Being Jewish in Istanbul
February, 2016
The Turkish Jewish community is a minority in a country of almost 80 million people, the largest Jewish community in the Muslim world. How does it feel to grow up and live in Istanbul as a Jew? Does it feel safe to say you’re Jewish? and what kind of Jewish communal life takes place there? When I’ve been advised by the Jewish community centre director, Lisya, not to say the word Jewish out loud, it made me wonder about these kind of questions.
Around 18,000 Jews live in Turkey today, the vast majority lives in Istanbul. Although the community enjoys long-established good relations with the government, there is a lot of concern for security. In each Jewish facility I visited, the school, the community centre and the synagogue - each take heavy security precautions. Sadly, shortly after my visit a terror attack killing three Israelis and injuring 11 others took place in Istanbul’s city center.
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The Jewish community of Istanbul has two community centres - one in the European side and one on the Asian side of the Bosphorus. Since the school can offer only few hours of Hebrew and Jewish studies, due to government legislation, most of the Jewish activities are taking place there. Each centre has its own different youth movements, but the two movements are in close relationship and coordination with each other. During my visit I met with many of the key people in the educational field - the JCC director, the school director, the new pedagogical director, Rabbi Haleva that teaches Jewish studies in school, the presidents of the youth movements and several of the madrichim. All of them are passionate about Jewish studies, they want to strengthen their cultural Jewish studies, to renew the guiding materials and to strengthen their skills. Similarly to Israel, there is a tension regarding how exactly to do that between the religious institutions and the secular/community ones.
It was fascinating to understand the different needs of the religious leadership of the community and the community leadership. While the Chief Rabbi and his son, Rabbi Nafthali Haleva, were telling us how they fear the high percentage of intermarriage, the community leaders feel threatened by religious influence. While the rabbis talk about the synagogue as the center of communal life and the number of participants as a measure to success, the community leaders are talking about the community center as the driving force that should expose the community to different ways of being Jewish.
So how do you communicate Jewish content in a way that will not be threatening for any of this perspectives?
It made me think about the story of David Ben-Gurion and the empty wagon from one hand, and to think about S. Yizhar text on the other hand. Both stories talk about the difference between the religious and the secular approach. While the first story indicates that secularism holds no values, Yizhar wrote exactly about this notion, writing that while for religious people the Torah is a binding authority, for seculars - the responsibility is on them to decide what to do and how we want to behave. You don’t become secular in a passive way, you have to claim it and carry the responsibility for it.
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The story of David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s founding prime minister, paying a visit in the 1940s to Avrohom Yeshaya Karelitz, known as the Chazon Ish, a prominent Haredi rabbi living in Bnei Brak. They got down to the business of figuring out what the role of the ultra-Orthodox would be in the new Jewish state. The Chazon Ish quoted a story from the Talmud to make his point. When two wagons meet on a narrow mountain pass, who shall give way—the “full” wagon laden with goods, or the “empty” wagon? The rabbi’s point couldn’t have been clearer: He expected the “empty” wagon of secular society to defer to the “full” wagon of a religious tradition spanning millennia. As is well-known, Ben-Gurion granted all religious authorities (such as control over marriage, divorce, conversions, etc.) to the Orthodox.
S. Yizhar text, in ×´The Courage to be Secular×´ from 1981:
"To be secular it is not enough to be non-religious. The distinction lies between finding something and losing something”.
"What makes someone secular? First and foremost, a sense of responsibility”
"The secular have chosen to face the world on their own terms. To be secular means to claim sovereignty over one's own life.”
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The Vilna Gaon said that if one lacks a measure of secular knowledge, one will lose out on a hundred measures of Torah knowledge. He believed that Torah and secular wisdom were intertwined (“HaTorah vehaChochma nitzmadim yachad”).
Should secular people seek for the permission of religious authorities? Or can they take responsibility, realise they have also a rich Secular Jewish culture, and start to claim it. We have the responsibility to fill in our wagon with all this richness of our history, books, values and culture.
We need to gain a new ownership on our Jewish texts. Study the Torah and Talmud from a Secular perspective, meaning that the text is not a binding authority, but a history. If we realise it’s all about knowing ideas, crafting values, thinking about what is right and not right, we won't be afraid of it, we will own it. This sense of ownership is important for us to feel as equals in the Jewish world. Not necessarily towards religious people, but first and foremost - in our own eyes.
The Turkish Chief rabbi Haleva
"Etzh Haim" Synagouge
Some of the activites that take place regularly in the JCC: Balet, dancing and drama classes.