Do Jews Have a Future in Turkey?

Growing anti-Semitism, an Islamist government, hostility toward Israel, and assimilation threaten the survival of the Jewish community of Turkey, which is now thought to number 15,000 souls. In a synagogue in Istanbul, there is a helmet under every seat in case of another attack like the 2003 truck bombings that left 27 dead. Avi Lewis writes:

With an illustrious 700-year history behind them, Turkey’s Jews now seem wedged between a rock and a hard place. While outbursts of anti-Semitic rhetoric and growing hostility toward Israel under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan make the community increasingly uneasy, some Jewish leaders say they are just as concerned over assimilation, intermarriage, and emigration. But they remain adamant that Jewish life will persist here, regardless of the growing intolerance and Islamization of Turkish society.

A spokesman for the Jewish community’s official [organization] says Turkey’s Jews are dismayed by the uptick in anti-Semitic speech and media articles but still try, in their limited capacity, to bring these issues to the attention of the public and government to solve them via the legal system. . . .

While some members are indeed in the process of leaving because of the anti-Semitic environment, others are staying put, and a small number are even returning. The general consensus is that of a highly ambivalent community taking a wait-and-see approach to political developments.

Read more at Times of Israel

More about: Anti-Semitism, Jewish World, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey, Turkish Jewry

It’s Time for Haredi Jews to Become Part of Israel’s Story

Unless the Supreme Court grants an extension from a recent ruling, on Monday the Israeli government will be required to withhold state funds from all yeshivas whose students don’t enlist in the IDF. The issue of draft exemptions for Haredim was already becoming more contentious than ever last year; it grew even more urgent after the beginning of the war, as the army for the first time in decades found itself suffering from a manpower crunch. Yehoshua Pfeffer, a haredi rabbi and writer, argues that haredi opposition to army service has become entirely disconnected from its original rationale:

The old imperative of “those outside of full-time Torah study must go to the army” was all but forgotten. . . . The fact that we do not enlist, all of us, regardless of how deeply we might be immersed in the sea of Torah, brings the wrath of Israeli society upon us, gives a bad name to all of haredi society, and desecrates the Name of Heaven. It might still bring harsh decrees upon the yeshiva world. It is time for us to engage in damage limitation.

In Pfeffer’s analysis, today’s haredi leaders, by declaring that they will fight the draft tooth and nail, are violating the explicit teachings of the very rabbis who created and supported the exemptions. He finds the current attempts by haredi publications to justify the status quo not only unconvincing but insincere. At the heart of the matter, according to Pfeffer, is a lack of haredi identification with Israel as a whole, a lack of feeling that the Israeli story is also the haredi story:

Today, it is high time we changed our tune. The new response to the demand for enlistment needs to state, first and foremost to ourselves, that this is our story. On the one hand, it is crucial to maintain and even strengthen our isolation from secular values and culture. . . . On the other hand, this cultural isolationism must not create alienation from our shared story with our fellow brethren living in the Holy Land. Participation in the army is one crucial element of this belonging.

Read more at Tzarich Iyun

More about: Haredim, IDF, Israeli society