Jewish Constantinople at the End of Empires

Frankel Institute Detroit Lecture Series on Jews and Empires

On October 30, 1918, the Ottoman Empire signed the Mudros Armistice, ending its involvement in World War I, and signaling the end of an empire that had existed for half a millennium. For the next five years, Allied forces would occupy the Ottoman capital of Constantinople, the fate of the empire, the city, and its inhabitants hanging in limbo. Constantinople was the home of some 90,000 Jews, the majority of whom were Sephardi Ottomans, but which also included substantial Italian and Habsburg Ashkenazi communities. It also became a temporary home to thousands of Jews from Russia fleeing the pogroms that accompanied the Russian Civil War. In turn, American Jewish representatives of the Joint Distribution Committee sought to help the plight of Russian Jewish refugees and Constantinopolitan Jews alike, but were often confounded by intra-Jewish strife. This talk explores how diverse Jewish groups and individuals within Constantinople contended with the end of empires and the ways in which Jewish and imperial identities collided and coalesced within the erstwhile Ottoman capital.