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In Turkey, a festival revives a jewel of the Sephardic world and aims to break stereotypes
IZMIR, Turkey (JTA) — Prague has the dubious honor of being chosen by Adolf Hitler to be a record of what he hoped would be the vanquished Jews of Europe. The Nazis left many of the city’s synagogues and Jewish sites relatively intact, intending to showcase them as the remnants of an extinct culture.
That has made Prague a popular tourist destination for both Jewish travelers and others interested in Jewish history since the fall of the Iron Curtain: the city provides an uncommon look into the pre-war infrastructure of Ashkenazi Europe.
Could Izmir, Turkey’s third largest city, become a Sephardic version, in terms of history and tourism? That’s the goal for Nesim Bencoya, director of the Izmir Jewish Heritage project.
The city, once known in Greek as Smyrna, has had a Jewish presence since antiquity, with early church documents mentioning Jews as far back as the second century AD. Like elsewhere in the Ottoman Empire, though, its community grew exponentially with the influx of Sephardic Jews who came after their expulsion from Spain.
At its peak, the city was home to around 30,000 Jews and was the hometown of Jewish artists, writers and rabbis — from the esteemed Pallache and Algazii rabbinical families, to the musician Dario Marino, to the famously false messiah, Shabbetai Zevi, whose childhood home still stands in Izmir today.
Today, fewer than 1,300 remain. The establishment of the state of Israel, coupled with a century of economic and political upheaval, led to the immigration of the majority of Turkish Jewry.
“From the 17th century, Izmir was a center for Sephardic Jewry,” Bencoya told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “We can’t recreate that, but we cannot forget that either.”
Izmir is located on Turkey’s Aegean coast. (David I. Klein)
Celebrating in the former Jewish quarter
Bencoya, who is in his late 60s, was born in Izmir but spent most of his adult life in Israel, where he led the Haifa Cinematheque, but he returned to Izmir 13 years ago to helm the heritage project, which has worked to highlight the the culture and history of Izmir’s Jewish community.
Over nine days in December that included the week of Hanukkah, thousands attended the annual Sephardic culture festival that he has organized since 2018. The festival included concerts of Jewish and Ladino music, traditional food tastings, lectures on Izmir’s Jewish community, and — since it coincided with Hanukkah and also a Shabbat — both a menorah lighting ceremony and havdalah ceremony were conducted with explanations from Izmir’s leading cantor, Nesim Beruchiel.
This year’s festival marked a turning point: it was the first in which organizers were able to show off several of the centuries-old synagogues that the project — with funding from the European Union and the local municipality — has been restoring.
The synagogues, most of which are clustered around a street still called Havra Sokak (havra being the Turkish spelling of the Hebrew word chevra, or congregation) represent a unique piece of cultural heritage.
Nesim Bencoya speaks from his office next to the restored Sinyora Synagogue in Izmir. (David I. Klein)
Once upon a time, the street was the heart of the Jewish quarter or “Juderia,” but today it is right in the middle of Izmir’s Kemeralti Bazaar, a bustling market district stretching over 150 acres where almost anything can be bought and sold. On Havra Sokak, the merchants hock fresh fruits, and hopefully fresher fish. One street to the south one can find all manner of leather goods; one to the north has markets for gold, silver and other precious metals; one to the west has coffee shops. In between them all are other shops selling everything from crafts to tchotchkes to kitchenware to lingerie.
Several mosques and a handful of churches dot the area, but the synagogues revive a unique character of the district that had been all but lost.
“The synagogues here were built under the light of Spain. But in Spain today, there are only two major historic synagogues, Toledo and Cordoba, and they are big ones. You don’t have smaller ones. Here we have six on one block, built with the memory of what was there by those who left Spain,” Bencoya said.
Those synagogues have been home to major events in Jewish history — such as when Shabbetei Zvi broke into Izmir’s Portuguese Synagogue one Sabbath morning, drove out his opponents and declared himself the messiah (he cultivated a large following but was later imprisoned and forced to convert to Islam). The synagogue, known in Turkish as Portekez, was among those restored by the project.
Today, only two of Izmir’s synagogues are in regular use by its Jewish community, but the others that were restored are now available as exhibition and event spaces.
