Mark Levene
The Donme, the Followers of Shabtai Tzvi: The ‘Other’ Jews of Salonika
Mark Levene - The Donme, the Followers of Shabtai Tzvi: The ‘Other’ Jews of Salonika
- Hello and welcome to what is the second talk I’m giving on the Jews of Salonica. Now as you’ll see from the title, this is slightly at variance because I’m talking about a group who, one might say are not Jews at all. So I’ve called this “The Donmeh”. The followers of Shabtai Tzvi. The other Jews of Salonica. Now just to make the sort of connection between the last lecture and as a reminder of what this is about, I am talking about Jewish Salonica at a very particular moment of time. The period around the turn of the 20th Century. From around 1900, through till around 1917. But with a critical inflexion point, a moment in time where things go from being very good to being very disrupted. And that is the period around 1912. When Jewish Salonica, which had been at its height through the previous 20, 30 years. 40 years, is actually very disrupted. It’s a moment of rupture, of shattering of what had come before. And the reason for that is that the city turns from being Ottoman to Greek. It’s provisional to begin with but then it becomes more permanent. And part of the argument here is that the, the wellbeing of Salonika Jewry was very much linked in to its relationship to the Ottoman Empire. Just as a reminder for you of what we’re talking about in terms of the city, Lauren let’s have the next slide. Right, you can’t really see this terribly well but it gives a sort of sense of compactness. This is Salonika in 1916 and it’s through, you’re looking from the sea to the land and a very compact city. I can’t, I don’t know if you can see but there are lots of minarets which dot the city landscape and this is being viewed through the barrel of a British naval gun and in 1916, Salonika is a quasi-occupied city by a, a multinational Allied army of which the British are part and I was talking about this just earlier today with somebody who was telling me that her uncle was part of this.
This is a famous campaign called the Gardeners of Salonika which I’m not going to particularly talk about now though it is tangential to our discussion. So the theme is the, this theme of today is to look at the rupturing of traditional, Jewish Salonika through the prism of a community which could be called Jewish, yet which was not. Which may be trying to confuse you a bit. So what we’re going to do to look at this period is we’re going to go back a bit and we’re going to look at the origins of the Donmeh, through the perspective of what had happened to the Jewish population which becomes the dominant population of Salonika. So let’s have another picture Lauren. Right, so as we discussed last time, the Jews of Salonika are by this time, entirely as their lingua franca, they are speakers of Judesmo, sometimes called Ladino which is a classical form of Spanish. And the majority of the people of Jewish population of Salonika which as a reminder is the majority population of the city. Of a multinational city, multiethnic city, very plural city. The majority of them have hived originally from Spain in the, at the end of the 15th Century. When Spain goes through its own tumultuous period and decides to vomit out those Jews who are not prepared to become Christian. This is an interesting thing in itself and it’s rather relevant to this whole subject of the Donmeh. It’s interesting isn’t it how we normalise events in history to become what we know and what we know more recently, we recognise in terms of its displacements. Its physical but also its psychic displacements.
So when we talk about the Holocaust for instance, we know that this carried with it not just physical suffering and mass death, it also came with it, feelings of survivor syndrome which actually go through generations. Second, third, fourth generation families of Holocaust survivors who have this experience of something totally traumatic and displacing which affects them. Now I think you can make some parallels, even though this is a much earlier time with what happened to the Spanish and Portuguese Jewish communities of the 15th Century. Because these are communities which are very stable, traditionally. They have been there for hundreds of years in Spain. They live in what is sometimes, by historians now referred to as a Condiventia. A relationship with Christians and Muslims within the Spanish world where communities live alongside each other and where the Jewish presence is very embedded and very strong. When the displacement happens, it has this, it has physical consequences and you can just see from this map the physical consequences include mass exile, mass movement of Jews to many parts of Europe and also of course, the New World. I remember just incidentally, reading something not so long ago about the populations of Spanish America, of Latin America today that maybe something like 2% of the DNA of these populations is actually Sephardic. And that’s something else we won’t talk about here. Of course significantly, that’s carried by Jews who have been Jews, who convert to being Christian. They become conversos, new Christians, Anusim.
