Travels in Search of Turkey’s Jews

In 1984, Laurence Salzmann, an American photographer, and his wife, Ayşe Gürsan-Salzmann, a Turkish-born anthropologist, were invited by the Beth Hatefutsoth Museum of Tel Aviv to do a photo-documentation of Jewish monuments throughout Turkey.

But monuments could tell only a partial story, so the Salzmanns expanded their project to include a photographic portrait of the Jews of Turkey, and a film that explored in detail the ways in which the Jews had become a favored ethnic group among a predominantly Muslim population. The film, entitled Turkey’s Sephardim: 500 Years, tells the story of Turkey’s Sephardic Jews in the mid-1980s.

This book brings in full circle the work begun by the Salzmanns twenty-five ago, and offers stories and reminiscences from a past, not likely to be encountered again!