Educating non-Jews
Hosting the festival within Izmir’s unique synagogues has an additional purpose, since the overwhelming majority of the attendees were not Jewish.
“Most of the people who come to the festival have never been to a synagogue, maybe a small percentage of them have met a Jew once in their lives,” Bencoya said.
That’s particularly important in a country where antisemitic beliefs are far from uncommon. In a 2015 study by the Anti-Defamation League, 71% of respondents from Turkey believe in some antisemitic stereotypes.
The festival included concerts of Jewish and Ladino music, traditional food tastings and lectures on Izmir’s Jewish community.(David I. Klein)
“This festival is not for Jewish people to know us, but for non-Jews,” Bencoya said. Now, “Hundreds of Turkish Muslim people have come to see us, to listen to our holidays and taste what we do.”
Kayra Ergen, a native of Izmir who attended a Ladino concert and menorah lighting event at the end of the festival, told JTA that until a year ago, he had no idea how Jewish Izmir once was.
“I know that Anatolia is a multicultural land, and also Turkey is, but this religion, by which I mean Jewish people, left this place a long time ago because of many bad events. But it’s good to remember these people, and their roots in Izmir,” Ergen said. “This is so sad and lame to say out loud, but I didn’t know about this — that only 70 years ago, 60% of this area here in Konak [the district around Kemeralti] was Jewish. Today I believe only 1,300 remain. This is not good. But we must do whatever we can and this festival is a good example of showing the love between cultures.”
“I think it’s good that we’re respecting each other in here,” said Zeynep Uslu, another native of Izmir. “A lot of different cultures and a lot of different people. It’s good that we’re together here celebrating something so special.”
Izmir’s history as a home for minorities has not been all rosy. At the end of the Ottoman period, the city was around half Greek, a tenth Jewish and a tenth Armenian, while the remainder were Turkish Muslims and an assortment of foreigners. In the Greco-Turkish war of 1919-1922 — remembered in Turkey as the Turkish War of Independence — the Greek and Armenian quarters of Izmir were burned to the ground after the Turkish army retook the city from the Greek forces, killing tens of thousands. A mass exodus of the survivors followed, but the Jewish and Muslim portions of the city were largely unharmed.
Izmir is not the only city in Turkey which has seen its synagogues restored in recent years. Notable projects are being completed in Edirne, a city on the Turkish western border near Bulgaria, and Kilis, on its southeastern border near Syria. Unlike Izmir, though, no Jews remain in either of those cities today, and many have accused the project of being a tool for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government to assuage accusations of antisemitism, without actually dealing with living Jews.
Losing Ladino and a ‘quiet’ mindset
Bencoya lamented that he is among the last generation for whom Ladino — the Judeo-Spanish language traditionally spoken by Sephardic Jews, but only spoken by tens of thousands today — was at least a part of his childhood.
“When you lose language, it’s not only technical, it’s not only vocabulary, it’s a whole world and a way of thinking,” Bencoya said.
The project is challenging a local Jewish mentality as well. Minority groups in Izmir, especially Jews, “have for a long time preferred not to be seen, not to be felt,” according to Bencoya.
That mindset has been codified in the Turkish Jewish community’s collective psyche in the form of a Ladino word, “kayedes,” which means something along the lines of “shhh,” “be quiet,” or “keep your head down.”
“This is the exact opposite that I want to do with this festival — to be felt, to raise awareness of my being,” Bencoya said.
The Bikur Holim Synagogue is one of the few still functioning in Izmir. (David I. Klein)
One way of doing that, he added, was having the festival refer to the community’s identity “as Yahudi and not Musevi!” Both are Turkish words that refer to Jews: the former having the same root as the English word Jew — the Hebrew word Yehuda or Judea — while the latter means “follower of Moses.”
“Yahudi, Musevi, Ibrani [meaning Hebrew, in Turkish] — they all mean the same thing, but in Turkey, they say Musevi because it sounds nicer,” Bencoya said. “To Yahudi there are a lot of negative superlatives — dirty Yahudi, filthy Yahudi, and this and that. So I insist on saying that I am Yahudi, because people have a lot of pre-judgements about the name Yahudi. So if you have prejudgements about me, let’s open them and talk about them.”
