Few Jews are familiar with Turkey like Rabbi Mandy Chitrik, a kosher overseer who oversees dozens of factories across the country.
For the past twenty years, Chitrik, a Chabad emissary and native of Israel, has traveled thousands of miles a year throughout Turkey, although the vast majority of 12,000 Turkish Jews are concentrated in Istanbul, the country's largest city.
Along the way he finds some interesting discoveries from burial sites that have never been documented, discovers observant Jews living far from Istanbul, and reveals unusual customs born out of cooperation with local Muslims.
Last summer, Chitrik began documenting his experiences on Twitter, during a three-week trip around Turkey that includes stops at familiar Jewish landmarks alongside some that are very far from the worn-out tourist route.
He has set himself the goal of raising awareness of history, which he says "falls between the cracks," especially for many Jews who see the world as one that is divided between Sephardim and Ashkenazim, and he feels he is succeeding.
Rabbi Mandy Chitrik takes a selfie at sunset in Turkey, August 9, 2021, courtesy of Chitrik
"People who follow our trip - most of them, by the way, non-Jews - invite us to visit. Jews of Turkish and Greek descent tell us it's terribly exciting," Chitrik said in an interview.
"We are thanked for the access we give them to all of these sites. It really warms the heart."
Chitrick does all this while armed with a skullcap and a tassel, making it an unusual spectacle in a Muslim country whose president was reprimanded last year by the US after delivering a speech saturated with anti-Semitism.
The rabbi's journey evokes similar reactions and feelings on the Internet as well.
Hussein Haki Kahwaji, a writer and nationalist journalist who boasts more than 60,000 followers, wrote on Twitter that Chitrik's itinerary "coincides with places where fires broke out" - referring to the forest fires that have forced thousands of Turkish residents to flee their homes in recent weeks.
"Rabbis are also experts in Kabbalah and black magic," he added.
But from Chitrick’s experience, antisemitic attitudes like this hardly permeate the locals he meets on his travels.
He says imams devote many hours to helping him search for the sites he is researching.
People on the street invite him to dinner, and express feelings of solidarity and brotherhood with the Jewish people.
"Coexistence between Jews and Muslims is not just a slogan reserved for conferences," explains Chitrik, who serves as chairman of the Alliance of Rabbis in Islamic Lands, a body established in 2019 to support Jewish life in Muslim countries.
"It was and still is the reality."
Chitrik and his son Haim set out on their journey on July 26, and it includes well-known stations that attest to the deep roots of Turkish Jewry, such as the ruins of a synagogue in Sardis.
The place, built at least 1,500 years ago, is considered one of the largest and most important in antiquity, and is also famous for its mosaic floor and well-preserved walls, which were unearthed in excavations in 1962.
But there are monuments that, apart from members of the Chitric family, few are aware of, such as the gravestones of Jewish soldiers who fought in Gallipoli, from the famous and bloody battlefields of the First World War.
The Jews who fought in the name of the Ottoman Empire are buried there alongside their fellow believers who fought for France and Britain, part of the total number of fallen that hovered around one hundred thousand people.
Chaim Chitrik Buries Human Bones in Milas Cemetery, Turkey, August 1, 2021, Mandy Chitrik)
In Tira, which was once an important Torah center, about 500 kilometers south of Istanbul, Chitrik was looking for a Jewish cemetery, which locals say was destroyed and buried under a new hospital.
"We found the hospital, and in its remote corner were entire tombstones that I think no one even knew existed," the rabbi said.
After exposing the remains of the cemetery and weeding the weeds around the gravestones - a strenuous job even on a normal day, all the more so when the temperature outside is 41 degrees - Rabbi Chitrik and his son Kaddish said over the graves.
But the journey of the father and son does not end there.
Wherever they go, they make contact with local Jews and Muslims, including clerics, and reveal small pieces of a rich but faded carpet of Jewish customs that have crystallized over the centuries.
The Great Synagogue of Bursa, about 130 kilometers southeast of Istanbul, has recently been renovated and functions mainly as a museum, and the grenades that adorn its Torah scrolls are decorated with a star and a crescent - distinct Muslim symbols.
When Rabbi Chitrik visited the synagogue and finished examining the Torah scrolls, he returned the keys of the Ark to the synagogue, Yusuf, who refused to collect the key in his palm, and asked Chitrik to place it on the back of his hand.
