Devin Naar, "Jews, Muslims, and the Limits of Tolerance"
David Shasha
Devin Naar on Jews, Muslims, and the “Limits of Tolerance”
I recently profiled University of Washington Professor Devin Naar and his contribution to the “Bourekas and Haminados” trivialization of classical Sephardic culture:
In the article I showed the myriad ways in which Sephardischkeit is presented today as exotic ephemera; a cute, but ultimately insignificant culture that adds “color” to a Jewish world that is controlled by “serious” Ashkenazim.
Naar has recently published a book on Jewish Salonica:
http://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=25672
Here is how the book is described on the SUP website:
Touted as the "Jerusalem of the Balkans," the Mediterranean port city of Salonica (Thessaloniki) was once home to the largest Sephardic Jewish community in the world. The collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the city's incorporation into Greece in 1912 provoked a major upheaval that compelled Salonica's Jews to reimagine their community and status as citizens of a nation-state. Jewish Salonica is the first book to tell the story of this tumultuous transition through the voices and perspectives of Salonican Jews as they forged a new place for themselves in Greek society.
Devin E. Naar traveled the globe, from New York to Salonica, Jerusalem, and Moscow, to excavate archives once confiscated by the Nazis. Written in Ladino, Greek, French, and Hebrew, these archives, combined with local newspapers, reveal how Salonica's Jews fashioned a new hybrid identity as Hellenic Jews during a period marked by rising nationalism and economic crisis as well as unprecedented Jewish cultural and political vibrancy. Salonica's Jews—Zionists, assimilationists, and socialists—reinvigorated their connection to the city and claimed it as their own until the Holocaust. Through the case of Salonica's Jews, Naar recovers the diverse experiences of a lost religious, linguistic, and national minority at the crossroads of Europe and the Middle East.
Naar does social history rather than intellectual history, and his work is very much concerned with more recent historical developments, rather than a more comprehensive look at Ottoman Jewish identity as an extension of Andalusian Sephardic culture that we can see in a monumental figure like the polymath Moses Almosnino (c. 1515-c. 1580), the subject of an excellent article by Alisa Meyhuas Ginio:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1NQdm28qvvXcVk4T3RJb0pYdkE/view
Almosnino was a loyal exponent of the tradition of Sephardic Jewish Humanism; a heritage that was proudly embodied in more recent figures like Israel Moses Hazzan (1808-1862) and Haim Nahum Effendi (1872-1960), the latter was the last Hakham Bashi of the Ottoman Empire, and later Chief Rabbi of Egypt:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_Moses_Hazan
http://www.sephardicstudies.org/haim.html
These towering figures represent the genius of Ottoman Jewish civilization with ideas and values rooted in the old Andalusian Sephardic world that remains a point of pride for many of us.
In his latest academic article published in Jewish Social Studies, Naar puts into question Sephardic primacy in Jewish Salonica:
http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/jewisocistud.22.1.03
Here is the abstract of the article:
Although Sephardim and Ashkenazim are often considered to be two distinct Jewish groups that rarely intersected, a close look at the case of Salonica (Thessaloniki), a port city in present-day northern Greece, reveals the permeability and mobility among Jewish communities over the generations. Although often imagined as the capital of the Sephardi Jewish world, Salonica became home not only to Jews expelled from Spain but also to those from Portugal, Italy, and elsewhere prior to and after 1492. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, industrialization, urbanization, and major political upheavals such as the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire propelled Jews from the region and beyond to seek refuge in Salonica. During this period of transition, some Jews from the Balkan town of Monastir, Greek-speaking Romaniote Jews from Thessaly, and Ashkenazi Jews from eastern and central Europe played key roles in Salonican Jewish society, whereas others experienced marginalization.
Like Rabbi Marc Angel before him, Naar appears to be very concerned about Sephardic elitism and exclusivity, and in his work we see a strong effort to bring together Ashkenazim and non-Ashkenazim in a harmonious balance.
We will recall Angel presenting the matter in a similar fashion when debating Malcolm Stern on Sephardic attitudes to Ashkenazim in New York City:
Angel, like Naar, took the side of unity against the idea that Sephardim had a unique culture that was preserved in the face of a rejectionist Ashkenazi Judaism with its clashing factions and inbred Shtetl parochialism.
The desperate attempt by Sephardim like Angel and Naar to collapse the Sephardi-Ashkenazi binarism is a reflection of the defeatism in a Sephardic community that has failed to preserve its intellectual and ethical values; a community that has no real chance for continuity as its children have migrated to one or another Ashkenazi Jewish faction and remain ignorant of our cultural heritage.
