Jewish Sites Of Istanbul

This volume presents the transformation of the Greek-speaking Jewish community of Byzantine Constantinople into an Ottoman, ethnically diversified immigrant community. As the Ottomans influenced its cultural and social values, the community strived to preserve its boundaries with the surrounding society.

This book brings together a collection of 16 essays, first published in the Journal of Modern Jewish Studies, that explore Jewish communities in North Africa, Turkey and Iraq. The discussions are located primarily in the 20th century but essays also examine the Jewish community in 16th-century Istanbul, and in early modern Morocco. Topics include traumatic departures of communities from countries of centuries-old Jewish residence, and relocations; pilgrimages to holy sites by Mizrahi Jews in Israel; resonances of Shabbetai Zevi in Turkey and Morocco; "otherness" and the nature of homeland; the Sephardi culinary heritage as realised in the cookbooks of Claudia Roden; sites of memory, such as Kuzguncuk in Turkey; and a controversial view of the exclusions and erasures that Arabized Jews have undergone. In this unique collection a major, but not exclusive, theme is that of the instability of memory, and the attempt to understand the interactions between memory and history as Jews recount their experiences of living in, and often leaving, their past homelands. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Modern Jewish Studies.

Turkey is famed for a history of tolerance toward minorities, and there is a growing nostalgia for the "Ottoman mosaic." In this richly detailed study, Marcy Brink-Danan examines what it means for Jews to live as a tolerated minority in contemporary Istanbul. Often portrayed as the "good minority," Jews in Turkey celebrate their long history in the region, yet they are subject to discrimination and their institutions are regularly threatened and periodically attacked. Brink-Danan explores the contradictions and gaps in the popular ideology of Turkey as a land of tolerance, describing how Turkish Jews manage the tensions between cosmopolitanism and patriotism, difference as Jews and sameness as Turkish citizens, tolerance and violence.

This book presents ten chapters in the history of the Jewish community of Istanbul from the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople (1453) to the establishment of the Turkish Republic (1923). While delving into specific subjects such as the Romaniot presence in the city, the Karaite society, family life throughout the generations, material culture and its meaning, social life, urban history, economic life, and relations with the Ottoman regime, a common thread binds all of them. Each of the chapters, individually and together, constitutes a journey between different cultures and religions. The history of Istanbul's Jews carries the imprint of Greek Orthodoxy and Catholicism, as well as Islam. It moves in cycles between the Byzantine and Ottoman realms, between Catholic Europe and the Muslim Ottoman Empire, and finally, between the Ottoman Jewish culture and a modern Europe in the throes of secularization. Over 50 images are included to illustrate the multi-cultural aspect of the history presented here. The collection of essays in this volume present high quality scholarship, but equally they provide a fascinating insight to general readers with an interest in Constantinople-Istanbul-Qosta, as well as readers interested in Jewish urban history, the transmission of culture, and multiculturalism.