bow-tied choirboys and kindergartners dressed
as fruit. Every Sunday a Zionist-oriented youth group practices
Israeli folk-dancing for which two members of the group travel to
a Jewish folk-dancing camp each year to train so as to return to
the community and impart the intricacies of the horah.
Living with the Jewish community I felt admitted to a secret club
that was accessible to me as a Jew and surrogate community member.
Living in Istanbul I felt for the first time like I was a Jew in
the Diaspora. I could not freely admit I was Jewish, wear shirts
with Hebrew writing, distribute flyers about Jewish events with
dates, times, and locations listed, or express Zionism in any public
setting.
The Istanbul community is remarkable because they do not ask that
their country treat them differently. They fluidly work within the
confines of their complicated society because they are attached
to it. They are descended from Spanish Jews, no strangers to maintaining
Jewish identities in secret. Through a combination of security concerns
and cultural skepticism, that same sensibility has threaded its
way through the Turkish Jews of today.
In Istanbul I observed how to build an active Jewish life despite
external challenges. Yet most of the time I was there I was struck
by how safe I felt, how unnecessary all the security measures seemed,
how unlikely it seemed that our laconic Turkish neighbors would
target the Jews in their midst. Turkish friends I had were proud
of the Jewish communities in their country both because their coexistence
signified progress and civility in a world where the relationship
between Jews and Muslims were increasingly, heartbreakingly deteriorating,
and because the Jews were exotic and curious, a beacon of nonconformity
in a country where Ataturk's portrait graces every office, school
classroom, and grocery store.
To be religious in Turkey requires a specific brand of skewed logic
the likes of which make more sense the more Raki, licorice-flavored
liquor, you drink. I spent many evenings listening to fierce debates
between religious Muslim Ataturkists who advocated the prohibition
of women wearing religious head-coverings in University or government
buildings. The argument was as follows: since Turkey's primary religion
is Islam it is the one religion whose rituals must be separated
and prohibited against. To advocate such opposition is no small
feat, though not terribly unusual. In addition to security, it is
for these complicated reasons why the Jews are so secretive, because
religion itself must be handled delicately, slowly, slowly.
My Jewish friends in Istanbul tell me the synagogues have closed
since the bombings, even the youth groups have stopped meeting.
The funerals were difficult, there are still members of the community
recovering, no one is sure how to proceed.
Though this isn't the first time Istanbul Jews have experienced
terror on their synagogue floor, it has hit them at a time where
the Jews were looking hopefully to the future. Turkey's candidacy
for European Union membership, the possible triumph of democracy
in Iraq, all were signs that finally, haltingly, the Muslim world
was hulking its way to modernity and democracy. That Turkey's struggle
to maintain a secular republic would not go unnoticed. That Jews
and Muslims could live together peacefully, albeit under Muslim
rule.
How exactly should this community proceed? If one Jew is unsafe,
all are unsafe. True, the Jews who choose to live in a Muslim country
should be prepared for this type of thing, but what about those
on vacation in Kenya, in Paris? What can I say when one of my students
in the sleepy Fort Lauderdale suburb where I teach Hebrew school
looks up in a moment of insightful disruptiveness and asks, "Ms.
Liss, why is there a policeman stationed outside our school?"
What can I possibly say? Where is the language to deal with the
experience of being a Jew today?
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| From the fish market, a view of the old city
on the European side of Istanbul. |
While in Istanbul I assisted the Israeli consulate by translating
for Iranian families stopping in Turkey for visas on their flight
from Iran to Israel. Later on, when working for the Associated Press
Jerusalem Bureau, I mention to my German-born Palestinian-husbanded
editor that I would like to do a story on these families. What I
can I say when her answer is astonishingly, "But why on earth
would they come here? What is waiting for them here?"
Where is the language to deal with this experience? The feeling
I detected in the Jewish community last year, was that though their
numbers are slowly dwindling (due to assimilation and lack of affiliation),
no one is in a rush to leave Turkey. Many of the Jewish teenagers
I worked with in Istanbul loved to visit Israel and had many relatives
there. But the idea of aliyah was never really an option. I found
that most Turks rarely travel, thus the idea of moving to another
country seemed a bit too rash, too risky.
This summer the friend whose father died at the Neve Shalom attack
years ago, did make aliyah, after years of thinking and deciding.
One such conversation we had a year ago about this decision centered
around his reluctance to leave Turkey. He was comfortable in Turkey;
he felt closer to Turks than to Israelis. "I feel that if I
go to Israel it will be a new page for me." It was not about
nationalism or security. For once, and perhaps it always is, about
deciding where you are in your life and where you want to be.
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Sara Liss is the co-founder
of Petakim and a freelance writer living in Miami.
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