The Jews of Ottoman Izmir

"The Jews of Ottoman Izmir: A Modern History" was published in 2020 by Stanford University Press. The book was authored by Dina Danon, an esteemed researcher specializing in Sephardi Jewish history. With its publication, Danon offers a fresh and comprehensive exploration of the Sephardi Jewish community in Izmir during the late Ottoman period, drawing on previously untapped Ladino archival material. The book has received critical acclaim for its unique perspective and meticulous research, providing valuable insights into the experiences of the Jewish community in Izmir.

"The Jews of Ottoman Izmir" sheds light on the often-overlooked Sephardi Jewish community that thrived in Izmir, a prominent port city in the eastern Mediterranean, for over four centuries. Drawing from previously untapped Ladino archival material, Dina Danon delves into the unique dynamics of this community. Contrary to the prevailing European narrative, where Jewish distinctiveness was often viewed as incompatible with modernity, Ottoman Izmir presents a different perspective. Here, Jewish difference was unremarkable, allowing for a more nuanced exploration. Danon argues that while religious and cultural distinctiveness remained unquestioned, other facets of Jewish identity, such as poverty and social class, emerged as significant sources of tension.

Through the voices of diverse individuals spanning different socio-economic backgrounds, from beggars to mercantile elites, shoe-shiners to newspaper editors, rabbis to housewives, Danon demonstrates that it was the changing attitudes towards poverty and class, rather than Judaism itself, that shaped the Sephardi community's encounter with the modern era. “The Jews of Ottoman Izmir" offers a compelling narrative that challenges preconceived notions and presents a fresh perspective on the complexities of Jewish life in a multicultural context. By highlighting the intersections of identity and social dynamics, Danon illuminates the multi-layered experiences of the Sephardi Jewish community in Izmir during this transformative period.

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About the Author: Dina Danon is Associate Professor of Judaic Studies at Binghamton University. She holds a doctorate in History from Stanford University. She is the author of The Jews of Ottoman Izmir: A Modern History (Stanford University Press, 2020), a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award in Sephardic Culture. She was recently a fellow at the Katz Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, where she began work on a new project on the marketplace of matchmaking, marriage, and divorce in the eastern Sephardi diaspora. She is currently at work, with Nancy Berg, on a co-edited volume entitled Longing and Belonging: Jews and Muslims in the Modern Age.

Meet the Authors: Dina Danon (Dec 7, 2020) - 06:51

Book Talk: Dina Danon (March 19, 2022) - 78:23

Dina Danon with Devin E. Naar (May 6, 2021) - 80:14

Podcast: megaphone.link/NBN1146323363 - Interview with Dina Danon (Feb 18, 2021) - 48 min

Book Reviews

• Fishman on Danon, 'The Jews of Ottoman Izmir: A Modern History'

  Citation: Louis Fishman. Review of Danon, Dina, The Jews of Ottoman Izmir: A Modern History. H-Nationalism, H-Net Reviews. May, 2022.

  URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=57355
  
  In her book, The Jews of Ottoman Izmir: A Modern History, Dina Danon sets out to tell the story of how the Ottoman Jewish community of Izmir underwent a transitional period in the late nineteenth century, during which new understandings of community emerged. Unlike recent literature on Ottoman non-Muslims that focuses on the relationship between Istanbul’s Jewish community and the city’s Muslim political elites, Danon’s work looks inward to explore the dynamics within Izmir’s vibrant Jewish society. What emerges is a comprehensive social history of a community that to a great extent maintained a character unique from those of other Sephardic Ladino-speaking communities, such as in Istanbul and Salonica.

  Through her detailed descriptions of issues of poverty, class, and social mobility, Danon exposes a narrative that stands in stark contrast to those of Ashkenazi European Jews, whether in the Russian Empire, where Jews suffered persecution or, in western Europe, such as France and Germany, where they began to assimilate. In fact, Danon shows that, unlike these other Jewish communities, the Jews of Izmir did not face an overarching “Jewish question” during the nineteenth century. Rather, as Danon writes, for the Izmir Jews “there were no protracted struggles for tolerance or emancipation, no implicit or explicit demands on Jewish particularism, no calls to dismantle the semi-autonomous kehillah or even criticism of it as reflective of dual Jewish loyalty” (p. 25).

  So, with what changes were Izmir’s Jews so preoccupied during the final decades of the nineteenth century until the breakout of World War I? One of the main themes threaded throughout the book is concern about poverty, which Danon clearly states was a question not limited to the Jewish community: “Izmir’s Jews grappled with poverty not because it reflected something specific about Jewishness but because their socioeconomic position, which was shared by Ottomans of many faiths, was increasingly at odds with new attitudes towards social stratification. These attitudes were disseminated by both the kehillah and the Ottoman state and reinforced by the changing canvas of the eastern Mediterranean port city itself” (p. 26).

  As she brings to life the Jewish quarter of Izmir, the “Djuderia,” Danon eloquently shows that a new model of the community was taking shape. Leading us through the archives of multiple Ladino newspapers, Danon demonstrates that Izmir’s Jews were becoming increasingly aware of the community’s public image. For example, we see concern that the proliferation of Jewish beggars was tarnishing the community’s reputation as well as calls to curb Jewish begging on the neighborhood’s streets. The same worries were expressed about displays of rowdiness, such as the public drunkenness that occurred during the Jewish festival of Purim. These demonstrate how the community’s internal politics were shaped by the judgmental gaze of Izmir’s other non-Muslim populations—Greeks and Armenians—as well as of Muslims and government administrators.

