Jacob Daniels, "The Jews of Edirne: The End of Ottoman Europe and the Arrival of Borders" (Stanford UP, 2025)

Summary

Podcast Summary: New Books Network – Jacob Daniels on The Jews of Edirne: The End of Ottoman Europe and the Arrival of Borders

Original Air Date: December 3, 2025
Host: McKenna Mezistrano
Guest: Jacob Daniels, Assistant Professor of Instruction and Assistant Director at the Schusterman Center for Jewish Studies, University of Texas at Austin

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Overview

This episode features a rich and detailed interview with historian Jacob Daniels about his new book, The Jews of Edirne: The End of Ottoman Europe and the Arrival of Borders (Stanford University Press, 2025). Daniels and host McKenna Mezistrano delve into the distinctive Jewish experience in Edirne (Adirne), focusing on the community's political, social, and economic evolution from the late Ottoman period (1908) to the aftermath of the 1934 Thrace events. The discussion examines how Jews in this border region navigated changing national identities, shifting political regimes, communal dynamics, and the complex significance of borders in 20th-century southeastern Europe.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Jacob Daniels’ Path to Edirne Jewish History

• Daniels began his PhD at Stanford in pursuit of working with Aron Rodriguez, initially drawn to the anomalous 1934 Thrace events—“the only case of mob violence, sort of Muslim neighbors attacking their Jewish neighbors in the history of the Turkish Republic” [03:08].
• Other inspirations: discovery of the Ladino newspaper La Voz de la Verdad (1910–); broader historical questions about the meaning and power of borders, both in Ottoman Europe and contemporary discourse.

  “I just felt like borders were and continue to be an important topic. And at Dirnay, being a city and province that becomes a border town, that story attracted me.” [04:30]

2. Setting the Scene: Edirne & its Distinctiveness [06:33–13:08]

• Geography & Demography:
  • Edirne Province (not just the city) was a network of towns, notable for Jews living across small towns—unusually compared to Ottoman port cities.
  • Major ethnic groups: Jews, Muslim Turks, Greeks (Rum), Bulgarians, Armenians.

  “Compared to, say, Izmir or Salonica, you see Jews more spread out in Edirne province, living throughout the southeast corner of Europe... a pattern that seemed to start somewhere in the 19th century.” [06:38]

• Economic Roles:
  • Jews acted as agricultural middlemen, army provisioners; deeply integrated in Ottoman economic and military life.
  • Edirne, not a major port, was less influenced by Western merchants, more embedded in Ottoman systems.
• Cultural Fluidity:
  • Although termed “provincial,” Edirne’s diversity rivaled port cities.
  • Political and cultural orientation oscillated between Istanbul and Salonica.

3. Phase I (1908–1912): Political Experimentation [14:24–24:12]

• Key Figures:
  • Joseph Baris Kaq (Barisak): Newspaper editor, leading voice for a dual Jewish-Ottoman identity—resisted both assimilationist and separatist extremes.

    “He wants to be...the Jewish nation and the Ottoman people—that Jews should be Jewish and Ottoman at the same time...” [15:41]

  • Competing Ideologies:
    • Ottoman integrationists (Turkish-speaking, law school educated)
    • Alliance Israélite Universelle alumni (French-language assimilation with Ottoman civic pride)
    • Early Zionists (youth, Maccabi sports club, limited traction pre-1920s)
• Illustrative Incident:
  • 1910 shootout between Jews and police over a demolished home/bar shows lively (and sometimes risky) public political engagement; followed by communal leaders favoring quiet mediation despite some criticism for passivity [26:05].

4. Phase II (1912–1918): Balkan Wars and Cautious Political Retreat [25:23–37:47]

• Impact of Balkan Wars (1912):
  • Yugely destabilizing—refugee flows, ethnic cleansing across all groups except Jews, loss of surrounding territories (Salonica, parts of Bulgaria and Greece).

    “Jews are in the eye of the storm...not almost never victims of ethnic cleansing...but in the middle of this swirl of violence.” [27:43]

  • Jews shift from experimentation to “active but cautious” politics: withdrawing into traditional strategies of royal alliance, seeking protection from high authorities (especially Talaat Pasha, himself from Edirne).

    “...combined with the old Jewish political strategy of royal alliance... aligning Jewish community...with the highest authority in the land.” [29:12]

  • Refraining from public support for Christian neighbors, toning down public complaints—reflecting acute awareness of minority vulnerability.

5. Women’s Leadership: Angela Gueron & Julie Beja [37:47–54:56]

• Angela Gueron:
  • Director of the Alliance Girl’s School; emerges as a powerful communal leader by organizing relief during wartime and holding authority over significant educational and financial resources.

    “...running an alliance school put one in a very powerful position in control of resources... the budget that an Allianz school had is... a lot of money.” [38:36]

  • Frequent conflicts with male communal leaders over accountability and female authority.
  • Her letters, journals (especially during the 1912–13 siege), provide rare insight into women’s roles and intra-communal tensions.
• Julie Beja:
  • Successor to Gueron; her tenure marked by further clashes, this time with new political undertones—especially accusations of Zionist sympathies and tensions with other Alliance leadership.
  • Both women ultimately removed, but their leadership illustrates dynamic, contested gender and political roles within Edirne’s Jewish community.

