Daily Sabah (Turkey)

WRITING EAST: OTTOMAN-LEVANTINE POSTCARDS AT TAILOR’S SYNAGOGUE

The early medieval Genoese neighborho­od around Galata Tower descends to the Karaköy ports over the spiral-woven Kamondo Stairs sculpted in the elaborate stone of the pre-modern infrastruc­ture. Narrow, cobbleston­e streets beg a passing glimpse, and for the

-

WHILE the Jewish heritage of Istanbul is widely celebrated for its Sephardic culture and the Greek-speaking Romaniotes who came before, the Eastern European Ashkenazi Jews who lived in the eye of the Sublime Porte were a special minority within many minorities. By 1894, the Union of Ashkenazi Tailors finished building Beth ha Kenesseth Tofre Begadim, which, from the Hebrew, essentiall­y means the Tailor’s Synagogue. It was a house of worship for generation­s of clothiers who had settled on the northern shores of the Golden Horn not far from Karaköy port. Historical­ly, the Bosporus had been a pilgrimage link to Jerusalem for cities on the Black Sea coast like Odessa, where the Jewish community made up over a third of the population by the turn of the century.

By the late 19th century, the Ashkenazi community needed a Chief Rabbi. They read the internatio­nal Jewish press for candidates. German papers mentioned a distinguis­hed rabbi named Dr. David Markus originally from the Poland-Prussian border, though educated in the Netherland­s and Germany, where he taught classical languages and mathematic­s. As an Enlightene­d Jew, he had received a secular education in psychology and philosophy and worked diligently to modernize Jewish life. He pursued his work in Istanbul after arriving in the year 1900, eventually transformi­ng community developmen­t in the oldest Jewish neighborho­ods of Hasköy and Balat with German aid. His efforts revitalize­d an unused synagogue, and after gaining Turkish nationalit­y following the Constituti­onal Monarchy of 1908 he encouraged Turkish language learning among Jews. Finally, he bridged the enmity between Ashkenazi and Sephardic communitie­s, who had ceased intermarry­ing over disputes, and establishe­d a modern education system for Jews in Istanbul.

The Tailor’s Synagogue became the Schenidert­empel Art Center in 1996 under the auspices of the Dr. Markus Cultural Associatio­n 50 years after congregant­s moved religious ceremonies a short walk away to Yüksekkald­ırım, the second of three Ash- kenazi synagogues in Istanbul, and the only one still holding active services. Since the inaugural art exhibition at Schneidert­empel in 1999, the center has held numerous shows celebratin­g everything from photograph­y to caricature, music, literature, tango, painting, and currently historical postcards. In the winter of 2008, cartoonist Izel Rosental launched his book, “Aquarium” at Schneidert­empel, where he has become a public figure and multigener­ational community member, as his grandparen­ts were married at the Tailor’s Synagogue.

Rosental recounted the facts of his illustriou­s local heritage at Schneidert­empel with a bright smile on the evening of Nov. 1 to mediate a panel of fellow high school students from Lycee Saint Joseph. They could hardly contain themselves as they beamed with friendship and laughter throughout the course of the event held to discuss the current exhibit, “The Eyes of the Levant,” which will be on display until Dec. 3. Seyhun Binzet spoke first as the postcard collector. He owns more than 15,000 and has given exhibition­s to highlight various aspects of them in Bursa, Çanakkale, and London.

In the 13th century, seafaring Italian merchants coined the place name “Levant” to mean the Eastern Mediterran­ean. It is a term from another era, before boundaries carved the land into the American and British colonial concept of the Middle East and its surroundin­g postcoloni­al nationalit­ies. It refers to a geography without modern definition­s. “The Eyes of the Levant”is an exploratio­n of a historical theme, and offers a special perspectiv­e on the present as curated within Schneidert­empel. The transforma­tion of synagogues around the world into museums and cultural centers is part of a general paradigmat­ic shift likened to revisiting antique and vintage postcards. It is well-expressed in a Sephardic proverb: “Two Jews, four synagogues.” At a point in time, practical use becomes secondary to cherishing the preservati­on of memories.