  With so much value placed on the community’s public image, it is not surprising that its social transformation occurred via performative acts, like in the relatively new domains of charity and philanthropy. New philanthropic organizations raised money through balls and banquets, sponsored by the who’s who of Izmir’s Jewish community and attended by Ottoman administrators. Danon notes that these social events led to a greater mixing of communities: “against the backdrop of this changing environment, affluent Jews in Izmir experienced increased socialization with their non-Jewish neighbors, particularly within the realms of philanthropy” (p. 103). This entailed new interactions between groups strolling on Izmir’s prestigious Kordon, as well as involvement in new social clubs. Such performative acts extended to the performance stage itself, as in plays where Jews, still greatly immersed in Ladino offstage, sought to demonstrate their proficiency in Turkish to Ottoman Muslim audiences.

  On some levels, the Jews of Izmir did develop similarly to other Jewish communities in the empire, such as in the cities of Salonica and Istanbul. For example, all three communities were divided over internal taxing by the Jewish community, known as the gabela. These taxes, raised mostly from the sale of Kosher meat, hit poorer members particularly hard, and butchers, shohatim, had an increasing say in community matters, with so many dependent on them maintaining their much-needed service. According to Danon, “conflicts surrounding the meat gabela reflect the tensions embedded in the way in which an increasingly impoverished community allocated resources among its members” (p. 127). Debates over the tax played out in the growing number of Ladino newspapers. One satirical journal, El Soytari, situated the struggle over meat prices within the Jewish ceremonial Passover narrative (pp. 123, 148). The way these debates unfolded within a relatively new Jewish satirical press mirrored similar developments in the larger Ottoman society, wherein satire was becoming an important venue in which to discuss political and social issues.

  Danon’s findings are rich and she draws important conclusions from them, showing how despite communal struggles, the Jews of Izmir remained organized within a kehillah. In fact, the battle against widespread poverty brought the community together on some issues. For example, the chief rabbi of Izmir had given his support to the secular French Jewish Alliance Israélite Universelle (AIU) schools since the 1870s. This places the Izmir community in contrast to other Ottoman Jewish communities, where an antagonistic relationship would define attitudes toward the AIU school.

  There is no doubt that this impressive historical survey of Izmir is a treasure trove of information and moves the study of Ottoman Jews forward. As a scholar of the late Ottoman period, I would have hoped to see more on how Zionism was engaged with by Izmir’s Jews, as well as more on how debates surrounding the future of the Jewish community within the greater Ottoman context unfolded in the city’s Jewish press. However, I do not see these as shortcomings in the book, but as avenues for future inquiry to be followed in light of the author’s conclusions.

  Having read the book, I am left with a sense of loss for this community that would dwindle in the decades following World War I, with many of Izmir’s Jews making their way to Israel after 1948. Danon’s portrayal of the community as one that was looking greatly inward might hold the key to understanding their later migration once that insular world was shattered following World War I and the city’s turbulent and violent years leading up to the Turkish Republic. Certainly, this is a story yet to be told, and one can only hope that Dina Danon, or other scholars of Izmir, will take up this question in the future.

• Annie Greene reviews The Jews of Ottoman Izmir

  Dina Danon. The Jews of Ottoman Izmir: A Modern History. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2020. 241 pp.

  Review by Annie Greene
  criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/annie_greene_reviews_the_jews_of_ottoman_izmir

  In The Jews of Ottoman Izmir, Dina Danon explores the making of modernity through the quotidian class negotiations of Izmir’s Jewish community during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Danon’s access to the Ladino records––such as handwritten tax collections, censuses, and print newspapers, in addition to the better known Alliance Israélite Universelle archives and Ottoman archives––enables her to reflect on the polyphonic voices of this modern Ottoman community—its rich and its poor. These sources and her interpretation of them makes the monograph an important intervention, and it demonstrates how poverty awareness, embourgeoisement, and community restructuring were not only essential to making modernity but also essential to facilitating imperial citizenship.

  Danon’s book visits the making of modernity among Izmir’s Jews by focusing on their struggles and the production of discourse about their struggles. In chapter 1, Danon investigates the changing understanding of poverty and its relations to public space. In chapter 2, she continues this investigation through a taxonomy of the poor and by identifying the new charity associations as a form of embourgeoisement. Chapter 3 furthers the discussion of the bourgeoisie but with a focus on leisure, demonstrating that the seemingly Western activities of Izmir’s middle- and upper-class Jews were authentic in their expression. In chapter 4, Danon illustrates how the struggles over the gabela tax on kosher meat signify Izmir’s Jewish community’s development of its own public sphere, mirroring the larger Ottoman public sphere. This public sphere, sustained through the discourse in the Ladino press about the community’s internal organizational structure, leadership, and authority is analyzed in chapter 5.

  Sensory analysis runs throughout this monograph and highlights the applied class analysis and socioeconomic negotiations as sites of modernity. Making modernity in the everyday requires classifying new sights, sounds, smells, and encounters––such as, among other examples, the physical poverty of public begging, the noise from Purim holiday carnivals, and the importation of Western clothing. However, these encounters, negotiations, and discursive classifications were not unique to Jews. As Danon asserts, there was no “Jewish question” in Izmir (p. 6). Throughout her book she demonstrates that Jewish self-consciousness arose not from religious concerns but from class-based ones. Jewish poverty was incompatible with new and accepted Ottoman attitudes of progress, and therefore, Jews engaged in modern pursuits of charity and leisure too (see p. 26). One is left with the conclusion that Izmir’s Jews were diverse yet rather like their Ottoman Muslim and Christian neighbors. The Jews of Ottoman Izmir contributes to new perspectives on the class-based process of becoming modern in an empire and provides a model for writing modern imperial histories, ones that focus on voices from non-elites, from nondominant communities, from regions outside the center, and in materials composed in nonofficial state languages.