Becoming Ottomans: Sephardi Jews and Imperial Citizenship in the Modern Era

Abstract

JULIA PHILIPS COHEN, Becoming Ottomans: Sephardi Jews and Imperial Citizenship in the Modern Era (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). Pp. 256. $ 35.00 cloth.On 31 March 1492, The Catholic monarchs Isabel of Castile and Fernando of Aragon signed the Edicts of Expulsion applying to all the Jews in their realms, and by 31 of July of the same year, no Jew was allowed to stay on their respective lands. Ottoman Sultan Bayezid-i-Veli (Bayazit II, 1447-1512, r. 1481-1512) allowed the exiled Jews-hence to be known as Sephardim (people of Sepharad, following Obadiah 1:21)-to settle down on his lands, because he was interested in their skills, capabilities and knowledge in the fields of weapon manufacture, textiles, printing, glassmaking and medical practice. The Sephardim never forgot the shelter offered them by the Ottoman sultan and were grateful and faithful subjects who took great care to regularly pay their taxes to the Ottoman authorities. In return, they were allowed to lead their community life according to the rulings of their religious leaders and soon gained the upper hand and leadership over many of the already-existing Jewish communities in the Ottoman Empire: the Romaniotes-speakers of Jewish-Greek-and the Musta'aribun-speakers of Jewish-Arabic.For the next three centuries, the Sephardim in the Ottoman Empire lived in a sort of cultural bubble. Most of them could not speak the Turkish language, let alone read it, but went on speaking the Judeo-Espanyol they had brought with them from Spain and wrote Ladino or Hebrew. Not proficient in the official language of the court and officialdom, they were not to be admitted into those ranks. Like other non-Muslims, all the Jews in the Ottoman lands were considered dhimmi-zimmi who paid the poll tax (cizye). As the Jewish population of the Ottoman Empire was a predominantly urban one, its centers were Salonica, istanbul and since the seventeenth century, izmir.The nineteenth century brought a great change to the life of the Ottoman Empire and its inhabitants, Jews included, as a modernization process gradually followed the Napoleonic wars in the Balkans. Under Abdulmecid's second Reform Decree, Hat-i-Humayun, the restrictions on non-Muslims were gradually ruled off, and the Ottoman Constitution of 1876 urged all inhabitants of the Empire to consider themselves Ottomans. Jewish leaders, such as Rabbi Yehudah Hay Alkalay of Sarajevo and Silistra, responded enthusiastically to the changes, encouraging their fellow Jews to be faithful subjects, to publically demonstrate their loyalty and to profit from the benevolent reforms. Author Julia Phillips Cohen analyzes the process and means undertaken by the Ottoman Jews to become a loyal model community, millet-i sadika, in the multi-lingual, multi-religious Ottoman Empire. At no point in time were the Ottoman Jews-unlike Ottoman Armenians and Ottoman Greek Orthodox-suspect of kindling ideas of irredentism. …