Jewish Life in Twenty-First-Century Turkey The Other Side of Tolerance [Paperback]

Turkey is famed for a history of tolerance toward minorities, and there is a growing nostalgia for the Ottoman mosaic. In this richly detailed study, Marcy Brink-Danan examines what it means for Jews to live as a tolerated minority in contemporary Istanbul. Often portrayed as the good minority, Jews in Turkey celebrate their long history in the region, yet they are subject to discrimination and their institutions are regularly threatened and periodically attacked. Brink-Danan explores the contradictions and gaps in the popular ideology of Turkey as a land of tolerance, describing how Turkish Jews manage the tensions between cosmopolitanism and patriotism, difference as Jews and sameness as Turkish citizens, tolerance and violence.

Brink-Danans volume offers a complex and thought-provoking portrait of Jewish life in twenty-first-century Turkey through the compelling lens of linguistic anthropology. It not only elucidates multiple facets of a Jewish community generally overlooked by scholars, but also encourages us to rethink the nature of 'cosmopolitanism,' 'tolerance,' and minority politics more broadly through the example of Turkey.Succeeds in applying anthropology to an urbanized and diverse community while deftly unraveling the dilemmas faced by Jews in Istanbul as they balance cosmopolitanism with maintaining a sense of who they are.Marcy Brink-Danans study offers a rare and insightful view of the multilayered dynamics between and profiles of individuals peopling Istanbuls Jewish community. Jewish Life in 21st-Century Turkey is at once an important ethnographic investigation and a sociolinguistic analysis. As such, it stands apart from other studies of Turkeys contemporary Jews.The book provides much important information and analysis on important issues regardingcontemporary Turkish Jews, though some of the theoretical parts might be of more interest to anthropologists. The study is an important contribution to our knowledge of Jewish life in the l“!