Or more pejoratively, marranos, pigs. But they, so in some instances they maintain their Jewish traditions. In some instances they don’t. But they are treated by the ones who stay in Spain or who live in Spanish America are very often looked upon as dodgy. Very seriously dodgy. And the origins of the Inquisition are in parallel with this element of the population which is considered to be not quite right. Anyway, for those who remain Jewish, one of the most obvious directions of travel is eastward. It doesn’t happen all necessarily at once but you get a major movement of Jews to the Ottoman Empire which of course is antagonistic to Spain and in particular, Jews settle, in large numbers, at the encouragement of the Ottomans. After the sack of Salonika in 1431. This city is largely repopulated by, by Sephardi, Spanish-speaking Jews. But the psychic displacement doesn’t necessarily go away. This sense of having been removed, dislocated from, from what one understood, it’s a sort of cognitive dissonance if one wants to be psychological about it. As to what has happened to this population. And I think there are some very interesting spillovers from this, this sense of unease. This sense that the world has been ruptured. One is a acute Messianic tendency and in particular in the 1520s, there is, somebody shows up at the papal court in Rome. A man called David de Riveni and he claims to be the forerunner of a Messianic figure. A man whose real name is Giorgo Pires but takes on the name of Solomon Mojo who incidentally doesn’t claim Messianic origins, Messianic credentials but nevertheless, the fact that he is on the scene in the wrong place, at the wrong time. He is brought before the Inquisition and he is auto-da-fe’d, he’s burnt at the stake.
So there’s a bit of this Messianic fervour going on. The second big tendency which is, I think, equally if not more interesting and relevant to the origins of the Donmeh comes through this. Next picture Lauren. Hello, Lauren? Yep, lovely, thank you. Right. Kabbalah of course is, is a sort of esoteric mystical end of Judaism. Not meant to be taught to all and sundry but it’s interesting that something which had been on the go since 11th or 12th century Spain takes on a new movement, a new tendency in the 16th century. This is what’s sometimes called Lurianic Kabbalah. It’s associated with a man called Isaac Luria who you may know ends up his days in a sort of, ooh a sort of university of his own in Safed in Palestine. In what is then Palestine and Luria almost seems to be working on the dislocated zeitgeist of the sort of Sephardic world of the time. He’s trying to understand what has gone wrong and his new stage kabbalah is trying to interpret this in really quite cosmic terms which I’m not even going to attempt. Or except very superficially to describe. But one of the things which I think is relevant and again, explanation for Donmeh is there is a particular concept which comes out of this notion of cosmic dislocation. And that is the concept of tzimtzum. Tzimtzum might be associated with a sort of kabbalistic idea of what we would call the Big Bang. And in this idea, Luria attempts to understand how the earth came into, sorry how the cosmos came into creation and his idea is that God has to withdraw Himself in order to create materiality. The materiality which includes the materiality of our world. And this is such an intense process, the emanation of light which comes from, what are called the sefirot, the emanations of the Godhead. Is so intense that some of the sefirot, the vessels which contain the Godhead are shattered. And they are shattered into shards and in the shards are the origins of evil in the world. And so you will know that in all likelihood, the notion of tikkun, tikkun olam. Tikkun olam, the notion of healing and restoration from this Lurianic Kabbalistic perspective is something which requires the shards to be mended together again and the evil to be removed from this.
So there is a process and the question becomes, “How is this process to happen?” And is it associated with somehow, some Messianic redemption? Now it’s interesting that you know, we’re talking, the moment of, the moment of rupture, of total rupture in the Spanish Jewish world. The Sephardi Jewish world would take us back to 1492. Same year of course that Columbus sailed the blue. These two things are not necessarily unconnected. They are very closely connected but the individual we associate with the picking up of kabbalah in a much more corporeal sense isn’t around til 1648, in terms of his coming out as a Messianic figure. But yet, there seems to be a connectedness through Lurianic Kabbalah and this individual who was a protagonist, a proponent of this. But in his own person and that is the figure of Shabtai Tzvi. Somebody who has been described as the sort of, the earthquake moment in the Jewish history of the 17th century. He is very much within a Messianic Millenarian tradition which we can see, not just in Judaism but beyond that. He’s prepared to utter the name of God. He imagines that the new imminent world of redemption is before us and therefore a new calendar is necessary. He’s prepared to transcend Talmudic law. Halakha is no longer relevant to the needs of the new community. People need to prepare themselves in readiness for the new Messianic age which includes returning to Eretz Israel, to the Palestine of the period, to Ottoman Palestine, but nevertheless, to Eretz Israel. Something else I think I need to throw in here, to give it sort of some context. This is a extraordinarily tumultuous period. Not just in the Jewish world. It’s a world where we think about it, the 17th century, it’s the world of the 30 years war.