6. Phase III: The 1934 Thrace Events – Violence & Exodus [54:56–69:45]

• Background:
  • By 1934, Christians had been largely expelled; a diminished but still significant Jewish community remained.
  • Efforts to promote a “Muslim bourgeoisie” faltered—Jews occupied crucial economic spaces (agricultural middlemen, small merchants).
  • Intensified local resentment; state authorities suspicious of minorities in border regions.
• Events:
  • Triggered by a government inspector’s strongly antisemitic report, violence erupted in towns across Edirne: looting, attacks, intimidation.

    “He writes like a very classic, all these anti-Semitic tropes about the Jews of this region... the economy is in their hands... exploiting the Turkish peasant.” [58:40]

  • No deaths, but a quarter of Jews flee immediately, mostly to Istanbul; permanent decline and dispersal follows.

    “This is the beginning of the end...the community loses its critical mass and it really becomes provincial. ...There’s no more violence like that. But...it just doesn’t feel like the kind of place that Jews like to live...” [65:38]

7. Epilogue: ‘Bordering the Holocaust’ [69:45–78:44]

• World War II and the Border’s Double-Edged Role:
  • The Edirne border “saves” the remaining Jews during the Holocaust: Nazis occupy only the Greek side; Turkish Edirne Jews are not deported, though subjected to persecution like the punishing ‘wealth tax.’
  • Yet, Jews from Bulgaria were caught in a deadly border-limbo—states forcing them back and forth, suffering starvation and violence until Turkish authorities allowed many to settle.

    “...the story, much of this book is about local Jews, like, resisting the logic of the border... that resistance only lasts so long.” [72:01]

  • Daniels argues that, while Jews long resisted defining themselves by state borders, the logic of the modern border—deciding life, death, expulsion—eventually became unavoidable, fundamentally changing the fate of local Jewish identity.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the unique pattern of Jewish settlement:
  “Jews from the city of Adirne, sort of colonizing...moving out to these smaller towns, probably for economic reasons... [They were] heavily integrated with the Ottoman state, especially in the form of the army.”
  —Jacob Daniels [06:45]

• On the period of political experimentation:
  “An interesting case...there’s now after 1908 there’s a parliament...his vision of the future of the Ottoman Empire is...decentralized. A system where Armenians, Jews, Greeks, Bulgarians have...some degree of autonomy and act politically as Jews, Greeks, Bulgarians...”
  —Jacob Daniels [18:42]

• On the seismic shift post-Balkan Wars:
  “All this goes away because during and after the Balkan wars there’s a sense of fear, there’s a sense of like, you know, we don’t want to be next.”
  —Jacob Daniels [32:05]

• On women’s communal leadership:
  “...the directors, especially the women who ran these schools [Alliance] will...become some of the most powerful leaders in the community...”
  —Jacob Daniels [38:11]

• On the paradox of Jewish economic “dominance”:
  “...Jews are becoming more and more prominent in...occupations over the course of the 20s and early 30s. It does seem to be the case that these plans to create like a Muslim bourgeoisie were frustrated in the sense that Jews filled a lot of the positions left by departing Christians.”
  —Jacob Daniels [57:39]

• On the defining violence of 1934:
  “...in like literally every single town that he [the inspector] visited where he spoke to the notables, anti-Jewish violence breaks out. I think it’s fair to say pogroms...They have a lot of the hallmarks of pogroms...”
  —Jacob Daniels [61:30]

• On the ironic protection of Turkish borders in WWII:
  “The border saves the Jewish community of Adiranite...Jews in Demotico will be almost entirely deported to Auschwitz just across the border. Adirne Jews will not be touched by the Holocaust in the sense that Turkey stays out of the war...”
  —Jacob Daniels [70:13]

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• Jacob Daniels’ background and entry into Edirne studies — [02:27–05:49]
• Describing Edirne’s unique demographics and economy — [06:33–13:30]
• Political experimentation among Jews, 1908–1912 (Barisak, Alliance, integrationist clubs) — [14:24–25:23]
• Shift to caution after the Balkan Wars — [25:23–37:47]
• Women’s leadership: Angela Gueron & Julie Beja — [37:47–54:56]
• 1934 Thrace events: violence and exodus — [54:56–69:45]
• Epilogue: WWII, the Holocaust, and the new iron meaning of borders — [69:45–78:44]

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Conclusion

Jacob Daniels paints a portrait of the Jews of Edirne as deeply intertwined with the shifting fortunes and anxieties of the late Ottoman and early republican eras. The community’s experiments with integration, autonomy, and communal leadership were shaped and ultimately curtailed by war, state-building, and the hardening of borders. Edirne's trajectory encapsulates broader European and Ottoman-Jewish dilemmas about identity, safety, and the power—and peril—of lines on a map. Daniels’ work, as discussed here, is vital for anyone interested in rethinking the meanings of borders and minority experience in 20th-century Europe.

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For further details and personal stories, listeners are encouraged to read the book “The Jews of Edirne: The End of Ottoman Europe and the Arrival of Borders.”

Transcript

[Jacob Daniels]

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Welcome to the New Books Network.

[McKenna Mezistrano]

Hello everyone. Welcome back to New Books in Jewish Studies, a channel on the New Books Network. My name is McKenna Mezistrano and today I'm here with Jacob Daniels to discuss his new book, the Jews of Edirne, the End of Ottoman Europe and the Arrival of Borders, just released in June 2025 through Stanford University Press. Jacob is Assistant professor of Instruction and Assistant Director of the Schusterman center for Jewish Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. He received his PhD in history from Stanford University, which is where we met Jake. It's great to have you here today, McKenna.

