JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Kosher offerings on supermarket shelves in America and Israel might have looked differently this High Holiday season had Rabbi Mendy Chitrik not undertaken a 3000 mile trip around Anatolia, Turkey’s Asian portion, this summer. While it may come as a surprise, despite only 15,000 Jews in the country, Turkey is a major supplier of kosher…
(JTA) — Bucking a slump in Western immigration to Israel under its law of return for Jews, movement from Russia has increased in 2017 and more than doubled from Turkey. In total, the 23,415 immigrants who have come to Israel from Jan. 1 to Sept. 30 constituted a 2 percent increase over the corresponding period…
Numbers paint a stark picture for the future of Turkey’s steadily shrinking Jewish community. Forty percent of the population is preparing a possible exit route from a land that has harbored Jews since Ottoman times. Over the past 15 months — a stormy political stretch culminating in a disputed vote to expand President Recep Tayyip…
A squad of about half a dozen cats patrols a small, overgrown cemetery in central Istanbul. “It’s a kind of magical place, right under our noses,” says Memo Kösemen, a local artist and graveyard habitué, surveying the small plot of land. But something’s caught his eye and suddenly he’s crestfallen. He bends down and hoists…
A prominent Turkish Jewish leader says there hasn’t been any signs of a backlash aimed at the community following the populist uprising that helped defeat the bloody attempted coup aimed at overthrowing President Tayyip Erdogan — but others still fear the worst. Cefi Kamhi, a Jewish businessman who represents the country in the European Jewish…
A prominent Turkish-Jewish businessman and politician, Cefi Kamhi is chairman of an Istanbul-based consulting agency and television distribution company. He heads three councils for Turkey’s foreign economic relations board, and represents his home country in the European Jewish Parliament. His wife is Muslim. Yet after several assassination attempts, Kamhi is under 24-hour police protection to…
The diplomatic clash between Israel and Turkey may be escalating, but many within Turkey’s 23,000-strong Jewish population insist that it is nothing more than politics for them, with no practical effect on their lives or security. “In daily life, we don’t fear anything from the Turks,” said Nisya Isman Allovi, manager of the Jewish Museum…
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