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Turkish Jews

Research · September 2017

DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.25252.78726

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 1   Are Turkish Jews Sephardim?
2   Comment on Behar et al. 2008. Counting the founders: the matrilineal genetic
3   ancestry of the Jewish Diaspora.
4   Posted by JvanStraten-887 on 19 Sep 2017 at 21:24 GMT
5  
6   Sephardim are Jews who lived in Iberia during the Middle Ages, and their
7   descendants. The latter went mainly to France, England, the Netherlands, Germany,
8   Italy, Anatolia (Turkey), North Africa, and the Americas. It is unknown how many
9   Jews went to each country.
10   The conclusion by Behar et al. (PloS One 3: e2062) that Turkish Jews are
11   representatives of Iberian Jewry is mainly based on three pieces of information:
12   statements by the interviewees, the Turkish Jews only settled in the country after the
13   expulsion from Iberia in 1492, and Turkish Jews had mtDNA subclade HV0 that was
14   also found among Portuguese Jews in Belmonte. I will take a closer look at these
15   three points. In addition, the following will be discussed: the rise of the domination of
16   Sephardic Jewry, and Judeo-Spanish and the number of Iberian surnames.
17  
18   Statements by the interviewees
19   The interviewees had declared that their ancestors had arrived from Spain. Genetic
20   research by Need et al. [1] pertaining to Ashkenazi Jews in the United States showed
21   that the origin of more than 45 per cent of the grandparents of the Jewish interviewees
22   was unknown: a place the grandparents left at the most hundred years earlier. Here we
23   are dealing with ancestors who supposedly left Iberia some 500 years ago. How
24   reliable is the information about Iberia, and how can it be verified? Moreover,
25   information about origin may be incorrect as will be explained under the heading
26   Judeo-Spanish.
27  
28   Turkish Jews only settled in the country after 1492
29   The presence of Jews in Turkey, and especially in Anatolia, is already mentioned in
30   the third century BCE [2]. In Miletus is an inscription in the theatre dating from the
31   first century BCE showing the places reserved for Judeans. Jews lived in Ephesus
32   from the early Hellenistic period, leading to an important Jewish community in the
33   first century CE, many of whom were Hellenized [3]. In the 6th century, relatively
34   well-to-do Jews lived in the town [ibid.]. There is a map with some 13 Jewish
35   settlements in Turkey during the 12th and 13th centuries, in addition to the one in
36   Constantinople [4]. There was a synagogue in Bursa in 1324, in 1365 there were Jews
37   in Edirne, which also had the first Ashkenazi community [2]. Already before the
38   conquest of Constantinople in 1453 the city had Romaniot, Ashkenazi, Italian, and
39   Karaites communities [5]. Romaniots (Ρωµανιώτες) are neither Sephardim nor
40   Ashkenazim. For the last 2,000 years they lived in Greece, in western Asia Minor, and
41   on the Balkans [6]. They spoke Greek. Karaites only recognize the laws of the Old
42   Testament, contrary to the mainstream of Jews who follow the Old Testament, the
43   Talmud, and other rabbinical laws.
44   Heyd [7] enumerates the different Jewish congregations in Istanbul in the 17th century.
45   They are divided into two groups, those whose ancestors were forced to move to
46   Istanbul by Mehmed II after he conquered Istanbul in 1453, and those who came of
47   their own accord. The former, 22 congregations (one consisting of Karaites from
48   Edirne), all came from within the Ottoman Empire. Ten came from Turkey itself, 8
49   from Greece, three from today’s Macedonia, and one from Bulgaria. They must have
1  
 