[Jacob Daniels]

It's great to be here. Thank you so much for taking the time to do this interview. It's always, always has been and will be a pleasure to chat with you.

[McKenna Mezistrano]

Awesome. So we always start like this. Just begin by telling us a little bit about yourself and perhaps share a little bit about how you came to study the Jews of Edirne.

[Jacob Daniels]

Yeah. So short version, you know, I started the history PhD program at Stanford in 2015. I really wanted to work with Aron Rodriguez, the person who, who became my advisor and mentor. And it was one of the rare cases in life where I got, I got my first choice, I got what I wanted. So there I was, first year history PhD at Stanford, sitting in a Rowan's office and you know, we were talking about ideas for My first research paper.

[McKenna Mezistrano]

And.

[Jacob Daniels]

I was drawn to this story of the Thrace events, the truck, the trachea of 1934. It was. It's a curious incident in that it's the only case of mob violence, sort of Muslim neighbors attacking their Jewish neighbors in the history of the Turkish Republic. You know, so anomalies are. Are interesting. Right. And I wanted to explore that case, and I wrote my first research paper about that. And then I learned from Olga Bordovalla, our Ladino teacher, about Labo's La Verdad, this sort of underexplored Ladino newspaper published in adirne starting in 1910. And I got a hold of the PDF of that paper and I just sort of dove in, I think. I think. So there's sort of two sides that. That the sources were available, there was work that needed to be done, and that was just sort of. I was getting sucked in more and more as I explored. And then meanwhile, simultaneously, you know, the country, I think, was sort of was caught in this border hysteria. So now, like 2016, the election, you know, is all happening in the background as I'm starting my PhD work. And I just felt like borders were and continue to be an important topic. And at Dirnay, being a city and province that becomes a border town becomes a border province, that story attracted me. So I sort of felt simultaneously this, on the sort of narrow, kind of nerdy side, that. That this was. There was work to be done, there were sources. I was curious to read more and more. And then on. On the big picture side, you know, just looking around at the. The rhetoric in our country, around the world, about borders. What is up with borders, right? What, what are they? Why are they such an obsession for people? These are questions that I want to sort of explore at the same time. And I realized, you know, here's my chance to sort of fill a gap, an important, you know, gap in. In Jewish history and Sephardi history, Ottoman Jewish history at the same time, I hope, you know, work. Work towards some answers to some pretty big questions about. About borders and modern political identities and all that.

[McKenna Mezistrano]

Yeah. So the book spans about 1908 to 1934. And we'll get into the various phases that you outline throughout the book. But as a starting point, and this is, I think, a good segue because you were mentioning the border. Can you set the scene of Edirne province, discuss maybe who lived there in the 19th century, on the eve of 1908, what did they do? How is this province organized? And I say Edirne province. Because I just want to make sure that people know that this book is not only about the city of Edirne, but actually about what you kind of describe as a network of towns. So if you could just set the scene, I think that would be helpful.

[Jacob Daniels]

So first of all, network of towns indeed. And that's maybe a good starting point. Typically, you know, there are patterns in Jewish history. Jews tend to live in the big city, right? And Edirne is no exception, the big city of the province. Edirne itself definitely has by far the largest Jewish population of, of the region. But Jews live in the surrounding towns to a greater extent than other Ottoman places. Compared to, say, Izmir or Salonica, you see Jews more spread out in Edirne province, living throughout the southeast corner of Europe in towns with names like Kirk Larly, for example, or what is today called the multicole Greece. This was a pattern that seemed to start somewhere in the 19th century. Adirne, Jews, Jews from the city of Adiring, sort of colonizing, if you will, in the sort of old fashioned sense of that word, moving out to these smaller towns, probably for economic reasons, working as often middlemen in agricultural, doing agricultural work during the city, sort of being the hub of this network. But we see, so on the eve of the 1908 Young Turk Revolution, Jews are very integrated into the local economy and the local scene in a way that I would argue is special. Of course, this happens throughout the Ottoman Empire, but maybe not to this extent do we see Jews living in small towns, dealing with peasants, villagers, farmers, both Muslim and Christian, dealing with the army. Jews are a, a not uncommon Jewish occupation is to be like a provisioner of goods to the Ottoman army. There are major Ottoman army bases in Adirne. This is an old role that Adirne played as the, the staging ground for Ottoman offensive movements into Europe. And then as the empire sort of went on the defense sometime in, let's say the early 19th century kind of became a stronghold, a defensive position for the Ottoman army. It switched, but the constant was a large military presence and, and that affected sort of the Jewish economy very much. So I would say we see a Jewish community that is heavily integrated with the Ottoman state, especially in the form of the army with local Muslims and Christians. And you know, Journey is not a port city. There are some ports in the region, but they're not nearly as important as the more famous ones of Salonica and Istanbul, Ismir. So the economy is less oriented toward ports and less oriented toward Western European merchants. So I would, you know, perhaps this is arguable, but we see an especially Ottoman Jewish community that, that does business with, with the Ottoman state, with other Ottoman citizens less so foreign merchants. Also by way of setting the scene. Adena province is very diverse. Even though this isn't the, the cosmopolitan port city type, it's perhaps as diverse as the famous port cities. And you know, this sort of cosmopolitan is a word that, you know, much ink has been spilled about it. And what exactly does it mean? Perhaps it's not exactly the right word to describe during a province. And indeed what, you know, as, you know, what say the Istanbul Lavino Papers have a column right in the provinces and, and that's where news about Adirne would pop up in, in the provinces. So it's, it is in a, in a narrow, literal sense provincial, but at the same time it's very diverse. Very large Greek room population, one of the largest room populations in the empire at the time. Also substantial Bulgarian Orthodox Bulgarian Christian populations and Armenian populations as well. Very little work has been done about the Armenians of province, but a pretty large community. So it's diverse. Jews are interacting daily. At least merchants or people with mercantile doing mercantile work are interacting daily with Muslim and Christian Ottoman citizens. I say that as opposed to, you know, Western European merchants interacting very much with the Ottoman state, the Ottoman army Jews are in the local government. Even before the 1908 Young Turk Revolution, you see some Jewish names in the municipality and they're in between Istanbul and Salonica. That's another interesting thing. Sort of two worlds that we know a lot about from excellent previous scholarship. Eden is right in between. And you see sometimes on the western edge of the province in towns like Kamfi today, the Greek name Xanthi oriented more towards Salonika on the eastern side of the province. See now called Tekirda, you can see definitely more oriented toward Istanbul and the city of Adiranis somewhere in between. And so that's an interesting story too. I mean it's really, it's its own, it's its own unit, it's its own entity. They're not Istanbul Jews, they're not Salonica Jews, they're Adirani Jews. And sometimes the Ladino paper would say we Adirnilis, that is the Turkish word, like to this day for like an Adirne Denison. So how's that by. By. By way of setting the scene.