“I am not so romantic that I can eliminate all antisemitism, but if I can eliminate some of the prejudgements, then I can live a little more at peace,” he added.
So far, he feels the festival is a successful first step.
“The non-Jewish community of Izmir is fascinated,” Bencoya said. “If you look on Facebook and Instagram, they are talking about it, they are fighting over tickets, which sell out almost immediately.”
Now, he is only wondering how next year he will be able to fit more people into the small and aged synagogues.
“For Turkey, [the festival] is very important because Turkey can be among the enlightened nations of the world, only by being aware of the differences between groups of people, such as Jews, Christians, others, and Muslims,” he said.
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Hasan Piker causes new trouble for Democrats — especially in key Senate race
Hasan Piker, the popular pundit who most recently suggested American Jews are making themselves targets of violence by supporting Israel, may speak for far-left progressives, but he doesn’t speak for one of the movement’s highest-profile candidates in a closely watched swing-state race, the candidate said.
Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, the Michigan Democratic nominee for Senate, released a statement Monday saying he disagreed with Piker’s latest remarks and that he is opposed to “any rhetoric that puts the community at risk.”
“If Jews in America keep putting this idea out there that they are singularly invested in Israel, eventually someone is going to come around and take action,” Piker said during a Twitch stream on Thursday, “not against the state of Israel, mind you, but against American Jews.” He claimed American Jews who support Israel are bringing violence on themselves by tying their identity to what he called “Jewish ISIS.”
Piker added in an interview published Monday in Haaretz that, “I don’t think that me calling Zionism a Nazi ideology is fomenting violence towards Jews broadly. I genuinely don’t believe that.”
In Monday’s statement, El-Sayed sought to move past the controversy, shifting the conversation back to his campaign’s economic message as he remains in a close race with GOP nominee Mike Rogers. “While politicians and pundits try to make this race about a Twitch streamer, we’re going to be talking about gas, groceries, good schools and healthcare,” Sayed said. “Nobody speaks for this campaign besides me and my campaign spokespeople.”
Piker’s influence
The episode comes as Piker appears to be expanding rather than retreating from Democratic electoral politics.
He campaigned with El-Sayed and other insurgent progressives, including Adam Hamawy, a fierce Israel critic who served as a trauma surgeon in Gaza and won the Democratic primary in New Jersey’s 12th District. In Florida, Rep. Jared Moskowitz made Piker himself part of the closing argument against his socialist primary challenger, Oliver Larkin, whom Piker supported. After Moskowitz easily defeated Larkin, the Jewish congressman offered Piker his “condolences.”
On Monday, even as the controversy over his remarks about American Jews was unfolding, Piker used his Twitch platform to offer an exclusive look at new polling commissioned by the IMEU Policy Project, a pro-Palestinian advocacy organization, and conducted by YouGov among more than 4,000 likely Democratic primary voters in the six states picked as early contests in the 2028 Democratic presidential primary: South Carolina, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Michigan and Virginia.
The results showed broad support among those Democratic voters for presidential candidates who commit to reducing U.S. aid for Israel. Piker commands an enormous platform among precisely the younger voters progressive candidates are looking to court. “These numbers are making it undeniable,” Piker said on the stream. “This is an issue that is untenable.”
Earlier in the stream, Piker said the backlash over the weekend has “been a lot” to endure. “I’m going to continue doing what I’m doing,” he added. “I’m not going to feel discouraged. I’m not going to stop saying the truth… someone has to do it.”
The risk for El-Sayed
For El-Sayed, separating himself from some of Piker’s comments but still embracing him reflects the difficult political balance he has been trying to maintain since narrowly winning the primary.
El-Sayed has struggled to build support among Jewish Democrats while holding on to the progressive and pro-Palestinian coalition that helped carry him through the primary. He has assured Jewish voters that his fierce criticism of Israel — and his political relationships with figures such as Piker — should not be seen as hostility toward Jews. “I love and revere Judaism and the Jewish people,” he said in a recent TV appearance. “My commitment to the well-being of the Jewish community, their safety, their children, their future in Michigan is the same commitment that I’ve got to the well-being of my own daughters and all of our kids,” he said in another interview on Sunday.