Leon Alenqua, head of the Jewish community of Bursa, immediately noticed Chitrick's embarrassment, and explained to him in Ladino, the language of the Spanish deportees, "that way you will not quarrel" over the key and the ark.
"I did not quite understand what he meant, but one thing is for sure: I will not quarrel with them," Chetrick wrote on his Twitter account of these bizarre exchanges, which he described as a unique stock market practice.
The rabbi described to his followers another Jewish-Turkish tradition called "mircado", apparently a derivative of the Spanish word for market, i.e. mercado.
According to the same custom, when a child is born after an abortion or illness, it is "bought" by a relative who takes care of all the needs of the child up to the age of 7-8, in an attempt to deceive fate during those critical years.
"The mercado is meant to change luck," he explained to Rabbi Moshe Habib, a member of a burial society in nearby Izmir.
Chitrik shared with his followers the discovery of the gravestone of Yitzhak Poliker, who died in Izmir at an extreme age and was buried in the Jewish cemetery in 1912.
The tombstone testified that he was "bought" as a child.
Although only 60 Jews remain on the stock exchange today, Alenkawa is convinced that the community will survive.
"Every day you have to work for Judaism to thrive here - and it will happen," he explained to Chitrick's camera in a spicy Turkish in Ladino.
The rabbi's travels also lead him to the remains of one of the largest Jewish groups in Turkey, the Romanians, who were wiped out almost entirely by the Nazis.
The Romaniuts existed long before the split between Sephardim and Ashkenazim, and do not belong to either group.
According to tradition, they settled in Greece and Turkey shortly after the destruction of the Second Temple, as early as 70 AD.
In the past, it was the largest and most prominent Jewish group in the Balkans, but today only a small community of the Ioannina in northern Greece remains of the Romaniuts.
In Turkey itself, only a few dozen Romani Jews remain.
Chitrik attributes the neglect of Jewish heritage sites in Turkey to the almost complete extermination of the Romanians, because there are very few Jewish families who take a personal interest in their heritage, as opposed to the way Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews are invested in North Africa and Eastern Europe respectively.
Instead, the fate of Jewish sites in Turkey now remains in the hands of local authorities, and the result is a blatant lack of uniformity.
A synagogue building in Milas, Turkey, was recently demolished and a new educational center, Mandy Citric, was built on its ruins.
Several municipalities and local authorities in Turkey have renovated synagogues in recent years, without any publicity or trumpet blasts.
One of the most impressive examples is the Bergma Yavetz synagogue near Izmir.
The building was used as a stable until a few years ago, when the authorities renovated it and gave it a mesmerizing interior space, including checkered marble floor, stained glass windows and a unique stage, decorated with marble and modern-looking metal bars, topped by a canopy of neoclassical columns and gold-painted wooden reliefs. the ceiling.
And yet, other Jewish heritage sites, some very ancient, still lie like an irreversible stone, exposed to the ravages of the weather and antiquities thieves, like the ancient synagogue of Priyana, near Izmir.
The massive stones, which also have sculpted granite pillars, have become coveted garden decorations for the residents of the area, and some of those scattered among the remains of the synagogue even serve the locals as picnic tables.
In Milas, south of Priana, the local synagogue was demolished a few years ago, and an educational center was built above its ruins.
Rabbi Chitrik and his son, who were traveling there with a friend of the son, Eliezer, also discovered tombs that had been desecrated due to construction work near the Jewish cemetery of Milas, and reburied the human bones that were scattered around them.
On the way, they met Jews who asked for help in preserving their Jewish customs, away from the heart of Turkish Jewry.
A Jewish woman from Antakya, 800 kilometers from Istanbul, near the border with Syria, turned to Rabbi Chitrik on Twitter and asked him to bring knives with him to carry out kosher slaughter.
For her and for the handful of Jews left in Antakya, the visit of the rabbi, who also serves as a butcher, was a rare opportunity to stock up on kosher meat.
Despite its rich Jewish history, in Turkey there is almost no mention of trips organized following the Jewish heritage, such as those that have been going on for years in Europe. Chitrik hopes to change the situation: "Turkey is a huge country, and that certainly complicates matters, but that does not mean there is no potential for such trips here," he clarified, "I hope my trip on Twitter will whet people's appetite."