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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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US House Passes State Department Funding Bill With $3.3 Billion in Security Assistance to Israel
US House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) speaks to members of the media on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, US, Nov. 12, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz
The US House of Representatives in a decisive bipartisan vote passed on Wednesday a sweeping government funding package that includes $3.3 billion in annual security assistance to Israel, underscoring continued congressional support for Washington’s closest ally in the Middle East amid heightened political scrutiny.
The legislation — which combines funding for the State Department and certain national security programs for the Treasury Department and other parts of the government — passed easily by a margin of 341 to 79, reflecting a durable consensus on Capitol Hill that Israel’s security remains a key US strategic interest.
Washington has committed to provide Jerusalem with $3.8 billion in military aid each fiscal year until 2028, according to an agreement signed by the two nations in 2016. The $3.3 billion in aid passed by the House, along with the $500 million given to Israel as part of the US defense budget for anti-missile programs, will meet that total.
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the foremost pro-Israel lobbying group in the US, issued a statement praising lawmakers for passing the legislation, arguing that it bolsters the longstanding relationship between the US and its closest Middle Eastern ally.
“The pro-Israel provisions in this bill further reinforce the bipartisan and ironclad support for the US-Israel partnership in Congress,” AIPAC said. “These resources help ensure that our ally can confront shared strategic threats and that America has a strong and capable ally in the heart of the Middle East.”
The funding for Israel is provided through the Foreign Military Financing program and aligns with the 10-year memorandum of understanding between Washington and Jerusalem. Supporters say the assistance is critical to maintaining Israel’s qualitative military edge, funding advanced missile defense systems, and ensuring the country can defend itself against evolving security challenges.
The House package also includes provisions tightening oversight of US funds directed to the Palestinians and restricting assistance to international bodies viewed by supporters of the bill as hostile to Israel. It further bans funding for the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the controversial UN agency responsible for Palestinian refugees and their descendants. The Israeli government and research organizations have publicized findings showing numerous UNRWA-employed staff, including teachers and school principals, are active Hamas members, some of whom were directly involved in the Palestinian terrorist group’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, while many others openly celebrated it.
The legislation additionally blocks all funding to the International Criminal Court (ICC), which was founded in 2002 under a treaty giving it jurisdiction to prosecute genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes that were either committed by a citizen of a member state or had taken place on a member state’s territory.
Last November, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense chief Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza conflict.
Israel has adamantly denied war crimes in Gaza, where it has waged a military campaign to eliminate Hamas following the terrorist group’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel.
The Trump administration has imposed sanctions on ICC judges and those who assist with International Criminal Court (ICC) investigations of American citizens or allies such as Israel in February 2025.
The legislation also allocates $37.5 million for the Nita Lowey Middle East Partnership for Peace Act, a 2020 US law issuing a maximum of $250 million over five years for initiatives promoting Israeli-Palestinian peace-building efforts and a two-state solution.
The funding package is making its way through Congress as the future dynamics of the Israel-American military aid relationship remain in flux. Recently, Netanyahu told US reporters that he plans on weaning Israel off US support over the next decade. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), a stalwart supporter of Israel, responded by announcing he plans on introducing legislation to accelerate the timeline to end US aid to Israel.
The measure now moves to the Senate, where leaders are expected to take it up in the coming weeks. If approved and signed into law, the funding would ensure uninterrupted security assistance to Israel for another year.
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Argentine Doctor Suspended After Threatening to Cut Jewish Throats
Dr. Miqueas Martinez Secchi. Photo: Screenshot
A doctor in Argentina has been suspended from his job at a hospital in Buenos Aires after posting antisemitic messages on social media that included explicit calls for violence against Jews.
The suspension of Miqueas Martinez Secchi, a resident physician specializing in intensive care at José de San Martín Hospital in La Plata, marks yet another example of rising antisemitism in health-care settings across the West.
“Instead of performing circumcision, their carotid artery and main artery should be cut from side to side,” Secchi wrote in one post.
The medical professional’s antisemitic online activity was exposed by journalist and commentator Dani Lerer, who posted the graphic messages on the social media platform X.
El @miqveas_ que llama a cortar la yugular de los judíos, y que borró su cuenta, es residente de terapia intensiva del Hospital General José de San Martín de La Plata.
Imagino que ya mismo tomarán cartas en el asunto las autoridades, pero que las redes hagan lo suyo. pic.twitter.com/luCjZbedar
— Dani Lerer (@danilerer) January 12, 2026
The posts prompted widespread outrage, leading Secchi to delete his social media account — but not before other users were able to save screenshots.
Buenos Aires Province Health Minister Nicolás Kreplak released a statement responding to the incident.
“Any aggressive message or one showing a lack of respect for human life is incompatible with health care practice and particularly with medicine. They are fundamental values of training as a health professional,” he posted on X. “Health is one of the essential assets of society, and it is indispensable to be firm against any act of discrimination and racism. As is public knowledge.”
Kreplak then referenced Secchi and noted he is under investigation.
