Marcy Brink-Danan

Jewish Life in Twenty-First-Century Turkey

Notify me when the book’s added
To read this book, upload an EPUB or FB2 file to Bookmate. How do I upload a book?
Turkey is famed for a history of tolerance toward minorities, and there is a growing nostalgia for the “Ottoman mosaic.” In this richly detailed study, Marcy Brink-Danan examines what it means for Jews to live as a tolerated minority in contemporary Istanbul. Often portrayed as the “good minority,” Jews in Turkey celebrate their long history in the region, yet they are subject to discrimination and their institutions are regularly threatened and periodically attacked. Brink-Danan explores the contradictions and gaps in the popular ideology of Turkey as a land of tolerance, describing how Turkish Jews manage the tensions between cosmopolitanism and patriotism, difference as Jews and sameness as Turkish citizens, tolerance and violence.
This book is currently unavailable
339 printed pages
Original publication
2011
Publication year
2011
Have you already read it? How did you like it?
👍👎

Quotes

  • Андрей Останинhas quoted5 years ago
    I have a secret, but don’t let it leave this room. When I started to sing these songs I assumed that they were part of the Sephardic tradition, carried on the lips of singers expelled from Spain 500 years ago. But then I noticed something strange: many of the songs had a musical structure that didn’t exist in Spain. So, I did some research and found that the songs aren’t that old. We found a copy of a Salonikan newspaper whose writers popularized these songs by writing Judeo-Spanish poems and instructing their readership to sing along to the tune of a Greek or Turkish song which was in fashion at the time. So, as you can imagine, the song isn’t really a traditional Jewish song, but it is beautiful nonetheless.
    By calling the song “non-traditional,” Shira professed an ideology of linguistic and musical purism. But why is syncretism a dirty little secret? If a Spanish song can be Jewish, why can’t a Turkish one?
  • Андрей Останинhas quoted5 years ago
    an interview, a community official once offered me a history of the community’s security apparatus. An engineer, he had developed the system of double doors, alarms, and wires himself, believing that the community shouldn’t entrust its security to non-Jews who ran the alarm companies in Turkey. The security system became so successful that it was eventually marketed for sale outside the community. Soon, the highest-level Turkish jail adopted it for an island prison holding political detainees such as (Kurdish leader) Abdullah Öcalan.
  • Андрей Останинhas quoted5 years ago
    The author of this piece, a non-Jewish human rights activist and writer for the news journal Turkish Daily News, refers to the anti-Israeli demonstrations that take place each week in Beyazit Square, home to one of the oldest mosques in Istanbul and named for Sultan Beyazit II, who is credited with welcoming the Jewish community into the Ottoman Empire after their expulsion from Spain (an irony likely lost on demonstrators). Turkish (and other) anti-Zionists often imagine that all Jews are Zionists (or vice versa).

On the bookshelves

fb2epub
Drag & drop your files (not more than 5 at once)