It’s the world of the English Civil War where all sorts of Messianic ideas are themselves very much to the fore. It’s the world of, in the Ashkenazi Jewish world, to the north of the Khmelnytsky Uprising and all the massacres of Jews and Poles which emerged from that. From 1648, the same year that Shabtai Tzvi comes out as a Messianic figure. It’s also the era to be equally topical which has been identified as the height of the little Ice Age where the Thames is icing over on a regular basis. People are dying of extreme cold in a country like England. Where there is plague of course in 1665, in 1666 of course there is the Great Fire of London. It’s also the age where in England, Jews are returned. Are allowed to return, very much on the back of a Messianic aspiration. The hope of Israel which we associate with another Sephardi Jew, Menasseh Ben Israel. So it’s not as if Shabtai Tzvi is actually in a complete vacuum. It’s as if the world he is part of is receptive, sensitive and possibly susceptible to a sort of Messianic fervour. Only one problem, when it comes to the crunch, and Shabtai Tzvi who is from, he is not actually Sephardi, interestingly. He is from a Romaniote, a Greek-speaking community in what is today the city of Izmir, what was then Smyrna. When he proclaims himself and this becomes this movement which he creates around him and all the evidence is, but he really does create a great Talmud in the Jewish communities. Particularly the Sephardi communities. When he is brought before the Sultan and asked to explain himself and told, “All right, perform a miracle or have your head cut off.” Or alternatively, you know, if you’re capable of neither of those things then you become a Muslim and survive. What does he do? He becomes an apostate. He becomes a Muslim and is actually exiled into the depths of Albania. Part of the Ottoman Empire of course. Now if you think about it, I’ve described what happens to the Sephardi community. The Spanish-speaking Jews in 1492. The dislocation which, the psychic dislocation of those who have survived. If you can imagine it in 1666, the year where all this comes to a head and that 1666 is also a year which is identified in, in Lurianic terms through Gematria.
Through the reading of the signs in the letters of Talmudic text as a year where things are going to happen. If you think about it, this is 1492 all over again. And where does that leave those who have been fervently following Shabtai Tzvi? Well of course, for most Jews, it is you know, it is a world gone flat. A world broken yet again and Shabtai Tzvi becomes a false Messiah. He’s no longer anything to do with the Jewish community and he is an apostate and nothing to do with them. Yet, a significant, if minority proportion of the Jews who had followed him. Primarily Sephardi Jews decide to go into apostasy with him and there’s a sort of Lurianic, kabbalistic explanation as given by Tzvi for why this is acceptable and necessary. And that is, if you really want to deal with the shards of evil, which are broken in the cosmos, then you have to descend to the lower depths in order to put them together again and heal them. So internally, within the community which stays with Shabtai Tzvi, there is a, not simply an apologia, but an explanation. A way out from catastrophe to eventual redemption but it is within the community that this is being played out. So we have something here, something really quite interesting about these particular Jews. By the way, they are dotted over the major Jewish communities. Particularly of Ottoman, of the Ottoman world. We know that there were followers of Shabtai Tzvi, Sabbateans as they are sometimes called in towns like Izmir, in Bulsa, in Edirne, Adrianople as it’s sometimes called in this period. But they tend to congregate in Salonika which is the major Jewish community and indeed, there seem to have been some significant conversions to the Donmeh grouping in this particular period. But they’re in a really, when one thinks about it, this is a very, a very interesting position to be in because this is an endogamous community.
In other words, they don’t marry outside of themselves. So their names are the same names as would’ve been in the Jewish community. Spanish Jewish names. Their DNA is the same as Jews who had come from the Spanish-speaking world. To begin with at least, they are speaking Ladino. Their culinary practises tend to be pretty much the same as Sephardi Jewish culinary practises. But unlike Sephardi Jews who had been able, once they left the clutches of the Spanish or Portuguese worlds, to return where they had been conversos, where they are able to return to being Jewish and this happened in all sorts of places like Bordeaux and Amsterdam. And in what became, from being the Portuguese to Dutch East Indies, here there is no option for the Jews who have converted to Islam to go back to being Jewish. Because they would get their heads chopped off. This is one thing that Islam does not allow for. If you are Muslim, you are a Muslim. You can’t be something else. So it puts these people in a, in a really remarkable situation. Actually let’s just, let’s go on a picture actually Lauren. Oh yes, here we’ve got Shabtai Tzvi and in a later, a later engraving of him. Just to show what an important figure he is. Let’s go on again Lauren. Salonika being at the, I don’t know I I can do this. At the centre of this Ottoman world, it’s almost an obvious place really for Donmeh to congregate. Keep going Lauren. Right, just you know, an early 20th century picture of a Donmeh father and daughter. I don’t know what one makes of this. Clearly this is a rather bourgeois couple, father and daughter. The man is wearing a fez but then, it was perfectly normal for anybody who wanted to be looked up to in the Ottoman world. Whether they were Jewish or Christian or Muslim to wear a fez.