 1   been mainly Romaniots. The action by Mehmed II shows that Jewish communities
2   existed in Turkey in the 15th century well before 1453. In the second group we find
3   congregations like: Portugal, Catalonia, Hamon (Granada), Ashkenazim (Germany),
4   Gerush (Hebrew for expulsion, probably from Spain), Great Sicilian, Little Sicilian,
5   Shalom Aragon, Cordova, Calabria, Cana (Salonika?), and Messina. The Jewish
6   community of Constantinople consisted clearly of Jews from various regions within
7   Turkey, and from Europe including Iberia.
8  
9   Numerical information about the different Jewish groups.
10   When Behar et al. consider the entire Turkish-Jewish community as Sephardim, they
11   should first have investigated how many Jews arrived from Iberia in relation to the
12   Jews already present. They mention “the migration of a considerable fraction of
13   Iberian Jewish exiles to Anatolia”, which is neither based on numerical data, nor does
14   it provide a numerical clue. According to Inalcik [8], Mehmed II successfully tried to
15   settle European Jews in Constantinople. As a result, in 1477, there were 1,647
16   European Jewish families. In Istanbul alone, in 1478 there were more than 8,200
17   Romaniot and Karaite Jews [3].
18   Levy [9] provides a very good discussion about the problems related to the value of
19   numerical information about the period under discussion. In addition to the fact that
20   the Jews did not want to be counted because the data were used by the Turkish
21   authorities for tax purposes, there is a major problem with the interpretation of the
22   Turkish term for household used in the registers. The number of people in a household
23   may have varied from a husband and his family to several families. Levy continues:
24   “it is important to note that the information contained in the Ottoman registers has the
25   advantage of being grounded in reality. It is, therefore, superior by far to any other
26   sources, such as travellers' accounts, whose numbers are generally based on hearsay.
27   Although fragmentary and deficient, the Ottoman records allow us, nevertheless, to
28   form an approximate idea, within certain parameters, of the population size; they give
29   us a sense of the relative strength of each group in a given location and its relative
30   economic position; and they allow us to follow long-range demographic and
31   economic trends.” He provides the following information based on Heyd [7] and
32   Epstein [10]: “Around the turn of the seventeenth century, the total number of
33   recorded Jewish households in Istanbul, “old” and “new,” was 2,195. Of these,
34   Romaniot Jews still comprised more than half, whereas the immigrant congregations
35   amounted to only about 44 percent of the households. This suggests that Jewish
36   immigration to Istanbul, while considerable, was not on as large a scale as generally
37   believed […] Thus […] the Sephardic congregations accounted for less than 25
38   percent of all the recorded Jewish households in Istanbul; and even if we were to
39   include the two unidentified groups with the Sephardim, their combined numbers of
40   628 households would constitute less than 29 percent of the Jewish households.” The
41   old congregations consisted of Romaniots, Ashkenazim and, Karaites. The new ones
42   were Sephardim, Italians, Ashkenazim, Hungarians, and two unidentified. It should be
43   mentioned here that the Italian Jews did not consider themselves as Ashkenazim or
44   Sephardim.
45  
46   Subclade HV0
47   Subclade HV0 is mentioned by the authors as an indication of Iberian origin, because
48   Jews from Belmonte, Portugal had this haplotype. However, HV0 is one of the most
49   common subclades in Macedonia, which also belonged to the Turkish, Ottoman
50   Empire. Nogueiro et al. [11] found that the presence of HV0 is not a general feature of
2  
 
 1   the Sephardic Jews in Portugal. Thus, it is questionable if this subclade is evidence of
2   an Iberian Jewish origin. The data in the above section also cast a different light on
3   the conclusion by Behar et al. that the high variation they found, reflects high overall
4   mtDNA diversity among Jews of Spanish descent. A more plausible explanation is
5   that the diversity is due to the heterogeneity of the Turkish Jewish community.
6   Meanwhile, the idea that Turkish Jews are Sephardim was adopted by other
7   geneticists who investigated the genetics of Sephardic Jews [12, 13].
8  
9   Domination of Sephardic Jewry
10   During the period up to about 1600, the Romaniot were the dominant group in
11   Istanbul, and not the Sephardim [4]. From then on Sephardic influence increases, both
12   economically and religiously. Although the other Jewish congregations tried to
13   maintain their own identity, this was not possible in the end [9]. Some of the first to
14   adopt the Sephardic culture, including their language, were the Italian congregations
15   [7]. The Ashkenazi Jews followed suit. The two communities that were most resistant
16   to Sephardic influence were the Karaites and the Romaniots, the oldest Jewish
17   communities in the country [ibid.]. The Romaniots had been the largest Jewish
18   congregation until well into the 17th century [9]. Nevertheless, after 1600, the
19   Romaniot community began to mix with the Sephardic community, and eventually
20   became part of it leading up to the Sephardic Turkish community.
21  
22   Judea-Spanish and Iberian surnames
23   The fact that Turkish Jews speak Judeo-Spanish has been interpreted as evidence that
24   Turkish Jews originate from Iberia. However, as is the case with Yiddish [14], we are
25   dealing also here with linguistic replacement, according to Ehret’s
26   “ethnic-with-language shift” model [15]. This phenomenon occurs when a small
27   group of immigrants with higher cultural customs enters a large society that looks up
28   to these immigrants. Ehret: “the embedding of the admired features of culture in the
29   wider cultural matrix of the donor society could trigger off the adoption of additional
30   parts of that matrix, undermining the sense of ethnic distinctiveness among the
31   adopting community and leading over a period of several generations to their adoption
32   of the language and assumption of the self-identification of the donor community.” A
33   relative small foreign group of Jews, this time from Iberia, with a higher educational
34   level - at the most 29 percent of the Jewish population in Istanbul at the beginning of
35   1600 - entered an extensive region with Jews of lower religious knowledge. As
36   mentioned above, the local Jewish populations adopted the customs of the immigrants,
37   some rather fast, some, following a tough opposition to the Iberians, at a later stage. In
38   the end most Turkish Jews spoke Judeo-Spanish and had the idea – as is shown by the
39   interviewees – that they originated from Iberia as well, similar to the East European
40   Ashkenazim who think that they originate from Germany.
41   If the Turkish Jews would indeed be descendants of Iberian Jews, we should find that
42   most of the surnames of the Turkish Jews are Iberian the way we find Iberian
43   surnames in Amsterdam among the Portuguese/Spanish Jews. In a list with 99 Jewish
44   surnames of Turkey taken down by Daniel Kazez from Yusuf Betsalel’s book
45   Osmanli ve Turk Yahudileri, only 14 were Spanish [16].
46  
47   Conclusion
48   Historical, genetic, and demographic data show that Turkish Jews cannot genetically
49   be considered a continuation of Sephardic Jewry. Turkish Jews are a mixture of
50   Romaniots, Italian Jews, Ashkenazim, and Sephardim. At the beginning of the 17th
3  
 