“Due to this message, consistent with other previous behaviors that now acquire relevance, the resident doctor at Hospital San Martín de La Plata who made those public statements is suspended and in an administrative and judicial investigation process, in order to conduct an evaluation under an ethical, technical, and professional committee that will determine whether it is appropriate or not for them to resume their training process,” the minister said.
The incident in Argentina continues an alarming pattern of rampant antisemitism in health care across the Western world which has left Jewish communities feeling unsafe and marginalized.
In November, for example, a Jewish columnist from Amsterdam said she was denied medical care by a nurse who refused to remove a pro-Palestinian pin shaped like a fist.
Elsewhere in the Netherlands, local police opened an investigation into Batisma Chayat Sa’id, a nurse who allegedly stated she would administer lethal injections to Israeli patients.
In Italy, two medical workers filmed themselves at their workplace discarding medicine produced by the Israeli company Teva Pharmaceuticals in protest of the Jewish state and the war in Gaza.
In Belgium, a local hospital suspended a physician after discovering antisemitic content on his social media, including a cartoon showing babies being decapitated by the tip of a Star of David and an AI-generated image depicting Hasidic Jews as vampires poised to devour a sleeping baby.
The same doctor came under fire after he recently diagnosed a nine-year-old patient by listing “Jewish (Israeli)” as one of her medical problems on his report.
Several such incidents have occurred in the United Kingdom, where British Prime Minister Keir Starmer unveiled a new plan in October to address what he described as “just too many examples, clear examples, of antisemitism that have not been dealt with adequately or effectively” in the country’s National Health Service (NHS).
One notable case drawing attention involved Dr. Rahmeh Aladwan, a trainee trauma and orthopedic surgeon, who police arrested on Oct. 21, charging her with four offenses related to malicious communications and inciting racial hatred. In November, she was suspended from practicing medicine in the UK over social media posts denigrating Jews and celebrating Hamas’s terrorism.
That same month, UK Health Secretary Wes Streeting called it “chilling” that some members of the Jewish community fear discrimination within the NHS, amid reports of widespread antisemitism in Britain’s health-care system.
Incidents in the UK included a Jewish family fearing their London doctor’s antisemitism influenced their disabled son’s treatment. The North London hospital suspended the physician who was under investigation for publicly claiming that all Jews have “feelings of supremacy” and downplaying antisemitism.
In Australia, two nurses filmed themselves bragging online about refusing to treat Israelis, making throat-slitting gestures, and boasting of killing Jews. Both lost their licenses and now face criminal charges.
A US-born Jewish woman who moved from Israel to Australia six years ago told The Algemeiner last year that she no longer feels safe in hospitals given the atmosphere of heightened antisemitism.
“In the past year alone, my little boy has witnessed many hostile protests where ‘anti-Zionists’ have actually come into the Jewish community without permits to intimidate us. Time and time again, instead of [authorities] dispersing and arresting anyone in the crowd for screaming racial slurs and threats, Jews are asked to evacuate and told if they don’t run away, they are inciting violence,” the woman said.
“Now they actually brag online about killing Israeli patients,” she continued, referring to the case in Australia. “I don’t know how safe I would feel giving birth at that hospital.”
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US Appeals Court Says Decision to Free Mahmoud Khalil Lacked Jurisdiction, Opens Door to Rearrest
Anti-Israel activist and former Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil marching with followers in New York City on June 22, 2025. Photo: Reuters Connect
A US federal appeals court ruled on Thursday that a lower court judge lacked the authority to order the release of a prominent anti-Israel activist who helped stage riotous demonstrations on New York City college campuses.
Mahmoud Khalil, an Algerian citizen born in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria, was detained by the Trump administration in March after federal agents arrested him at his Manhattan apartment for what the Department of Homeland Security described as “activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization.” The State Department also alleged that Khalil was supporting Hamas and argued his residing in the US posed “serious adverse foreign policy consequences.”
Immigration officials moved Khalil to New Jersey, leading his case to be transferred there to US District Judge Michael Farbiarz.
Khalil was held without charge for more than 100 days at a facility in Louisiana administered by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, until Farbiarz ordered his release in June, ruling that the government failed to prove he posed a threat and suggesting the detention may have violated his First Amendment rights.
On Thursday, however, a three-judge panel of the Philadelphia-based 3rd US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 that the lower court lacked “subject-matter jurisdiction” under federal immigration law to halt the Trump administration’s effort to deport Khalil.
According to the appeals court, the district court that considered his lawsuit was not the proper forum to address Khalil’s claims, which should have been heard through an appeal of a removal order from an immigration judge in accordance with the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA).
The ruling stressed that Khalil lacks legal standing to challenge the government’s decision to deport him before his case has been adjudicated in immigration court, adding that the INA does not allow for a petition to review (PFR) the case at the federal level at this time.
“The scheme Congress enacted governing immigration proceedings provides Khalil a meaningful forum in which to raise his claims later on — in a petition for review of a final order of removal,” an opinion issued by the majority says. “That scheme ensures that petitioners get just one bite at the apple — not zero, or two. But it also means that some petitioners, like Khalil, will have to wait to seek relief for allegedly unlawful government or conduct.”