This self-defeating process is interesting because at the current time there is little harmonious balance between Sephardim and Ashkenazim when it comes to Jewish equality. Ashkenazim fully control the “serious” Jewish discourse; Sephardim have been left on the outside looking in.
We can see in unfortunate figures like Angel and Naar a pathetically compulsive need to provide a vision of Jewish unity from the Sephardic side, at the very moment that the Ashkenazim have excluded us and made themselves the sole representatives of Jewish culture in our day.
The University of Washington’s Stroum Center for Jewish Studies has just published a set of short papers from its professors on the subject of Tolerance included in something called the Impact Report:
http://jewishstudies.washington.edu/jewish-history-and-thought/tolerance-roundtable/
The introduction presents George Washington’s famous letter on Religious Tolerance, but does not specify that it was written in response to the Sephardi leader of the Newport, Rhode Island Jewish community Moses Seixas.
Naar’s contribution to the roundtable is entitled “Jews, Muslims, and the Limits of Tolerance.”
In the brief article he presents the harmonious relationship of the Ottoman Jews with their Muslim hosts, but with an important caveat:
But “tolerance” in the Ottoman context was double edged, for it served as an alternative not only to the persecution and exclusion of the pre-modern Christian world, but also as an alternative to equal rights. Governed by Islamic law, the Ottoman Empire guaranteed a place in society for non-Muslims so long as they recognized their inferior status, paid special taxes, and pledged their allegiance to the sultan. In exchange, they gained the protection of the sultan and the privilege to build their own houses of worship, speak their own language, and develop their own institutions. They certainly were tolerated, but they were not equals. The authoritative Ladino (Judeo-Spanish) dictionary fittingly defines toleransya as “indulgence of what we do not like.”
Making positive reference to the French philosopher Voltaire and to the Enlightenment ideal of Equal Rights, Naar uses anachronism to critique the old Ottoman multi-culturalism.
In his article he does not at all refer to the constitutional reforms that were central to the argument made by Michelle Campos in her excellent study Ottoman Brothers:
Here is a review of the Ottoman constitutional reform movements, better known as the Tanzimat:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Constitutional_Era
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Constitutional_Era
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_and_modernization_of_the_Ottoman_Empire
In the work of Campos and other intrepid scholars like Abigail Jacobson we have discovered that the Ottomans were indeed prepared to take on the challenges of Modernity and the Rights of Man argument of the Enlightenment in the larger framework of Tolerance.
But, as we know all too well, the Ottoman Empire was destroyed in the Great War, and eventually Europe collapsed under the weight of Hitlerism. Jewish Salonica soon found itself at the tender mercies of the Nazis, victims of the gas chambers in Auschwitz and other places on the map of Voltaire’s “Enlightened” Europe and its fabled “Rights of Man.”
Indeed, it should be recalled that the Chief Rabbi of Salonica, the Galician-born Tzvi Koretz, acted as Judenrat in the deportation of community members to the death camps:
http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/ghettos/judenrat.html
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0012_0_11472.html
Ashkenazi influence in Jewish Salonica was perhaps not as salutary as Naar presents it.
It is interesting to note that Naar’s colleague Kathie Friedman chose to write her roundtable article about the importance of welcoming refugees:
http://jewishstudies.washington.edu/jewish-history-and-thought/importance-of-welcoming-refugees/
Naar, the deeply-conflicted Sephardi, decided to write against Islam, while Friedman, the Ashkenazi Liberal, chose to write positively about Muslim immigrants, based on her previous work on Bosnia.
Where Sephardim were once at the very vanguard of progressive values in Jewish culture, we have seen the deleterious impact of the Ashkenazification process that has taken place in our community, sadly reflected in people like Devin Naar and Marc Angel, stifling our cultural creativity and liberal attitudes.
And as we have seen all-too-clearly in Israel, Sephardim now represent a reactionary element in the Jewish world. Having abandoned its glorious cultural past the Sephardic community has been set adrift and has in fact little of substance to contribute to contemporary Jewish discourse.
David Shasha
Jews, Muslims, and the Limits of Tolerance
By: Devin E. Naar
A beautifully illustrated Jewish wedding contract, or ketubah, adorned with the symbols of Islam—the star and the crescent: this is one of the most striking artifacts that has surfaced as part of the Sephardic Studies Program’s effort to collect, digitize and make accessible the cultural and literacy heritage of Sephardic Jews. Shared with us by Rabbi Solomon Maimon and Albert Maimon, the ketubah dates from 1919 and pertains to the Bensussan family from the town of Tekirdağ, then in the Ottoman Empire (today’s Turkey). The ketubah made its way to Seattle nearly a century ago, transplanting a piece of Ottoman Jewish culture from the eastern Mediterranean to the Puget Sound and linking Jews and the Islamic world to the Pacific Northwest.