At the same time, he resisted calls to distance himself from Piker, who has been embraced by Democratic Party progressive candidates. He appeared with El-Sayed on the campaign trail even as Piker has championed terrorist groups as righteous fighters against Israel — leading to accusations he traffics in antisemitism. In a recent speech to college students, Piker blasted Democrats who “fund ICE” and “fund Israel.”
El-Sayed’s Republican rival has already begun courting those voters, launching a “Democrats for Rogers” effort and highlighting El-Sayed’s relationship with Piker.
Speaking to Fox News’ Jesse Watters on Monday night, El-Sayed said that Rogers “thinks he’s running against Hasan Piker.”
An AARP poll released this month had El-Sayed at 48% and Rogers at 47%. Jewish voters account for only about 1.4% of the state electorate, but the defections among Jewish Democrats could matter in a race that close.
The post Hasan Piker causes new trouble for Democrats — especially in key Senate race appeared first on The Forward.
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‘Have a problem, call the PM,’ says Netanyahu as he gives out his number in campaign video
(JTA) — TEL AVIV – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday posted what he described as his personal phone number and invited Israelis to contact him with their questions and problems.
It was an election-season stunt that drew such a flood of responses that the number’s WhatsApp account was blocked within minutes and those calling received a busy signal.
It also drew suspicions that it was a ploy to collect voter data.
In a video posted to social media, Netanyahu is seen with longtime adviser Topaz Luk, who asks the prime minister whether he can publish his phone number. Netanyahu initially reacts with disbelief, saying, “Topaz, have you gone crazy?” before agreeing.
“I want to hear from you. Your suggestions, your questions, your problems. I want to hear, so leave me a message,” Netanyahu said. He added that he could not promise to answer everyone but would respond to as many people as possible.
Hundreds of messages and calls arrived within minutes and the WhatsApp account associated with the number was blocked. Luk later posted on X that the account had been disabled because of the volume of calls and said Netanyahu’s team was working to restore it, directing people to Telegram in the meantime.
Kan political correspondent Michael Shemesh questioned whether the number belonged to Netanyahu at all and suggested on X that the exercise was “probably designed to harvest the phone numbers of potential voters.”
Other users pointed to another clue that the handset seen in the video was unlikely to be Netanyahu’s personal phone. One of the WhatsApp groups visible in Luk’s video was a synagogue updates group whose latest message appeared to back political rival Naftali Bennett, the former prime minister who now heads the Beyachad party.
“Something tells me that Bibi isn’t signed up to the ‘Menachem’s House Main Shul Updates’ group,” one X user wrote, “especially not when the latest message there is ‘yalla, it’s time for Bennett.’”
The Likud spokesperson had not responded to a request for comment on the accusations by the time of publication.
It was not the first time Netanyahu handed out what he presented as his personal number during an election campaign. In August 2022, little more than two months before the vote that returned him to power, the then-opposition leader published another number and invited Israelis to video call him.
“Why should only some people have my phone number? Everyone should have it,” Netanyahu said at the time, joking that the move was a “dramatic, world-changing decision.” He told supporters who sent proof they had joined his Telegram channel that they would have a better chance of receiving a video call from him.
The response was similarly intense. Likud said Netanyahu received 9,420 calls within the first 30 minutes, while follow-up videos showed calls and messages flooding the phone.
Netanyahu’s rivals mocked the stunt. Then-Finance Minister Avigdor Liberman released a parody video saying Netanyahu “has not picked up the phone in 12 years,” while Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid dismissed it as a “fictional phone operated by Netanyahu’s aides.”
The episode comes as Netanyahu faces a difficult reelection campaign, with roughly 20% of voters remaining undecided, many of whom are disillusioned Likud voters, according to pollsters and researchers cited by Reuters.
A Channel 13 poll released earlier this month put Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar party at 23 seats, ahead of Likud with 21, and Netanyahu’s current coalition projected to win just 49 of the Knesset’s 120 seats. Eisenkot also led Netanyahu 47% to 34% when respondents were asked who was better suited to serve as prime minister.