So this is somebody whose DNA, their DNA is authentically Jewish. But actually, in terms of their public life, they are Muslim. So how should we understand them? What do we know about their inner life and the answer of course is we don’t know so much because it was secretive. And this group is what one might call liminal. It’s neither, it’s certainly not Jewish. Despite the fact that the DNA is. If it is Muslim, it is Muslim in a way that ect Muslims, other Muslims look upon these people in a similar way to how ect Christians in the Spanish world looked upon conversos. As being somewhat dodgy and this very name, Donmeh, it means betrayer. The Donmeh themselves would’ve referred to themselves as ha-Ma'aminim. Believers, in other words, the followers of the true faith. But any other term you apply, Donmeh, Sabbateans, or more recently, Salonikla if you are working within a Turkish frame of reference. Implies something which has, is undercover, involves betrayal, involves a sort of dubious quality to it. So we might say here’s a community which is not in a very good position. By the way it’s riven very quickly three ways. There turn out to be three groupings who tend to be endogamous within their own grouping because there is a sort of dispute over what is the legacy of Shabtai Tzvi after his death in 1676. Who is the rightful heir of Shabtai Tzvi. So there’s already a three-way split and you might say this isn’t a great basis for the continuity of this group of people. But not so, and in a sense we have to explain why is it that actually this grouping, within the context of Salonika society, particularly by the period I’m talking about, 1900 is actually very, very well off and successful. Let’s have another picture Lauren. So, and you can see, here is very much like some of the buildings built for the famous Jewish families like the Allatinis and the Modianos from this period, this is something interesting. This is the Donmeh Yeni Tjami.
In other words, new mosque. But it’s a mosque which is not really, for all Muslims. It’s a mosque for the Donmeh. It’s built by an Italian architect. You can see it’s extremely beautiful and it’s a mix of designs which you know, fuses East and West. It’s very interesting to go into. It’s actually an archaeological museum of sorts these days. It’s not used anymore for reasons I’ll explain and it has as I say, an Italian architect, Vitaliano Poselli and Poselli is also the architect for many of the wealthy buildings. The wealthy bourgeois of Jewish Salonika from this period. Let’s look first at why maybe it’s not so odd being Donmeh. Let’s have another picture Lauren. Right, now. Right at the beginning of what I was saying here, you may remember I said that Salonika is a very plural community. It’s a multicultural community and a multicultural community which goes way beyond explaining this society simply in terms of Christians, Muslims and Jews. Because one of the things which is very notable about Salonika, in its Balkan and wider Anatolian context, is that this is a society in which heterodoxy, in opposition to Orthodoxy is really quite normal and it’s quite okay. Here’s a wonderful picture actually from the Albert Kahn collection which I talked about last time. This is a group called Mevlevi. No go back for a minute, that’s fine Lauren. Thank you, we’ll come on to the Bektashi in a minute. The Mevlevi, you may know by a different name, whirling dervishes. And of course, the Mevlevi are famous for getting themselves into a trance-like state through whirling round amongst other things.
And they are, of course, like many groups who inhabit this city and area, they are Sufi. So they have a mystical tradition about one’s relationship with God and the Godhead. And they tend to be syncretic. They take from other religious traditions and it’s okay. So you can already see a sort of, a cross-reference with the Donmeh here. Let’s go on to the other one which is even more significant I think. This is again a grouping you probably haven’t heard of. Some of you may have done which is very, very widespread across the Balkan and Anatolian world. Again, a Sufi grouping which is very syncretic. In other words, it takes from other traditions and can be made comparison with other traditions. So for instance, for many Christians, the fact that the Bektashi have 12 Imams in their tradition is a bit like the 12 disciples. But they’re also something else in this. They’re very pantheistic or even panentheistic. They believe in the interpenetration of the divine in all things on heaven and earth and indeed, that divinity goes beyond time and space. So if you can get that, what I’ve just said, it sounds a bit like something to do with the Donmeh and the sort of kabbalistic reading of the cosmos and how one gets into it and how one relates to it individually. Grew the group through what are called, in the Sufi world teches, lodges. But in other words, the point I’m trying to make is that the Bektashi and Mevlevi are not marginal to the Salonika world. They’re actually very central to it and so it’s not so odd for groupings to have these crossovers or for the Donmeh not to be part of Salonika society. It is true that there is a sort of, there is a question about, well where exactly do they fit? And I suppose one can take this, you know an example of this. Donmeh are not buried in the Muslim cemetery, the main Muslim cemetery.