[McKenna Mezistrano]

That's great. Yeah, thank you. And I appreciate also the comparisons to the perhaps more well known Ottoman Jewish communities and highlighting the fact that it is those port cities that really have received a lot of scholarly attention. And what you are focusing on is something rather different for all the reasons that you outlined.

[Jacob Daniels]

And maybe I'll add. McKenna, just real quick, what was once Adirne province, the northern part of Edirne province in the 19th century, is now Bulgaria. So that's also an important point of clarification. The province used to be bigger. I mean, if we go from like the 1860s to, you know, 1923, the birth of the Turkish Republic, the province gradually shrinks. So but at one point it included northern Adrena Province, included much of today's southern Bulgaria. And so that, and that change, this place that was once called, you know, a dear province, suddenly becoming part of this new country called Bulgaria is a kind of recurring theme of the book as well.

[McKenna Mezistrano]

Definitely. So let's move on to, I guess the first sort of era or the first period in the book, which is roughly 1908 to 1912, which you call a period of political experimentation. And there are a number of figures in this period who you use to help illustrate the various politics of Edirne Ali Jews. Maybe you can discuss a couple of these figures. I found Baris Haq to be particularly fascinating if you want to focus on him and maybe flesh out a bit what made you characterize this period as one of political experimentation. And then we'll talk about what happened afterwards.

[Jacob Daniels]

