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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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The post In Turkey, a festival revives a jewel of the Sephardic world and aims to break stereotypes appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Iran Urges Citizens to Spy on One Another as US-Israeli Strikes Cripple Regime
Smoke rises following an explosion, after Israel and the US launched strikes on Iran, in Tehran, Iran, March 3, 2026. Photo: Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
Amid relentless US and Israeli airstrikes that have decimated Iran’s military capabilities and key energy facilities, Iran has called on citizens to report on each other in a new push to crush domestic dissent, as talks of a possible ceasefire remain uncertain.
On Thursday, the semi-official Fars News Agency, which is affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), called on all Iranian citizens to help “identify those who have turned their backs on the homeland and threaten national security,” warning that “the country is facing external threats and internal betrayals.”
“Iranians will not allow this betrayal to be forgotten,” Fars wrote in a post on X, linking to a website called “Our Memory” to offer a platform for citizens to snoop and inform on each other.
“The efforts of ‘Our Memory’ also carry a clear message to those who might be contemplating betrayal or collaboration with the country’s enemies: The society is vigilant and awake, and actions that pose a threat to national security will be identified and exposed,” Fars posted.
The regime’s latest propaganda campaign of intimidation comes as Israel’s offensive increasingly focuses on dismantling Iran’s internal repression systems, aiming to create a leadership vacuum and logistical breakdown that could hinder Tehran’s ability to respond if mass protests erupt again.
Even amid Israel’s major battlefield advances, however, a senior Israeli security official said Wednesday that Iran still retains the ability to launch missiles at its current rate for the next several weeks, according to Israel’s N12 media outlet.
“Iran can maintain its current rate of missile fire for weeks,” the Israeli official reportedly said in a closed-door briefing. “It has sufficient launchers and reinforced squads to sustain and stagger the attacks over time.”
On Thursday, US President Donald Trump announced he was extending, “at the request of the Iranian government,” the deadline to strike the country’s energy grid by 10 days, as Washington works to bring a possible ceasefire deal to the table.
Should diplomatic efforts falter, the Pentagon and US Central Command are reportedly preparing military plans for a “finishing blow” on Iran, potentially involving some level of ground forces and massive airstrikes.
According to multiple media reports, Washington is considering several options against Iran, including invading or blockading Kharg Island, the country’s main oil export hub, or even seizing Arak Island to secure control over the Strait of Hormuz, a critical passage through which roughly a fifth of the world’s oil supply flows.
Other potential measures include taking Abu Musa and two close islands near the western entrance of the strait or blockading or seizing ships exporting Iranian oil on the eastern side, threatening a vital route for global energy shipments.
Since the start of the war last month, combined US and Israeli strikes have dropped more than 25,000 munitions on targets in Iran, with nearly 15,000 of those carried out by the Israeli Air Force alone, according to updated Israeli intelligence data.
“These numbers are large and significant by any measure,” a senior Israeli military officer told the Hebrew-language news site Walla.
“We are concentrating strikes on the regime’s centers of gravity in Tehran, Isfahan, and other key sites. Iran may be a large country, but hitting the very heart of its infrastructure has a profound strategic impact,” he continued.
He also said the operation, which began with “leadership decapitation” and quickly shifted to paralyzing surface-to-surface and surface-to-air missile arrays, has effectively reduced Iran’s missile firing to low single- or double-digit daily levels, far below its plan of over 100 launches per day.
So far, Israel has destroyed more than 200 launchers, even as mobile units hidden in deep tunnels continue to pose serious obstacles, which are being bombed and blocked since missiles cannot always reach their depths.
Israeli forces have also systematically targeted Iran’s weapons manufacturing, attacking over 1,000 sites to degrade production, development, and research capabilities.
According to a Reuters report, US intelligence can only confirm the destruction of about a third of Iran’s missile arsenal, while another third has likely been damaged, destroyed, or buried in underground bunkers, with a similar situation affecting the regime’s drone capabilities.
While most of Iran’s missiles have been destroyed or rendered inaccessible, Tehran still may retain a significant stockpile and, as of now, could potentially recover some buried or damaged missiles after the current fighting ends.
As the war continues to escalate, Israel has shifted its strategy, with its Air Force last week striking a major natural gas processing facility in southwestern Iran — a move that damaged roughly 40 percent of the country’s gas production capacity.
Facing a gas shortage, the Iranian government was reportedly forced to prioritize fuel for electricity production, sharply cutting civilian fuel allocations and causing major disruptions to transportation and deliveries to Turkey.
“This is just a sample of our ability to crush Iran’s energy backbone,” an Israeli security official told N12.