Schneidert­empel doubles as publisher and bookseller, purveying rare gems such as “Anyos Munchos i Buenos,” a wonderfull­y comprehens­ive photograph­ic and textual work on the Sephardic Jews of Turkey by Ayşe Gürsan-Salzman and Laurence Salzman. In the Schneidert­empel exhibition cat- alogue to “The Eyes of the Levant,” there is a short historical treatise on the region, richly explained from the earliest era through the defining Arab conquest of the eighth century which remains the dominant social milieu. Binzet chose 270 postcards for the current exhibition dated between 1890 and 1920. They are rife with daily observatio­ns and emotional confession­s in the languages of Ottoman Turkish and French, the global language at the time. Film producer Engin Özden designed the exhibit with Binzet in minute geographic­al detail to expand on the colorful primary source material of the postcards, as they were sent from over 30 cities from the modern-day countries of Syria, Lebanon and Israel.

When he spoke with the panel, Binzet compared the postcards to pre-modern social media, describing them as similar to popular social media sites like Facebook. A younger audience member raised the point that the postcards are most like Instagram, as they were intended to be snapshots of moments that pinpointed a sender’s location with relative ease and speed through the post. They also conveyed the visual and linguistic trends of the day. And beyond popular culture, they document highly personal excavation­s from the immediate experience­s of private lives while forwarding visuals from broadly diverse local societies. Binzet remembered two postcards from the same battle against a Turkish army. In one, the soldier proudly described the battle as a success, while the other maintained that it was awful enough to attempt a medical discharge ruse.

While many mosques and churches are depicted in the postcards, along with fundamenta­lly sacred places like the interiors of the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, synagogues are extremely rare. He only mentioned one in his collection, from Edirne. The religious proscripti­on that forbids visualizin­g the sacred in Judaism includes picturing synagogues. And to write on such an image is all the more sinful to orthodox tradition. That said, there are many postcards on Jewish life, and almost all of them offer special contributi­ons to the historical record. As a land whose people have endured misappropr­iation among colonialis­ts and invaders lost in multiple translatio­ns, primary source material is perpetuall­y revealing, and all the more so when placed in a new light such as at “The Eyes of the Levant.”One such postcard is inscribed in French under a meticulous graphic of the Tabernacle, the portable temple of the exiled Israelites.

When he first gathered his collection for the current exhibit, Binzet excitedly called his old high school friend, the retired Galatasara­y University professor of French philology, Osman Senemoğlu, who initially thought he was being asked to speak about the “Levantens,” what Turkish historians call non-Muslim Europeans living as traders in Ottoman territorie­s. He soon clarified the hurried speech of Binzet and prepared a lecture on the linguistic origins of the Levant. That most of the postcards are written in French summons the expansioni­st notion of “La France du Levant,” as led by the descendant­s of French Protestant­s exiled after the French Revolution. Engin Özden followed his discussion to conclude by emphasizin­g that “The Eyes of the Levant”is a geographic­al exposition, and that there are manifold layers to the postcards, from its storytelli­ng to its sociology and well beyond to historic truths that are often much stranger than fiction.

 ??  ?? The postcards at the exhibition tell much about worlds lost to history yet restored with insightful detail.
The postcards at the exhibition tell much about worlds lost to history yet restored with insightful detail.
 ??  ?? “The Eyes of the Levant” is a unique curation of antique postcards from 1890 to 1920 from Ottoman-era Levant at Schneidert­empel Arts Gallery in Galata, open until December.
“The Eyes of the Levant” is a unique curation of antique postcards from 1890 to 1920 from Ottoman-era Levant at Schneidert­empel Arts Gallery in Galata, open until December.

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from Türkiye