Yes, indeed. So Joseph Baris Kaq emerges as one of the main characters, if you will. This is admittedly right as you, you know as well as anyone something we wrestle with as historians. You know, the guys who write the newspapers tend to take up a lot of space in our work because we, we know their voice, we know what they think. We know, we know quite well what they think. And so, you know, I try not to give him too much space just because he's the one who left the largest record. But to some extent I think it's inevitable. Also, he is very interesting. I think it's not just that he's the loudmouth, it's not just that he's the one who left the biggest record, but his story is very interesting and I think very indicative of life for Adiran Jews. So maybe I'll start with him and then maybe I'll try to throw in a couple other characters and political views to give you a sense of the range and this, this so called experimentation. So Bar, it's interesting, it's a little bit of people can claim him and call him what they want. Like I've seen in more in some literature published in Israel in Hebrew. They I've seen them called a Zionist and his newspaper, a Zionist paper, but I think that's not quite right, at least not before the 1920s. He, his line and you know, sort of taking him, taking his words at face value, he wants to be sort of speak in the name of the Jewish nation and the Ottoman people that, that Jews should be, should be Jewish and Ottoman at the same time that there's no need to surrender the, the so called national identity as Jews that is perfectly compatible and harmonious with a modern political identity as Ottoman citizens. This is an idea that's, that's come up in, in some previous scholarship before. This is, this isn't brand new but maybe, maybe it's especially prevalent in Adirnay. So when he says nation and national identity, the Jewish nation, this is something of a synonym for millet, right? The Ottoman Turkish word that maybe we can define as semi autonomous ethno religious community. I always say to my students, sorry for all the hyphens, but it's just the best definition I think semi autonomous ethno religious community. And after the revolution, I think bar is, I think typical of dirty Jews are trying to walk this line down the middle and sort of have it both ways. And they're wary of Zionism or the sort of Jewish nationalism that could imply secession or independence on a territory. They're also, they're into the talk of, of union and progress. The name of the political party, the Community of Union and Progress and, and the, the, the party's call for union of the elements. But at the same time Barischak and people like him really criticize Jews who they think go too far and want to sort of put their Jewish identity in the background and are sort of in Barry Scott's words like afraid to act as Jews in the political realm. And so an interesting case just to give you an illustrative example. There's, you know, there's now after 1908 there's a parliament and there's a Jewish, there are Jewish parliamentarians from Salonica, from Istanbul, from Izmir, from Baghdad, but not from the Jewish population isn't quite big enough to get. It's probably the biggest Jewish population in the Ottoman Empire that doesn't get a Jewish parliamentarian. And so like Bari. So for Barisak, when something happens in a dirne when there's what, what he his words, an anti Semitic incident, anti Semitismo in Ladino, he demands that like the, the, the members of parliament who happen to be Jewish stick up and, and and speak up for the Jews of Adirne. And he's outraged when they don't. Now, of course, the logic of. Of. Of parliament and, and these. Elect these. These electoral systems is right. A deputy in parliament represents a place, right, Like a region, not. Not an ethnic group or religious group. But Bari Scott says, like, that's nonsense. Of course, of course, like a Jewish member of parliament, even if he's from Istanbul or Izmir or Salonica, has to represent the interests of Jews because his. His vision of the future of the Ottoman Empire is one. Maybe we could use the word decentralized. A system where Armenians, Jews, Greeks, Bulgarians have some. Some degree of. Of autonomy and act politically as Jews, Greeks, Bulgarians, you know, in the name of their community, whereas others in the Deir and the other Adena Jews will, will, will. And that's often younger men who've been to the law school in Istanbul will push for, like, deeper integration and say, you know, no, we're. We should. We should learn Ottoman Turkish. We should really act as first and foremost Ottoman citizens. So that's one interesting difference. And then you'll see. So on that note, on the more we could say integrationist camp, maybe, um, there's some young men who are either at the law school in Istanbul or recent graduates, and they're coming back to Adirne and they're starting these clubs where they're really pushing learning and speaking Ottoman Turkish. And they're actually giving talks and lectures in Turkish, which is interesting because a more common thing, you'll see. I guess we could call this now like a third view. It's not too different from. From Barischoks would be the Alliance. The. So by that, I mean the alliance is really. Universell is an international Jewish organization based in Paris that runs a network of schools stretching from North Africa to the Middle east to the Balkans. And these schools aim to teach Jewish children to give them a proper French education, French language. Also, like, read the French classics, to dress French, to use silverware in a French way, you know, to sort of be proper French people, which by their logic, will make them better citizens of the countries in which they live. And the. So you'll see the. They're also clubs of, like, Allianz alumni. And they do a lot of events, especially after 1908, and they'll give these talks and have these events about, like, being Ottoman citizens and integrating and all that, are even talking about the value of Ottoman Turkish. But the talk is in French, so that's another. We could call that maybe a A third political style. It's sort of pro integration and cheering on this young Turk revolution. But there's just a deep assumption that, you know, French is the universal language forever, you know. Yeah, yeah. And then later Jewish nationalism that crosses the threshold into Zionism will appear. I mean, an early sign, something that flirts with. That would be the first during his first Maccabi club, which the Maccabi Sports Youth. Youth Sports and Athletic Organization opens just a couple years after the 1908 revolution. But then it closes its doors like a year or two later. So excuse me, it has a bit of a false start. But see, but you see that camp is there from, from pretty early on after the revolution.

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[McKenna Mezistrano]

So correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that many of these sort of different camps or different ideologies and debates that you were describing, a lot of them are happening before 1912. And it seems that something that you kind of touch on in the book is that there's a shift in 1912 to a more, I think what you describe as cautious politics on the part of Adirnez Jews. Could you maybe explain a little bit what happened in 1912 to cause this shift. And I think actually you described them as active but cautious. So maybe you could unpack this duality a little bit and explain what you were trying to capture there.

[Jacob Daniels]