The phone-number appeal is the latest in a series of efforts to put Netanyahu directly in front of voters, including a blitz of highly publicized appearances. Last week, the prime minister visited a restaurant in Hadera, a Likud stronghold, where owner Simo Shtivi said his arrival was “like hoisting the World Cup,” as diners lined up for photos and a chance to speak with him.
Netanyahu also made a surprise appearance with his wife Sara at a concert by Israeli pop star Eden Ben Zaken. A few days earlier, he filmed a campaign video at Jerusalem’s Malha Mall meeting shoppers, including children. The Central Elections Committee later ordered the video removed because election law bars the use of children in campaign propaganda.
Likud also rolled out billboards showing New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani alongside the leaders of Iran, Turkey and Hezbollah under the slogan, “They want Netanyahu to lose. Don’t let them win.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post ‘Have a problem, call the PM,’ says Netanyahu as he gives out his number in campaign video appeared first on The Forward.
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Providence voters to put Israel boycott movement to major test at the ballot box
(JTA) — As pro-Palestinian progressives find some success at the 2026 ballot box, the long-gestating Israel divestment campaign is looking to capitalize in Rhode Island.
Voters in Providence, the state capital, will vote on a referendum this November saying the city should refrain from investing in “foreign countries conducting ethnic cleansing, apartheid, illegal military occupation, or genocide.”
The language of the actual ballot petition does not mention Israel, nor any other country, by name. But the signature campaign was led by Providence for Palestine, a local activist coalition, and both its proponents and opponents have framed the measure as a referendum on Israel and the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.
With the referendum’s ballot placement secured, Providence has become the largest American municipality ever to place divestment before the voting public.
“We’re in this moment when the general public at large, and particularly Democratic voters, very much understand what’s going on in Gaza and Palestine as genocide, as apartheid, and want their leaders to take action on it,” Zack Kliger, a lead organizer of the ballot initiative and member of the Rhode Island chapter of the anti-Zionist group Jewish Voice for Peace, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Kliger described the current divestment campaign as having “definitely been led disproportionately by Jewish organizers.”
To determine which countries are “conducting” any of its list of human rights abuses, the referendum would rely on “resolutions” from various bodies, including the United Nations Security Council, International Court of Justice and “any” U.S. court ruling or U.N. body. Some, though not all, of those bodies have reached conclusions that would implicate Israel in the ballot language’s divestment campaign.
Both Israel and the Trump administration have strongly rejected all genocide accusations leveled against the country. “Apartheid” can be considered an independent crime under international law, while “ethnic cleansing” has no formal legal definition.
Divestment from Israel has seen some success on the municipal level since the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks and Israel’s military response in Gaza, which has sunk the country’s popularity across the American electorate. Last year a non-binding divestment resolution in Somerville, Massachusetts, a Boston suburb with less than half of Providence’s population, became the first such initiative to win at the ballot box. Over objections from Jewish groups, the city this summer began exploring the question of how to enact the measure into law.
Critics of divestment measures argue that they force local governments to put undue focus on international issues; could prompt division and backlash against local Jewish communities, and jeopardize public pension programs. The Providence campaign’s decision to avoid mentioning Israel in the ballot language sets it apart from similar initiatives, while also neutralizing claims, made against other resolutions, that such measures unfairly single out Israel.
Yet local Jewish groups say the risk to the community remains.
“All this will do [is] stoke more division in our community, and potentially make Jewish people here feel more unsafe,” Stephanie Hague, chief strategy officer of the Jewish Alliance of Greater Rhode Island, told JTA.
Hague noted that the ballot language, as written, prompts questions about the authority of the international bodies making judgments about what constitutes genocide, ethnic cleansing and other terms in in the initiative. She said that the Alliance would campaign against the ballot measure and, if it passes, explore legal options for putting up roadblocks to it.
A 2024 proposal to the city council urged Providence, whose approximately 15,000 Jews make up around 7% of the population, not to invest in Israel bonds. The measure failed to make it out of committee. Likewise, the board of Brown University, the Ivy League school located in Providence, voted on a divestment resolution as part of the demands of the school’s pro-Palestinian encampment movement in 2024. It failed.