They’re actually buried in a cemetery, contiguous with the huge Jewish cemetery outside of the walls of Salonika but it’s a separate Donmeh cemetery adjacent to the Jewish cemetery. Now a bit like some of these other groupings, as they move into modernity with their sort of heterodox, if you like, rather elastic ideas about the relationship between oneself and the universe, they tend to be like Jews perhaps. Forerunners in the mode of and okay with the processes of modernity. So this is a grouping which produces, which, there’s one other thing I need to say here of course. Because the Donmeh are Muslims, it enables them to become part of official public Muslim society in a way which it’s more difficult for Jews. So for instance, in addition to, like the Jews, becoming newspaper editors, doctors, commercial people, at a very successful level. Involved in tobacco and banking as well. There are Donmeh who enter into the Army service which is certainly not true of Jews. They become particularly medical doctors within the context of the army and they also became major educationalists. Schools are set up by the Donmeh for the communities, the Muslim communities of Salonika. In a way which is sort of not quite true of the modernization of Jewish education which tends to come through organisations like which is educating poor Jewish children in French. There’s also Italian schools like this but in this case, this thing about education is really quite significant.
And so these are harbingers of the shifting world towards a new, a recalibration of a potential Ottoman world as much more like a European world. I’m not saying that’s a good or a bad thing but it is what is going on in this period around 1900. So when we get to the first breakpoint, in Salonika’s political history of real significance, that breakpoint is 1908. It is the year of the, what’s called generically, the Young Turk Revolution and where does the Young Turk Revolution begin? With its demands for the overthrow of the old regime, for a new constitutionalism. For the end of the sultan’s autocracy. For the brotherhood of man between all the different peoples who live in the Ottoman Empire, where does it happen? The revolution, where is the incipient revolution take place? It happens in Salonika and hey presto, there are many Donmeh who are involved. Now, one can make an interesting parallel here. One could say this is a little bit like what happens in Russia around this time and through to the, to the revolution of 1917. Just as there are a significant number of Jewish revolutionaries who are involved in the Russian Revolution, there are a significant number of Jewish but more particularly, Donmeh, who are involved in the Turk Revolution of 1908. And this includes Donmeh who are involved in a radical grouping which comes to prominence in the following in subsequent years who become the, just as the Bolsheviks who do not start out as the obvious candidates for control of Russia in 1917, just so, just as there, here in the Ottoman Empire in 1908, a grouping materialises which eventually does take control and this is a group which is a hardline group called Etihad or the Committee. Let’s call it the Committee of Union and Progress. So for instance, let’s have another picture. Right, here we have a real, somebody unlike myself. A really fine dresser.
A man called Djavid Bey who is a critical figure in the, in the notion of the, the economic development of an autonomous Ottoman Empire. Apart from Western control, because Western control of the finances of the Ottoman Empire had been a stranglehold in this period from the 1880s onwards. And he is moving, he is a significant figure in the CUP. In the Committee of Union and Progress. Let’s take a contrast figure, another member of the Donmeh. Let’s have the next one Lauren. Right, here’s another man. We can see it from his name, Mehmed. Dr Mehmed Nazim is also a member of the Donmeh. These are really two contrasting figures. Djavid Bey who we just saw, was quite cosmopolitan. Very Francophile in his view of the wider world and when, in 1914, the Turkey of, the emergent Turkey, still the Ottoman Empire but under the aegis of the Committee of Union and Progress, decides to go to war on the side of Germany against Britain, France and Russia, he resigns his position. It doesn’t stop him being seen as an enemy of the ultimate victors of the new Turkey and he is executed, Djavid Bey, in 1926. By his supposed opposition. His supposed opposition, to the ultimate victor who is a man called Mustafa Kemal. Come on to him in a moment. Nazim is really the complete opposite of him. Nazim is a genocidaire. Nazim is a medical doctor, like many people who’ve had their education as Donmeh, he ends up as a medical doctor in the Army. But Nazim is one of the key figures of the Committee of Union and Progress who initiates the Armenian genocide.