Yes, and let me, let me just give one more. Of course, you know, as you were speaking, I thought of one more example. Let me give one more. Let me give one more example because I want to, I want to fully answer your very good question of political experimentation, and then I'll, I'll lead into answering that new question. So just, just to give you a sense of what I mean by experimentation in. I want to say it's 1910, there's actually, there's this incident where, again, long story short, the Ottoman authorities, the municipal authorities, demolish the home and bar restaurant of a Jew. And it's widely seen as. Because the, the guy's bar restaurant was competition for a municipal garden and venue across the street, even though the authorities use a pretext that it was structurally unsound. But this is seen as, as a grave injustice. They demolish this guy's house. Jews gather and they protest. One thing leads to another and it becomes this like, this face off between like a mob of Jews and the police. And it breaks out into a gunfight and shots are fired both, both ways. Somehow no one is killed. The, the British consul in his report says, like, you know, this proves that like, like, you know, in a typical, like, British condescending way, like neither Jews nor Turks are, have, have good aim or something like that. But I think it's also possible that they were purposely shooting like above each other's heads, like, not shooting to kill because it does seem strange like that no one was killed in the shootout. But, you know, okay, pretty big deal. You don't, you don't find a lot of like, like Jews versus police shootouts in Ottoman, in Ottoman history. And then the, the police, like sort of, they go around the Jewish quarter arresting people and there's this like, very heated trial. In the end, the Jews are acquitted. So is an interesting kind of test of the supposedly liberal era. And it's a bit of a Rorschach test, maybe you can see what you want, but. So on the one hand, the Jews are acquitted. No, no, there's, there's a little touch and go for a few weeks. But no, after this shootout, no Jews are sort of punished. At the same time, community leaders, the members of the communal council really worked hard to strike a, like a conciliary, to sort of be mediators in this, in this, during this, like, touchy Two weeks when the trials were happening and other Jews wanted to maintain like a stronger hold the line and sort of keep protesting the demolish, the demolition of the building and said, well, okay, but the, you know, the guy never got reimbursed and keep pushing and a stronger sort of Jewish politics. But in the end, the Consil, the, the communal council's sort of peacemaking wins the day and it's successful in, in a sense. But there are many Jews like Baris Kak and even I guess a woman will talk about more in a minute. Angel Giron, the director of the Allianz Girl School, who doesn't usually agree with Baris Clark, but in this case she does. They both write separately. Like it's shameful that the communal council sort of like capitulated and gave in. So there's, I think there's a camp or multiple camps even during this period of peak experimentation that are really pushing for like a stronger Jewish politics and feel, feel emboldened by all this talk of, of liberty now. So that's, that's, that's an example of experimentation. 1912, to answer your question, the Balkan wars, the short answer is the Balkan wars break out in the fall of 1912 and this completely changes everything. For during their residence, the Ottoman Empire, the Ottoman Balkans, so the Ottomans lose Salonica and what today, much of what is today Bulgaria, Greece, Serbia is taken during these wars and there's a refugee crisis. Muslims from those lost territories flow into the heartland of the Ottoman Empire. There's really ugly ethnic cleansing committed by almost all parties and against almost all parties during the war. So in the early days of the war, the say, like the Bulgarian army and the Greek army really do horrible things toward Turkish speaking Muslims. And also, you know, the Greek army does horrible things to Bulgarian Christians and the Bulgarian army does horrible things to Greek Christians. And then later in the war when the Ottomans are sort of retaking Edirne, for example, they commit atrocities. Atrocities was like the word that the press used, the European press. They commit all sorts of atrocities against Christians, Armenians, Greeks, Bulgarians. Jews are in the eye of the storm, as I say in the book. They're not, they're almost never victims of ethnic cleansing at this time. They're certainly not perpetrators, but they're sort of just in the middle of this swirl of violence. And when the dust settles, I mean, if it ever really settles, it's a pretty tumultuous decade. But after the Balkan wars, the new politics for the Jews of Adirne is this is where we really start to see what is called kayadez. And in Ladino, keeping your head down, sort of quietism combined with the old Jewish political strategy of royal alliance, which is sort of just aligning Jewish community, aligning itself with the highest authority in the land. So in this case, really by, by 1913, that means the, the. The ruling cup triumvirate in Istanbul. One of the three members of the triumvirate is, is Talat Pasha, who's from Adirne and both attended and later taught at Jewish schools in Adirne. He knows a lot of Adiran Jews, know Talat Pasha personally. And both Talat Pasha and Jamal Pasha become like their names are in the, are in Lavo all the time when there's an incident when, when it looks like local authorities are sort of mixing up Jews in some of these, like, deportation orders. When, when they're, when local authorities are, say, rounding up Greeks. There's an incident, for example, after the Balkan wars where citizens of Greece living in a dirty province are being rounded up, brought to Tekirda, put on boats and sent to Greece. And so here's one example. Like a single Jew named Albert Alfasa is, is ensnared in this. I guess he was a Greek citizen. And the labos of just. Is covering this case, like every day, like the Alfasa affair, a Jew was wrongfully included in this deportation of Greeks. We, you know, the chief rabbi of Adirne has notified the chief rabbi of Istanbul and he is meeting with Jamal Pasha or Tala Pasha, depending, you know, and they, and they, you know, this classic royal alliance. They go to the highest authority and plead the case. And it usually works. Indeed, like a few weeks later, Jamal Pasha or Tala Pasha will send, will sort of correct the mistake and say, yeah, a Jew should not have been deported. Albert Fasa can, can go back to his home in, in the town of Uzumkopu, for example. So we, we see, you know, I, I say this. I don't think it's too loaded. I'm just, it's, it's a chronological fact with a, a regression back to, like, older strategies. Whereas after 1908, there was this brief experimentation with, you know, parliamentary politics, right? Like now there's parliament. You don't, you don't, you don't send the Jewish intercessor. Intercessor, That's a word that I always get tripped up by. Stadtlohn, right? To, to, to the king. Right? Now we have Parliament. Now we have representatives in Parliament. And we saw a lot of debate among what exactly that means. And how that system is going to work. But I do think that Jews are, were trying to use this parliamentary system. Jews were, I think forming sort of different sort of intercommunal alliances and, and, and, and working with the Greek or Bulgarian communities at certain points and, and even citing them as examples like baris clock in 1910 or 1911 would say or claim. There's probably something to this. Hey, like the Greeks and the Armenians are not ashamed to like act in the political realm as Greeks or as Armenians. Why are we Jews like so cowardly and afraid to act in the political realm as Jews? So using like Christian communities as an example. But this all goes away because during and after the Balkan wars there's a sense of fear, there's a sense of like, you know, we don't want to be next. And literally Christians are just being expelled. There are fewer Christians around them. And this is not a climate where you're going to like point to the Christian community as like exemplary. So no more, no more, no more articles in the press about like, hey, we should, we should do what the Greeks are doing, we should do what the Armenians doing. I mean quite the contrary now it's like they barely talk about the Christian communities and to the extent that they do, they repeat, they seem to be repeating like government press releases. They just say like there's like a on again, off again column as, as really an ethnic cleansing of the room of the Greek Orthodox community is happening in 1914. There's this column in LA VO's Lavradot says like the emigration of the Greeks. And I'd be like two, just a few sentences like the emigration of the Greeks continued this week, you know, maybe some estimates of like how many Greeks left and they call it emigration. So they're not going to criticize the government. They're certainly not going to like, you know, say laudatory things about, about Christian communities. And, and it's back to Royal Alliance, I see.