The ketubah compels us to reconsider the relationship between Judaism and Islam by reminding us that, although contemporary media may present it otherwise, Jews and Muslims were not always in conflict, but rather lived side by side, cooperating and collaborating for centuries in the realm of the Ottoman Empire. Indeed, Jewish chroniclers lauded the Ottoman Empire as a Jewish safe haven. In 1454, Isaac Sarfati emphasized the preference among Jews to live under Muslim rather than Christian rule: “Turkey is a land wherein nothing is lacking… Is it not better for you to live under Muslims than under Christians? Here every man may dwell at peace under his own vine and fig-tree.” After Jews expelled from Spain in 1492 found shelter in the Ottoman Empire, the image of Ottoman tolerance and protection was solidified. In 1550, Jews in Salonica declared: “Turkey is entirely open to you, settle here, our brethren, in the best of the land! [You] will not be afflicted by the burning fire of oppression and of exile… the Turks do not let us suffer any evil or oppression.” Even the famous eighteenth-century French philosopher, Voltaire, in his Essay on Toleration, praised the Ottomans: “The Sultan governs in peace twenty million people of different religions… the empire is full of Christians and Jews. The annals of Turkey do not record any revolt instigated by any of these religions.”
But “tolerance” in the Ottoman context was double edged, for it served as an alternative not only to the persecution and exclusion of the pre-modern Christian world, but also as an alternative to equal rights. Governed by Islamic law, the Ottoman Empire guaranteed a place in society for non-Muslims so long as they recognized their inferior status, paid special taxes, and pledged their allegiance to the sultan. In exchange, they gained the protection of the sultan and the privilege to build their own houses of worship, speak their own language, and develop their own institutions. They certainly were tolerated, but they were not equals. The authoritative Ladino (Judeo-Spanish) dictionary fittingly defines toleransya as “indulgence of what we do not like.”
With the rise of modern notions of citizenship and equal rights in the nineteenth century, the old order of the Ottoman Empire, however peaceful it may have been, was overturned by yearnings for equal political and civil status for all. Nationalist leaders went further by arguing that each nation ought to govern itself rather than be subject to the rule of others. Mere tolerance was not enough: equal rights or national independence became the new calls of modernity that led to the overthrow of Europe’s land empires, the Hapsburgs, Romanovs, and Ottomans. But Jews did not immediately embrace the call of national liberation; some sought to integrate into their surroundings and many met the idea of the nation-state with trepidation. This was true in the Ottoman Empire, where Jews clung to an image of their empire as a bastion of tolerance.
Our collection’s ketubah with the Islamic star and crescent emerged out of this milieu, on the cusp of the transition from the Ottoman Empire to modern Turkey (est. 1923). The inclusion of these symbols constituted a traditional expression of gratitude to the empire for the protection and tolerance offered by Islam; the symbols further represented modern expressions of patriotism and political belonging. They also constituted an expression of self-defense, an anxiety that if Jews did not publicly pledge their allegiance to the Ottoman Empire, the protection and tolerance from which they benefited could be revoked. They were aware of the fate of fellow non-Muslims who rebelled or who clamored forcefully for equal rights or political independence. Indeed, as punishment for these demands, Armenians suffered genocide at the hands of the purportedly tolerant Ottoman Empire in the midst of World War I.
The ketubah reminds us that the tensions that seem to be so entrenched between Jews and Muslims in the Middle East are really the modern products of major political and cultural changes that transpired over the past century. Made possible by the Ottoman Empire’s policy of tolerance, peaceful coexistence—rather than conflict—was the norm for the previous five centuries. But the ambiguous moral and political resonances of the concept of tolerance remain with us today. Turkey still points to its “tolerance” of Jews as a way to divert attention away from the shame of the Armenian genocide and mistreatment of other minorities. And political forces around the world continue to appeal to the notion of tolerance as a way to ensure peace, stability, and civility, but to do so at the expense of desires for human dignity, universal rights, equal treatment before the law, and an embrace—not mere tolerance—of differences with regard to religion, nationality, race, language, culture, class, gender, and sexual orientation. Even if tolerance may provide the prospect of peace under one’s own proverbial vine and fig tree, is it enough merely to indulge in what we do not like?
From the University of Washington’s Stroum Center for Jewish Studies, November 21, 2016, originally included in the department’s Impact Report, Fall 2016