Activists are more confident this time, citing the success in Somerville — where, unlike in Providence, Israel was mentioned by name as the target of the winning ballot measure. Also unlike Somerville, whose measure was non-binding, Providence’s initiative would mandate city action.
Supporters also note that Providence joined a 2006 divestment initiative against Sudan to protest ethnic cleansing in Darfur, a divestment campaign that was spearheaded by American Jewish groups.
“We’re really proud of the legacy of the American Jewish community and standing up on social issues,” Kliger, who grew up in the Conservative movement, attended a Jewish day school in Brooklyn and has family in Israel, told JTA.
Unlike in Pittsburgh, where a similar 2024 initiative was undone before the election following legal challenges to the signatures, the Providence activists were able to collect and verify more than enough signatures to qualify for the ballot. The initiative’s supporters said they had identified around $2.5 million in city funds that would be affected by a divestment order. They cited American companies frequently targeted by pro-Palestinian activists, such as construction equipment manufacturer Caterpillar and weapons firm Axon Enterprise.
The city council of Portland, Maine, also passed a divestment proposal in 2024, though that city’s mayor, after initially endorsing the plan, later said he regretted having done so because of the divisiveness it spurred.
Some progressive Jewish professionals in Providence say the initiative is in keeping with their values.
“I know there are others out there who think that this is a situation where one would need to choose between their Jewish principles and other principles. I don’t perceive it that way,” Lex Rofeberg, senior Jewish educator with the alternative Jewish engagement network Judaism Unbound, told JTA about his support for the ballot campaign.
Rofeberg, a Providence resident, said it would be wrong for non-Jews to conclude that “it is a Jewish value to support human rights violations.”
“For those who see a ballot initiative that does not name Israel at all, but simply says we should not invest our dollars in atrocities — for people who see that as somehow threatening to Judaism, why would they think that?” he asked.
Hague, the Jewish Alliance staffer opposing the initiative, sees just such a threat to Jewish interests. She acknowledged that it can be hard to communicate to non-Jews, who would understandably oppose genocide and apartheid, the ways in which her group sees the BDS movement as “a calling card for antisemitism.”
She outlined what she saw as her group’s mission: “We have to do so much education in a short period of time, and helping people understand the Jewish community’s relationship to Israel, and then understanding this initiative’s relationship to the BDS movement and how those things are connected, and the real fear and isolation many Jewish Americans are already feeling, particularly after Oct. 7.”
The political environment, though, may be unfriendly to such efforts. Following broader national trends, the city’s Democratic mayoral primary, set for Sept. 9, is also pivoting to a large degree around Israel.
Incumbent Mayor Brett Smiley, who converted to Judaism and held a bar mitzvah while in office, is a vocal Israel supporter who opposes the ballot initiative. His progressive challenger, state Rep. David Morales, has backed the ballot initiative.
So too have some local elected officials with Jewish heritage. “For any community that we are identified with, and for the sake of our soul and our humanity, we have to be able to say, ‘This is not OK,’” Rachel Miller, city council president, told JTA.
Miller, who has a Jewish father and Catholic mother, said she considers herself “culturally” Jewish and objected to the idea that there is a single Jewish voice on the issue. She believes, she said, in “disconnecting the actions of a state against a group of people from my personal Jewish heritage, from my personal Jewish identity.”
Even if passed, it’s possible the ballot initiative could run afoul of a statewide ban on working with government contractors who openly boycott Israel — a so-called “anti-BDS law,” one of many such measures enacted in a range of states.
Those laws themselves have been debated for years. This fall a ballot initiative in Oak Park, Illinois, a liberal Chicago suburb, will ask voters to register a formal objection to that state’s anti-boycott law. The initiative, which is opposed by local Jewish groups, survived a legal challenge on Monday.
Hague acknowledged current Jewish divisions on Israel, and the difficult political climate for pro-Israel Jewish groups. Facing down a ballot initiative like this, she said, takes work.
“I think we know public opinion is not supportive of Israel right now. I think it’s not an issue that people understand implicitly when they just read a ballot question,” she said. “So yes, of course, there’s reason for concern, and I think no matter what happens at the ballot, I still think it’s an important moment.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Providence voters to put Israel boycott movement to major test at the ballot box appeared first on The Forward.