[McKenna Mezistrano]

Yeah, well, that was an incredible narration of this change over time. And I want to just dwell here for a couple more minutes to make sure that we talk about a couple of other fascinating figures in the book. One of them you already mentioned very briefly and that was Angela Gueron. But there's also Julie Beja and I wonder if you could speak a little bit about what their stories demonstrate about these changing Jewish politics in Edirne before and after the Balkan wars. And I also just want to, you know, use this as a time to foil, as you said, Barisak is a loud Voice. He's writing in the press all the time. But you were really able to access these two female figures and I think really bring them to light. So maybe in telling their stories you could also speak about the sources that you used and how you were able to do that.

[Jacob Daniels]

Yeah, well, thank you. I'm glad to hear that. That, that, that was your experience reading the book. So one, you know, the audience, the legacy of the audience continues to be debated to this day, like in safari studies. But perhaps, you know, if there's like a sort of good column, bad column, pros and cons of the alliance and how the alliance stands up by our sort of values today in 21st century America. Perhaps one of the strongest, you know, in the good column is the schools that it built for girls and the roles that it gave to women as teachers and directors of these schools. This was truly revolutionary. And this has been written about before. Of course, not only the fact that Jewish girls could get an education, a modern French education at that, but the fact that the, the directors, especially the women who ran these schools will at least in the dirne will, will in some cases become some of the most powerful leaders in the community. You know, running an alliance school put, put one in a very powerful position in control of resources. I mean the, the budget that an Allianz school had is, is one of the sort of like biggest pools of money, you know, by the standards of, of an Ottoman Jewish community is, it was a lot of money. And, and in fact, what do we see is, is one of the biggest points, bones of contention that, that, that the men complain about with some of these female school directors. They're not sharing like their, their accounting books, you know, where they're not, they're not sharing the budget with us. They're hiding their accounting books. Immediately you see a lot of resentment from male leaders, including the aforementioned Bark, that, that these, it's a recurring theme that the female directors aren't, aren't being transparent with the finance of the school, but they control large budgets. They have access to like visiting European diplomats, you know, French, especially French consuls or other people in diplomatic core will come like visit these schools. And then, and this is well documented in an article from some years ago by Avador Levy. He looks at Angel Garon and so, so by the way, the kind of sources, because they work for the alliance, they have to write these, I think bi weekly reports for their bosses back in Paris. And well, I guess maybe that's another, another good thing we can say about the Alliance. They what they did for, for Jewish women was revolutionary and they kept good records.

[McKenna Mezistrano]

Of course.

[Jacob Daniels]

They did a good job, which is great for us. Yes, it's good for us. They did a good job of archiving their records that we can use to this day. So for someone like, like Angela Garon we can actually now much of this is digitized. Um, we can see her, her, her like regular reports back to Paris and there's a wonderful document her, her journal that she kept during the Balkan wars during the Bulgarian Siege of Edirne 1912-1913, where she documents life in a city under siege. And perhaps especially interesting some of the intra communal dynamics and how during I think as is often the case, right, during like wartime, in unusual times, maybe unusual or non traditional leaders can can emerge and step up and she emerges as one. She has the girls, her students sew bandages and like other needed supplies for Ottoman soldiers in his military hospital. By the way, the, the picture on the front on the COVID of the book is Angela Garon and another Allianz school director, Rosa Mitrani. They're volunteering for the Red Crescent during, during the siege of Edirne surrounded by their male colleagues, presumably all Muslim male colleagues. And we see these two Jewish women in the center. So they, they, they, they volunteered and had their students sew bandages for soldiers in the hospital and the valley. The governor of during a province sort of writes them a thank you letter, acknowledges them and this. And this month this really, this really incensed like Barisak and the, the chief rabbi and they, they resent. It's pretty clear that they resent a woman rising to, to a position of so much power, having direct access to the governor, right. The volley of the province and, and stuff like that. So I think the position of like directing an Allianz girl school had been around for some time, but the right combination of factors I think just the personality. Angel Garon just happened to have a sort of bold personality and maybe like the Young Turk Revolution, like is. Is all that talk of sort of like liberty and, and these new supposedly modern values might have also kind of fueled her to sort of sort of take a stance. And I refuse to share her accounting books with the chief rabbi and not take advice from the, the rich Jewish women. So basically like the wives of the communal council members, right? The communal council is usually like the leading merchants of the Jewish community have this position of leadership and then their wives have like de facto positions of like usually it's in, in this kind of traditional role for wealthy women that they're like philanthropists that they're a common thing is like they'll help found and, and run the Jewish orphanage and, and, and then know. I guess they assumed that they also had the right to kind of give advice to the woman who directed the Alliance Girl School. But Angela Girl didn't feel that way and would not take their advice. Right. And so she does all these things that really tick off the, the, the leadership of the community. During the Balkan wars, they were trying to get rid of her. The Balkan wars probably bought her some more time. You know, in the chaos of the wars, they really weren't in a position to like, they, they, they had bigger finish to fry. They, they. They weren't able to fire her during the wars. They couldn't even communicate with Paris, in fact. And she plays this like really important role as a leader in the community. Eventually they will get her though. After the Balkan wars, pressure from the community, um, gets her fired. She also probably made some missteps with Alian's leadership and it all kind of combines to get her in the end and, and she is fired. But, but yeah, she's, she's definitely an important character. And I think you asked, you asked.