It added, “Because Khalil raises legal questions that a PFR court can meaningfully review later on, the INA bars him from attacking his detention and removal in a habeas petition.”
In a statement, Khalil was defiant even as he faces the possibility of being again detained.
“The door may have been opened for potential re-detainment down the line, but it has not closed our commitment to Palestine and to justice and accountability,” he said. “I will continue to fight, through every legal avenue and with every ounce of determination, until my rights, and the rights of others like me, are fully protected.”
Additionally, his lawyers, provided by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), vowed to exhaust “every available avenue,” which may include a petition for his case to be decided by the US Supreme Court.
Speaking to Fox News, the Trump administration commended the decision, saying, “Mahmoud Khalil was given the privilege of coming to America to study on a student visa he obtained by fraud and misrepresentation. As we have always maintained, the executive branch has the lawful authority to take actions that will protect the public and to ensure the integrity of our immigration system.”
Beyond Khalil’s alleged pro-Hamas activities, the US government has maintained that its action was warranted by his lying to obtain a green card. In court documents it charged that Khalil did not disclose that he had interned for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), a group that was found multiple times to have been breached by Hamas members, and also concealed key details about another position he held at the British embassy in Beirut, Lebanon. Khalil, the government added, also did not inform immigration officials about his leadership role in the notorious “Columbia University Apartheid Divest” (CUAD) group.
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, CUAD perpetrated illegal building occupations and severe infrastructure sabotage while Khalil participated in a graduate program at Columbia University in the months after the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel. The acts stunned Columbia’s campus, prompting fears of imminent revolutionary-style violence on campus even as Jewish students and faculty received antisemitic hate mail and death threats.
The Department of Homeland Security initially arrested Khalil while acting on an executive order issued by President Donald Trump which called for the deportation of foreign nationals who cause antisemitic hate incidents. A major provision of the order calls for the deportation of extremist “alien” student activists, whose alleged support for terrorist organizations, intellectual and material, such as Hamas supposedly contributed to fostering antisemitism, violence, and property destruction on college campuses.
Khalil has refused to condemn Hamas and even once denied that antisemitism at Columbia University required a policy response from school officials.
“I would say there is manufactured hysteria about antisemitism at Columbia because of the protests,” Khalil told Ezra Klein in an interview with The New York Times last year. “There are incidents here and there. But it’s not like antisemitism is happening at Columbia because of the Palestine movement … This is why I always push back. I have a strong belief that antisemitism and anti-Palestinian racism rise together because the same groups are perpetrating that in different ways.”
Khalil then went on to assert some of the very claims prompting accusations of antisemitism in the anti-Israel movement, accusing the Jewish state of “genocide” while arguing that the accusation is aimed at making pro-Israel supporters “uncomfortable” and defending the terrorist-led Palestinian intifadas.
“I don’t want to sanitize history,” Khalil continued. “Like I told you, the second intifada involved violent acts, but overwhelmingly, they were peaceful.”
Over 1,000 Israelis were killed in the early 2000s during the second intifada, when Palestinian terrorists ramped up violence targeting Israelis that included suicide bombings, shootings, and stabbings.
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, pro-Hamas activists at Columbia produced several indelible examples of campus antisemitism, including a student who proclaimed that Zionist Jews deserve to be murdered and are lucky he is not doing so himself, brutal gang-assaults on Jewish students, and administrative officials who, outraged at the notion that Jews organized to resist anti-Zionism, participated in a group chat in which each member took turns sharing antisemitic tropes that described Jews as privileged and grafting.
CUAD was among the most strident pro-Hamas organizations on campus and once promoted itself by distributing literature which called on students to join Hamas’s movement to destroy Israel and America.
“This booklet is part of a coordinated and intentional effort to uphold the principles of the thawabit and the Palestinian resistance movement overall by transmitting the words of the resistance directly,” said a pamphlet distributed by CUAD, a Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) spinoff, to incoming freshmen. “This material aims to build popular support for the Palestinian war of national liberation, a war which is waged through armed struggle.”
Other sections of the pamphlet were explicitly Islamist, invoking the name of “Allah, the most gracious” and referring to Hamas as the “Islamic Resistance Movement.” Proclaiming, “Glory to Gaza that gave hope to the oppressed, that humiliated the ‘invincible’ Zionist army,” it said its purpose is to build an army of Muslims worldwide.
“We call upon the masses of our Arab and Islamic nations, its scholars, men, institutions, and active forces to come out in roaring crowds tomorrow,” it added, referring to a then-upcoming event. “We also renew our invitation to the free people and those with living consciences around the world to continue and escalate their global public movement, rejecting the occupation’s crimes, in solidarity with our people and their just cause and legitimate struggle.”
Columbia University denounced the group in 2025 as a part of a rollout of policies to combat antisemitism and unauthorized demonstrations which disrupted academic life.
In a statement issued in July, university president Claire Shipman said the institution will hire new coordinators to oversee complaints alleging civil rights violations; facilitate “deeper education on antisemitism” by creating new training programs for students, faculty, and staff; and adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism — a tool that advocates say is necessary for identifying what constitutes antisemitic conduct and speech.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.