With the US also threatening strikes on key Iranian energy infrastructure, the Islamist regime is now facing pressure to consider a ceasefire agreement to bring the war to a close.
“The Iranians are in panic,” the Israeli official said. “They understand that further damage [to its energy facilities] will make governing the country impossible.”
In one of the latest blows to the regime, the Israeli Air Force on Friday attacked the heavy water reactor in Arak, central Iran, after Israeli intelligence detected repeated attempts to restore the site — a facility considered key for producing plutonium for nuclear weapons.
Israeli officials also confirmed an attack on Iran’s only facility in Yazd that processes raw materials into starting components for uranium enrichment, as well as multiple steel plants in a major blow to an already devastated Iranain economy.
After these attacks, the IRGC threatened to target six steel plants in retaliation, including sites in Israel, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, Qatar, and Kuwait.
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Man arrested over alleged firebomb plot targeting pro-Palestinian activist Nerdeen Kiswani
(JTA) — A New Jersey man was arrested on Thursday for allegedly plotting to firebomb the home of the prominent pro-Palestinian activist Nerdeen Kiswani.
Alexander Heifler, 26, was arrested by authorities in Hoboken after a weeks-long undercover operation led by the New York City Police Department revealed that he allegedly planned to throw a dozen Molotov cocktails at Kiswani’s residence.
The investigation into Heifler began in early February when Heifler discussed using Molotov cocktails on a group video call that included an undercover law enforcement officer, according to a criminal complaint filed in the U.S. District Court of New Jersey.
He later told the undercover officer that he had planned to flee the country following the attack. (The criminal complaint did not specify the name of the group or the country he planned to flee to.)
During a search of Heifler’s home Thursday night, detectives and FBI agents uncovered eight Molotov cocktails. He has been charged with unlawful possession of firearms and making of destructive devices.
In a statement Friday, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said that Heifler was an alleged member of the Jewish Defense League, a far-right pro-Israel group that the has FBI labeled as a terrorist organization since 2001, and that the country he had planned to flee to was Israel.
“Last night, an alleged member of the Jewish Defense League — designated by the FBI as a ‘known violent extremist organization’ — attempted to blow up the home of Nerdeen Kiswani in a chilling act of political violence and an apparent assassination plot,” the statement read. “The defendant allegedly planned to flee to Israel following the attack. This comes amidst an alarming rise in threats and violence across the country targeting Palestinian human rights advocates.”
“Let me be clear: We will not tolerate violent extremism in our city. No one should face violence for their political beliefs or their advocacy. I am relieved that Nerdeen is safe,” the statement continued.
A police official confirmed that Heifler was a member of a branch of the Jewish Defense League on Friday, according to The New York Times.
Last month, Kiswani, who has long drawn accusations of antisemitism for her rhetoric on Zionists, sued Betar USA, a far-right militant pro-Israel group, accusing the group of violating her civil rights by putting out social media “bounties” on her and repeatedly harassing her. (In January, Betar USA agreed to dissolve its New York operations following a settlement with the state attorney general.)
The activist has also been singled out by far-right Florida Jewish Rep. Randy Fine, who reposted a tweet of Kiswani’s last month to make disparaging remarks about Muslims which sparked calls for his censure.
In a post on X, Kiswani, a Palestinian-American who co-founded the hardline pro-Palestinian group Within Our Lifetime, wrote that she had been informed by the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force on Thursday night that “a plot against my life that was ‘about to’ take place.”
“For months, Zionist organizations like Betar and politicians like Randy Fine have encouraged violence against my family and me,” Kiswani continued. “I will have more to say as additional details come to light. I will not stop speaking up for the people of Palestine. Thank you for your support.”
In response to The New York Times’ post about the arrest, Betar USA wrote that it was “not surprising if other terrorists targeted her.”
“Violent terrorist Nerdeen Kiswani wants to globalize the intifada not surprising if other terrorists targeted her. Palestinians have always targeted one another,” the group posted on X alongside a video of Kiswani’s rhetoric. “Not surprising given the violent nature of these people who have globalized the intifada.”
The announcement of the arrest drew praise from the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, which wrote in a post on X that there is “absolutely no place in our city for violence, threats, or attempts to take someone’s life—ever.”
“While we adamantly disagree with Nerdeen Kiswani’s inflammatory rhetoric and her organization’s tactics, we condemn in the strongest possible terms the reported plot against her,” the group said.
Brad Hoylman Sigal, the Jewish Manhattan borough president, also praised the NYPD for the arrest in a post on X.
