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…
Something absolutely astonishing is going on right now in northern Syria along the Turkish border: refugees streaming on foot across the barbed-wire frontier by the tens of thousands, fleeing the advance of the terrorist army known as the Islamic State. As many as 100,000 refugees, mostly Kurds, have crossed the border in the past week…
Jews in Turkey are under no obligation to comment on Israel’s operation in Gaza, a group of Jewish intellectuals in Turkey said. The open letter issued Friday was in response to calls for the Jewish community to denounce the operation, as well as a campaign claiming the Jews of Turkey are responsible for Israel’s actions…
A prominent Turkish Jewish couple were found murdered in their Istanbul home. Police discovered the bodies of husband and wife, Jak Karako, 77, and Georgia Karako, 69, inside their apartment on Friday. They had been stabbed multiple times. The Karakos were the former owners of Ören Bayan, one of Turkey’s most famous textile companies. According…
A Turkish aid group said on Monday it would send ships again to challenge the Israeli blockade of Gaza, four years after Israeli commandos stormed its flotilla bound for the Palestinian territory and killed 10 people. The incident wrecked diplomatic ties between Turkey and Israel, once close Middle East allies but whose relationship had been…
I decided to become a vegetarian when I was 12 years old, much to my mother’s dismay, and maintained my meat-free diet for almost 15 years, during which time I never missed poultry or beef for even a moment. I decided to start eating meat again when my husband and I began dating seriously. The…
On July 23, a Turkish group called on social media for a boycott of the books of Turkish Jewish novelist Mario Levi. The famous novelist was born in Istanbul, and one of his best-known novels is “Istanbul Was a Fairy Tale.” However, being throughly Turkish did not shield him from the anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli wind…
דאָס בוך איז גרונטיק געפֿאָרשט, לעבעדיק אָנגעשריבן — אָבער אידעאָלאָגיש באַפֿאַרבט
