(JTA) — In the backyard of the Etz Ahayim synagogue in Turkey’s largest city, congregant Yusuf Arslan hollers pleasantries as he mingles with other members of the small congregation. He needs to shout to be heard over the deafening sound of a sudden downpour hitting the blast-proof glass ceiling that stretches over the synagogue’s spacious…
The Union for Reform Judaism urged President Barack Obama to use the word “genocide” in describing the murder of 1.5 million Armenians. Rabbi Rick Jacobs, the union’s president, made the call in an open letter he sent to Obama on Thursday, ahead of the centennial anniversary of what is widely known as the Armenian Genocide….
When the domes of Edirne’s abandoned Great Synagogue caved in, Rifat Mitrani, the town’s last Jew, knew it spelled the end of nearly two millennia of Jewish heritage in this Turkish town. As a boy, Mitrani studied Hebrew in the synagogue’s gardens and, in the 1970s, dispatched its Torah to Istanbul after the community shrank…
(Reuters) — Israel on Wednesday accused a senior Turkish official of “misusing” a Holocaust commemoration to criticize Israeli policy, the latest exchange in a bitter row between the former allies. Turkish Parliamentary Speaker Cemil Cicek late on Wednesday addressed members of Turkey’s tiny Jewish community and others at a Holocaust Memorial Day event and said…
(Reuters) — Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu on Thursday compared Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu to the Islamist militants who killed 17 people in Paris last week, saying both had committed crimes against humanity. Davutoglu said Israel’s bombardments of Gaza and its storming in 2010 of a Turkish-led aid convoy headed there, in which 10 Turks…
Israel’s foreign minister called Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan an “anti-Semitic bully” in a meeting with Israeli ambassadors on Wednesday and said Europe was being cowardly in not taking him on. In an address to Israeli envoys based in Europe and Asia, Avigdor Lieberman, the leader of far-right party Yisrael Beitenu, was withering about Erdogan, a…
Turkish Chief Rabbi Isak Haleva met with Pope Francis on the Catholic spiritual leader’s first official visit to Turkey. Francis, who was born in Argentina, and Haleva met privately for about 15 minutes on Sunday, Vatican Radio reported. The two conversed in Spanish, which is Haleva’s maternal language as a Sephardic Jew of Spanish descent….
Saul Cenudioglu remembers when his synagogue was full and when Muslims and Christians of this diverse Turkish city joined with Jews to celebrate marriages and births. “I’m afraid in 15 or 20 years, people in Antakya might be saying, ‘Did you know there used to be Jews in this city?’” Cenudioglu said. Antakya sits just…
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