“Grateful to @NYPDnews for their swift work in preventing this horrific plot against Nerdeen Kiswani,” Sigal wrote. “Political violence, against anyone, for any reason, has no place in our city.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Man arrested over alleged firebomb plot targeting pro-Palestinian activist Nerdeen Kiswani appeared first on The Forward.
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The moral degradation of Israel’s far-right is even worse than you think
This week, an Israeli Knesset member said something that should have been shocking, horrifying and unanimously condemned.
“I stand behind IDF soldiers in every situation,” said Yitzhak Kroizer, a member of the ultranationalist Otzmah Yehudit Party. Even if the “collateral damage is children or women — it does not matter to me.”
“In Jenin, there are no innocent civilians,” he added. “In Jenin, there are no innocent children.”
Kroizer was referring to a genuine tragedy: The killing of almost an entire Palestinian family by Israel undercover forces on March 15, near the village of Tammun. The forces opened fire on the family’s car as they returned from a shopping trip. Waed Bani Ohde, her husband Ali, and two of their young children Othman, 7, and Mohammed, 5, were killed. Two sons survived. The army says the car accelerated toward the forces; Palestinian witnesses say the IDF gave no warning before attacking.
It is tempting to dismiss statements like Kroizer’s as the rhetoric of the extreme. Indeed, I often find myself making that point when talking to people inclined to think the worst of Israel: They do not represent the majority, and not even the immoral government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
But that, while true, is becoming a little too pat.
For it is also true that as time goes, as the wars continue and hearts harden, what Kroizer articulated is a moral framework that is steadily taking hold in the Israeli right.
That’s why the statements were not condemned by anyone associated with the government. And, indeed, Israeli far-right activists responded to the deaths with social media posts rejoicing in the death of the unarmed “terrorists.”
No senior Israeli official apologized for the shooting. No one said publicly that even if the soldiers believed they were acting under threat, the killing of two children demands something more than a routine internal review.
No official has even conceded that this type of event might contribute to agitation and instability in the West Bank, and perhaps spark another uprising. Set empathy aside; even enlightened self-interest is beyond the current Israeli government.
Yes, an investigation has been opened. But military investigations almost never lead to concrete action against the troops. A Guardian report this week revealed that no Israeli citizen has been prosecuted for a killing in the West Bank since 2020, despite a radical uptick in violence; settlers and police have already killed 10 Palestinian civilians this month alone.
The undercover soldiers, especially, are something like the real life version of the international hit Fauda, widely admired for their counter-terrorism activity. There is little appetite for throwing the book at them.
So while it’s tempting to chalk this up as just another tragedy in a long list of tragedies on both sides, it is actually much more: a devastating manifestation of something fundamental — not just a personal tragedy but a national one.
That’s a tragedy I’ve seen unfolding slowly, since even before the Hamas attack of Oct. 7, 2023.
I’ve seen it in the rhetoric of far-right leaders like cabinet ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich. But I’ve also seen it firsthand, as when I found myself on wartime television panels where I was besieged by right-wingers enraged at my assertion that innocents have been killed during the war in Gaza. I challenged one of them about whether this idea would include a two-week old baby.
“OK, maybe not the baby!” he conceded, unhappily.
The descent of part of Israeli society into this unforgivable lack of compassion is, some have argued, an inevitable outcome of indefinite control over the Palestinian territories. For years, warnings that rule over millions of disenfranchised Arabs would mutate Israel’s character were treated as excessive, even hysterical.
Israel was not a colonial power in the classic sense, its defenders argued; it was a democracy under siege, navigating impossible dilemmas. The West Bank may be “occupied” but that was justifiable because of the threat its near proximity posed. Israel’s actions might be harsh, but they were necessary, the argument went. It was said that the country’s moral core, despite pressures, would remain intact.
The initial signs after this latest tragedy are not exactly reassuring. Far from condemning Kroizer, as they rightly should have, the cabinet convened this week to offer his party a great gift: the legalization of 30 illegal settlement outposts, including some in “Area A,” which is supposed to be under full Palestinian control.
Israel did not begin this way. Its founding story was deeply bound up with an acute awareness of the need to maintain morality. The early Zionists envisioned a country that would be a “light unto the nations.”
As occupation has become an entrenched reality, most Israelis have wanted to look away; the problem is too complicated. This position may not be possible for much longer. The moral rot is too extreme. But the good news is that it has not infected everything and everyone. Israel’s public broadcaster devoted a segment to the Palestinian family’s tragedy, characterizing Kroizer’s statements as a disgrace.
The humanistic ideas through which Israel once judged itself have eroded. We must now hope that they won’t entirely vanish.
The post The moral degradation of Israel’s far-right is even worse than you think appeared first on The Forward.