So his views of, if you like, these are, these Donmeh become ultramodernist, ultranationalist protagonists of the Committee of Union and Progress. He’s also, by the way, executed by Mustafa in 1926. From two sort of, two sides of the Committee of Union and Progress, these people both suffer the same fate. Now I’m just going to move on quickly to why should all this all matter in a wider sense. And I think it’s like the Jews in Russia who become involved as revolutionaries, there’s something about this tendency as it bleeds onto the wider world stage, particularly in the context of the First World War where we should sit up and take note. And this is really a way of looking at this is through how the Committee of Union and Progress is reported back through the embassies of the, of the major powers to their, to their governments in London or their offices, their foreign offices and one we know about particularly is how the Committee of Union and Progress is reported back through the embassy in Constantinople. The British Embassy, to the British foreign office in London and it is reported back, let’s have the next, let’s have the next slide. Lauren, thank you. It’s reported, here we have here. For those of you who are interested in this, you can actually read the full transcript of a letter of May 1910. A really long letter from the ambassador in Constantinople. A man called Gerard Lowther to the head of the Foreign Office. Not the Foreign Secretary but the actual acting bureaucratic head, Charles Hardinge. And his description of the Committee of Union and Progress is somebody who’s really the Jew CUP. It is controlled by Freemasons and Jews and crypto-Jews.
In other words, Donmeh. And they meet in the Masonic Lodges and they’re really, according to Lowther, plotting to destabilise where the Ottoman Empire ought to be in its geopolitical relations with the wider world. And of course, from Lowther’s point of view, the whole thing is that the Ottoman Empire ought to be under the thumb of the British and the French and what he is concerned about is that it is moving in the direction of becoming under the thumb of the Germans and the Austrians and who is responsible for this? It is the, it is the crypto-Jews who are at the heart of this. And he is being fed, by the way, Lowther is not really in quotes, an expert on this. But he looks to somebody within his, within his consulate. Within sorry, within the embassy who does claim to be an expert and this is his dragoman. In other words, the person who is able to speak Ottoman Turkish and lots of other languages and claims to have a knowledge of this. This is a man called Gerald Fitzmaurice and Gerald Fitzmaurice by the way, goes on to be the, a key player in the Naval Intelligence Division in Britain in the First World War. And Fitzmaurice, like Lowther, is a fervent believer that there is a conspiracy going on amongst the Jews and the crypto-Jews to disentangle the Ottomans from their British relationship and put it firmly in the German relationship and this is furthered of course, as I said, this whole period. 1908 to 1914, say. The middle of that is the Balkan Wars of 1912 where the Greeks actually capture, in their terms, liberate the Ottoman city of Salonika with its majority Jewish population, pro-Ottoman Jewish population essentially.
They liberate it and what happens then, parts of the Jewish community come up with a plan to disentangle it back from Greek control with the proposal that there is an internationalisation of the port of Salonika which would make it separate from Greek control and who is it who backs this plan most fervently? It is the Germans and the Austrians who see this as being geopolitically of use to themselves. So if you can see what’s going on here, this confirms in the Foreign Office mind that there is something about the community, the Committee of Union and Progress which links to the Jews as a destabilising factor in the whole unravelling of the Balkan picture at this time. Now, I just want to take this a little bit forward because I want to just show you where this goes before we have a coda of what happens to the Donmeh. Next one please Lauren. Right, so we’ve come across this current to called Lowther, the ambassador. In Constantinople with his views about the Jew Committee of Union and Progress. We’ve come across this character called Gerald Fitzmaurice who is feeding him the information about what’s really going on with these crypto-Jews. There is a third significant character here who is rather significant in terms of where this is leading British thinking about the Donmeh and about the Jews of Salonika. This is a man called Hugh O'Bierne who was the Charge d’ Affaires in the British Embassy in the new state of Bulgaria before the First World War. You may remember that Bulgaria is another state which sides with the central powers, with Germany and Austria. Alongside the Ottoman Empire, against the Allies in the First World War and O'Bierne, oo moves, of course from Sofia when this happens, back to Britain is very, very exercised by what is going on. And he also is in very close contact with Lowther and Fitzmaurice and I just want to read you here about something which he writes within the context of the Foreign Office which is not thrown out the window, or thrown in the bin as something completely ludicrous but as a proposal for how to deal with the Young Turks in government who are against Britain in the First World War and this is what he writes.
“It has been suggested to me "that if we could offer the Jews "an arrangement as to Palestine "which would strongly appeal to them, "we might conceivably be able to strike a bargain with them "as to withdrawing their support "from the Young Turk government "which would then automatically collapse.” Now if you think about it, there’s something in these words or in the semiotics of this statement, there’s something really quite extraordinary going on. It would seem to be suggesting that the Jews not only have a line to the CUP or are somehow entangled with it, but if they withdrew their support, the whole Young Turk government, the CUP government would simply collapse. And this becomes, interestingly, a motif in the thinking of the British Foreign Office in the period of the First World War and it carries through to another fervent believer who is also interconnected and we need to think of these personalities in terms of Venn diagrams. Lowther, Fitzmaurice, O'Bierne and then a man called Mark Sykes who is also very much of the same persuasion and it’s Mark Sykes who runs with this notion that yes, the Jews are malevolent. That they are cosmopolitan, international, against ourselves and that therefore, there has to be a way, as they are so powerful and malevolent of co-opting them and the way is, according to O'Bierne, who gives the idea, in effect, to Sykes, to give the Jews Palestine.
