US travel show host praises Turkey’s effort to revitalize its Jewish culture

By Handan Kazanci

ISTANBUL (AA) – The host of a US travel show spotlighting Jewish history destinations worldwide praised Turkey’s efforts to revitalize its Jewish culture.

“Turkey is revitalizing the synagogues. The Turkish government is paying for the revitalization of synagogues and Jewish heritage sites,” Brad Pomerance, the producer and host of Air Land & Sea, a global travel series about Jewish communities, told Anadolu Agency.

“In Edirne, the Turkish government spent two and a half million dollars to revitalize and rehabilitate the synagogue there, and it is absolutely beautiful,” he added, referring to the Grant Synagogue of Edirne, northeastern Turkey, near Bulgaria and Greece, which was restored in 2015 and is the largest one in the Balkans and third-largest in Europe.

He also highlighted the importance of the Izmir Jewish Heritage project in Izmir province, where the EU and the Turkish government both work to revitalize synagogues.

Invited by the Turkish Culture and Tourism Ministry, Pomerance and his team of the Jewish Life Television (JLT) channel were in Turkey last month.

“Suffice it to say there are countries in continental Europe or, let's say Central and Eastern Europe, that have lots of Jewish heritage. They have synagogues, they have cemeteries, and many of those countries are letting the synagogues and cemeteries disintegrate,” Pomerance lamented.

-Turkey's Jews 'proud of their Turkish heritage'

Pomerance also mentioned Turkey’s Sephardic Jews. “I had known, kind of in the back of my mind, that the Ottoman Empire had welcomed Jews after the Spanish Inquisition, 1492,” he explained.

“But I didn't really comprehend the extent to which Sultan Bayezid II, I mean, not only did he welcome the Jews from Spain, but he sent an armada of ships to pick up, they believe 150,000 Jews,” he added, referring to the Ottoman Empire’s ruler from 1481 to 1512.

Turkey has had Jewish communities since ancient times, and many expelled Spanish and Portuguese Jews were welcomed into the Ottoman Empire in the 15th century.

The Istanbul metropolis in particular still retains a sizeable Jewish community.

Sephardic Jews were an incredibly vibrant part of the Ottoman culture for the next 500 years, said Pomerance.

“The Turkish Jewish community is not as large as it used to be. It's much smaller than it was,” he conceded, but added that the “Jews that remain, they’re mighty, they’re intelligent, they're proud of their Turkish heritage.”

He recalled an interview he did for his travel show with a Turkish Jew in the Aegean province of Izmir. He explained seeing a menorah, the Jewish candelabra, “where the center candle is supposed to be, there's Turkish the star and crescent.”

It demonstrates “Jewish pride for Turkey, the home country,” he added.

He also noted how an interviewee teared up when she visited Istanbul’s Dolmabahce Palace, where Turkey’s founding leader Mustafa Kemal Ataturk spent his final days before breathing his last in 1938.

“There's no question that the Jewish community contributed to Turkish life and culture,” he added, explaining how he stumbled on Sephardic pastries while strolling down the streets of Alacati, a small tourist-friendly town in Izmir.

“I see on the menu outside, it was a chalkboard. It was in Turkish, but I could see the words ‘Sephardic pastry’,” he added.

The team visited Istanbul, Izmir, and Edirne.

Apart from Jewish heritage, they also shot at the ancient city of Ephesus, as well as the famed Galata Tower in Istanbul and the historic Selimiye Mosque in Edirne.

When asked when the shows covering Turkey will air, Pomerance said “there will be several episodes because we felt so much” when visiting Turkey, adding that they are aiming for “some point in 2022.”