 1   century, Sephardic Jews were still a minority among the Turkish Jews, and it is quite
2   feasible that they still are. This heterogeneity also explains the high overall mtDNA
3   diversity among the Turkish Jews, and the relatively small number of Iberian
4   surnames.
5  
6   References
7   1. Need AC, Kasperaviciute D, Cirulli ET, Goldstein DB: A genome-wide
8   genetic signature of Jewish ancestry perfectly separates individuals with and
9   without full Jewish ancestry in a large random sample of European Americans.
10   Genome Biol 2009 10:R7; doi: 10.1186/gb-2009-10-1-r7.
11   2. Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic world. Vol. 3, Ottoman Empire.
12   Leiden/Boston: Brill. 2010.
13   3. Encyclopaedia Judaica. Vol. 6, Ephesos. Berlin: Eschkol; 1930. p. 683.
14   4. Bowman SB. The Jews of Byzantium 1204-1453. University, AB: The
15   university of Alabama Press; 1985. p. 51.
16   5. Rozanes SA. Divre yeme Yisra’el be-togarmah: ‘al pi meqorim yesharim. Vol.
17   1. Husiyatin: F. qawaleq. p. 25.
18   6. Lewis B. The Jews of Islam. Princeton University Press. 1987.
19   7. Heyd U. The Jewish communities of Istanbul in the seventeenth century.
20   Oriens. 1953;299–314.
21   8. Inalcik H. The Ottoman Economic Mind and Aspects of the Ottoman
22   Economy. In M.A. Cook MA editor. Studies in the Economic History of the
23   Middle East. London: Oxford University Press; 1970.
24   9. Levy A. The Jews of the Ottoman Empire. Princeton, N.J.: The Darwin Press,
25   Inc. 1994.
26   10. Epstein MA. The Ottoman Jewish communities and their role in the fifteenth
27   and sixteenth centuries. Freiburg: Klaus Schwarz Verlag. 1980.
28   11. Nogueiro I, Teixeira J, Amorim A, Gusmao L, Alvarez L. Echoes from
29   Sepharad: signatures on the maternal gene pool of crypto-Jewish descendants,
30   European Journal of Human Genetics 2014: 1–7.
31   12. Atzmon G, Hao L, Pe’er I, Velez Chr, Pearlman A, Palamara PF, et al.
32   Abraham’s children in the genome era: major Jewish diaspora populations
33   comprise distinct genetic clusters with shared Middle Eastern ancestry.
34   American Journal of Human Genetics. 2010; 86:850–859.
35   13. Adams SM, Bosch E, Balaresque PL, Ballereau SJ, Lee AC, Arroyo E, et al.
36   The genetic legacy of religious diversity and intolerance: paternal lineages of
37   Christians, Jews, and Muslims in the Iberian peninsula. American Journal of
38   Human Genetics. 2008; 83:725-736.
39   14. Van Straten J. The origin of East European Ashkenazim via a southern route.
40   Ashkenas. 2017; 27(1): 239–270.
41   15. Ehret Chr. Language change and the material correlates of language and ethnic
42   shift. Antiquity. 1988; 62:564–573.
43   16. Kazez D. http://www.angelfire.com/wy/yaw/jewish.htm.
44  
45  

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