Now, I’ll just leave that one with you because what we have in this is we have a strand of what becomes, by the end of the First World War, a really loud, megaphone-loud noise which is that there is some sort of conspiracy going on in the world and that this is an international Jewish conspiracy which itself fields, feeds into the concept of “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” that everything is being manipulated for the benefit and for the malevolent and sinister purposes of, the diabolical purposes of the Jews and somehow the Donmeh fit rather neatly into that rejection of the world. Now, just a couple of things to finish because I’m sure I’m, ooh. I’m running, I’m running out of time. Two things. A coda to the story. One, and this is beyond the scope of what I can talk about here in a sense but it’s relevant. The Donmeh, there are no Donmeh in Salonika today. As far as I’m aware. The reason for that is in 1923, there is an arrangement between the, the Greek and Turkish governments as a result of what is called the Asia Minor catastrophe from a Greek perspective. A Greek-Turkish trauma about their relations which leads to catastrophic war from the Greek point of view and there is what is called, an exchange of populations. A compulsory exchange of populations. All Muslims who live in the Greek world have to go to Turkey. All Christians who live in the Turkish world have to go to Greece. An exchange of populations. There’s nothing jolly about this but it is compulsory. Everybody has to go. The Donmeh, as part of the Muslim population are required to move to Turkey. They try to suggest to the authorities, to the international authorities that they don’t count because they’re not exactly Muslim. But they are forced to go and here you’ve got a paradox in this. Sephardi, the Sephardi DNA line from Salonika is maintained through the fact that they are compulsorily deported to Turkey.
If they had stayed in Salonika, they would doubtless have been treated as Jews but that’s a counterfactual of course because we don’t know exactly what would’ve happened but the guess is they would’ve been deported. The second thing. Donmeh who end up in Turkey, in Istanbul particularly and Izmir are treated by the Turkish population very much as Spaniards of the, of course they weren’t Spaniards. They were subjects of the Aragonese and Castilian crowns in the 15th century and 16th century would’ve treated conversos as really quite dodgy. And those Jews who, sorry those Donmeh who now tend to, who then tend to be referred to as Salonikli, those who come from Salonika tend, as families, to keep their heads down because they do not want to bring attention to the fact that they are different or in some sense, disruptive of the new Turkey. Almost second last picture, one more. Right, this new Turkey. The new Turkey which has emerged from the Ottoman Empire is led by a man. This is of course a Turkey which no longer has Salonika as part of its world because that has been captured by the Greeks. Nevertheless, this man, Mustafa Kemal who calls himself Ataturk. In other words, number one Turk. Where does he hail from? From Salonika, and where was he educated? He was educated in a Donmeh school. So we have the inversion of the global conspiracy of crypto-Jews as it returns to Turkey because the conspiracy theory in Turkey is, who is Mustafa Kemal?
He is really a crypto-Jew. In other words, a crypto-Jew meaning a hidden Jew and what is going on in Turkey is that all those cosmopolitan, hidden Jews are really disrupting with their heterodoxy and their cosmopolitanism. The true path of a true Turkey. And if you don’t believe me, please go on Google. Put in Kemal, put in Donmeh if you like and find what you can about conspiracy theories regarding this man and his true Jewish or Zionist or whatever conspiratorial origins and you’ll find an absolute plethora of material about this. Last thing, let’s just move on to the final, final one. Mustafa Kemal’s family home became the Turkish Consulate in Salonika and is still there. It’s a museum now. And a subject of many events, tumultuous events in itself in Salonika. If you want to know more about this, and indeed you’d like to, your appetite has been whetted for knowing more about Salonika and both Jewish and non-Jewish, we will be running The Greek Project. That’s me and my partner Ellie. We’ll be running a tour to Salonika as indeed to other parts of this northern Greek world in September this year and you can find more about us on that site. You just Google in “The Greek Project”, ends the plug. Hope this hasn’t been too much to cope with all in one go but maybe you know, a starter for you knowing a little bit more about the Donmeh, thank you.
[Lauren] Mark, thank you so much. Do you have 10 minutes to maybe take some of the questions.
Of course I have 10 minutes. Given everybody else has 10 minutes. I’m sorry I’ve gone on rather a long time.
[Lauren] Sure, do you mind pulling up the Q and A and reading the questions out loud?
Yes you do that.
Pick the ones that.
Lauren, that’s how I’d like it. Thank you very much.
Q&A and Comments:
Q - Sure. Great, David is asking what the origin of the word Donmeh is?
A - It means, I think, betrayer in. No no no, I’m wrong there. It means convert but that could also be interpreted to mean turncoat. And that’s why there’s this sort of ambiguity about the term Donmeh. It essentially has become a negative or pejorative term.
Q - [Lauren] Thank you. Maxine is wondering if you can comment on, and quite a few people have mentioned this in the comments that they read a book called the “The Books of Jacob”. And they’re wondering if you’ve read it and what your thoughts are.
A - I don’t know this work. Tell me more, somebody tell me more about it and I’ll try and say something sensible in return. I’ve heard of it. It’s about, it’s about Donmeh isn’t it?
Q - [Lauren] Yes, Lorna says that it brings in the Salonika community and it’s centred on the Frankists. Named after Jacob Frank.
A - Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry, say that last bit again. It’s centred on Salonika and?
[Lauren] And is centred on the Frankists, after Jacob Frank.
Right okay, yeah. Well look I can only say this much. You know, there is a lot of ground here. That’s right, I’ve not read the book for which apologies but as some of you will know, who may have read this book, there were, if you like, disciples of Shabtai Tzvi who moved north. There was, and the Sabbatean idea is picked up by groups in parts of Poland, in Podolia in particular I seem to remember and one of these people is this man Jacob Frank and he sets up his own sect which is not dissimilar to the Sabbateans. And they have their own interesting history and the Frankists, again, become another sort of rather radical grouping who you know, the person we, I think who comes from a, a Frankist background, you know, in terms of his fame as a figure within the Polish and Ukrainian world is, and that man called Adam Mickiewicz who is you know, the great Polish stroke Ukrainian poet. But as far as we know, his background is Frankist. So you know, history moves in cunning ways and the dislocations of one place can have knock-on effects on another. But yes I’m contrite, I will have to read this book. People can tell me more about it if they like. Is that?
Q - Another question. People are asking if there are still Donmeh today and where do they live now?
A - Right, good question. As I said, people do not tend to refer to themselves by this name. As a general rule. They tend, if where they live now, as a general rule, not to refer to themselves in this way at all. Though they are often referred to as Salonikla. In other words, people who have come from Salonika. And I’m just trying to think, what would be an equivalent of this if you didn’t want to, if you didn’t want to make a big deal about your background. Perhaps even Jewish people in England who want to assimilate and to be seen as true blue Englishmen and not to have their background made a big thing about. This is how Salonikla tend to behave while knowing something about their background which has been, in terms of its Jewishness has been more or less altogether lost. There are certainly Salonikla, particularly in Istanbul today, for awhile they tended to retain their, their endogamous relationships. That they married within the grouping but actually that has tended over the last 40-odd years. Remember also, that they were, in a sideways on way, persecuted. There was something in the Second World War where groupings who were considered a bit dodgy were heavily taxed. There was a capital levy tax which was put on groups like Greeks and Armenians, surviving Greeks and Armenians. But the Donmeh also suffered for this. So you don’t tend to go around in Turkey today, broadcasting that you’re from this background. But it’s there, it’s there and internally people will talk about it amongst themselves and maybe very interested somebody, famous historian to me said, “My family is in part Donmeh "and he excited to tell me about it.” But he wouldn’t necessarily broadcast that in a Turkish milieu.
Q - [Lauren] Great and I think we have time for one more question. Why did the Donmeh not revert to Judaism once conditions became favourable for them to be openly Jewish?
A - They couldn’t. Under Islam, to, to do something like that is betrayal. And they would be, you see, look. There’s the parallel here. Let’s try and make the parallel. Supposing you were a new Christian, a converso who had been Jewish and you had then moved across the ocean to a Spanish America. Say to a place like Curacao in the, in the Caribbean. When the Dutch arrive later, large groups of conversos revert back to being Jewish. Even though they’ve lost a lot of their Jewish knowledge, as it were. They revert back. But the conditions enabled them to do so. Within an Ottoman Muslim world, there is no framework within which somebody who has been Donmeh can revert back to being Jewish unless they, for instance, were able at some stage, to emigrate to Palestine. Now, or somewhere else. Now I don’t know of instances like this but for the most part, there is no equivalent movement of Donmeh back to being Jews as there is for instance, conversos. Where the opportunity allows within the Western world for them to do so. If you get my comparison. Hope that’s okay.
Great. Thank you so much Mark and thank you everyone for joining us today and we will see you soon.
Yeah, thank you very much. Have a good evening everybody.
Bye.
Bye bye.