[McKenna Mezistrano]

About someone else about Julie Beja, if you want to talk about her briefly.

[Jacob Daniels]

Yeah. So then a couple years later, actually I believe it is her replacement. Geraln's replacement is Julie Bea, whose. Whose maiden name was Nar, by the way. I once asked Devon Nar about this. There was no immediate connection that he could think of. And she was indeed, I think her family was from Salonica. And yeah, she is Giron's replacement. And at first glance it's like it's deja vu. Like it sort of happens all over again. Like the, the men in the community are like, she's not sharing the accounting books of the school and she's not listening to us and, and all this. And they definitely resent like she also is taking like a, like a. She's running the school like it's hers. She's. She's not. You know, it's a little bit unclear. I think this is gray area, right? Is, is, is, is the woman who directs the Alliance Girl School, does she answer to the man who directs the boys school or not? And I think just traditionally unwritten rule. Yes, she does. But now we see some personalities who say, no, I don't. And so people resent that, but the alliances are flipped. If you read more closely, there's some interesting twists. So things are changing now. This is now we're getting to World War I. Zionism is emerging. It will sort of Zionist rhetoric will really come out during the Greek occupation, which, which begins unofficially in 1919. And, and so Beija's tenure goes into the Greek occupation of Adirne. And so now we have a new, there's like a new political climate. And the, the woman who runs the girl school sort of ticks people off in a new way for, for different, like, political reasons. So while whereas Angela Garon was really a staunch advocate of integration, there's even this line at one point when the Ottomans retake Adirne in 1913, she said she's happy, she celebrates. But she also adds, you know, we could learn a thing or two. The Ottomans could learn a thing or two from the departing Bulgarians. For example, the Bulgarians made everyone speak their language. That's. And she says that's a good thing. I think the Ottomans should make everyone speak Turkish. So. Which is interesting glimpse into, into her, you know, what would later be called like sort of Turkish Turkification sort of stance. But now, now that we're in the year, a few years later, during the Greek occupation of Edirne, the Greeks. So first of all, 1917 Balfour Declaration was like the watershed moment for Zionism. Zionism is now like a real possibility for Jews around the world. Certainly we see that change in the Ottoman Empire at least, and greet. Whereas Zionism under the Ottoman Empire was complicated either. If you were going to be a Zionist, you had to be clear that your definition of Zionism like, basically didn't mean Zionism as we know it today. Like you had, you had to say, like, yes, I'm a Zionist. And by Zionist I mean like the Jewish community should, should continue to look after the interest of Jews. Like that's, that was the definition of Zionism that the Ottoman authorities were okay with. But under Greek occupation, Greece by and large is, is okay with Zionism even, even supportive of it. They see it, I think, as a, as like a fellow nationalist movement that calls for secession from the Ottoman Empire. And so they're, they're for it. And in that political climate, as, as people are starting to talk about Zionism, it looks like, and this is a little complicated, you have to read the chapter to get all the details, but because there's pen names are used, so we have to make some assumptions here. We have to like, take the word of certain people. But it looks like Julie Beja is a Zionist and is, is one of the leading voices in that camp and she drives certain people crazy. So now she's now the woman who runs the Alliance Girl School is ticking off certain communal leaders such as Moyes Mitrani, the director of the Allianz Boys School, really, really frustrating him for her Zionist views. And this is, this is a big story. You know, around this time and even earlier in places like Bulgaria there's like a young Zionists in the community really like revolt against the audience. Both, both for political reasons in terms of larger worldviews on Jewish nationalism, but also because they see the alliances as very like paternalistic and heavy handed and non democratic. And so voices like Julie Bejo's and others are expressing anti Allianz views. And now Baris Haq, the editor of La Vois de la Verdad is one of them. So the alliances are a little bit scrambled again. Long story short with Angel Giron, her colleague, the director of the Allianz Boy School defended her, whereas the editor of the newspaper, the editor of the LA newspaper bar was totally against her and just like criticized her every day. Well maybe that's an exaggeration. Criticized her regularly in his newspaper. Now a few years later it's flipped where actually Baris K, the newspaper editor likes Beja, whether it be for political reasons, because they're sort of, they're, there's, they're this Jewish nationalism that's, that's, that's turning into Zionism and maybe that they shared that or other, maybe other strategic reasons. He's defending her actually. But Moyes Mitrani, the director of the Allianz Girls School really despises her and writes and writes about her. It's quite amazing at a time of like, there's so much going on. Adiran is occupied by the Greek army. Like the world's on fire. He's talking, it's like the topic he writes about the most is Julie Beja. He hates her. He hates her so much. Also at this time the male to female ratio in Adirne at large and within the Jewish community is dropping both from people who died in World War I. And I think some men were leaving to like try their hand at business elsewhere there there are fewer men and more women. There's a shortage of men to do, to work certain jobs and women are working more. And this comes up too in, in Moise Mitrani's letters. How, how you know, women are working all these like mean occupations that aren't appropriate for women. So all these things are, are swirling around and I think he takes out a lot of his anxieties on Julie Beja and she again, she will also be canned after like a couple years. I mean, in the end these women don't really stand a chance. The power structures I think are too entrenched. Like they, they. I mean what's interesting is, is the fact that they, that they're able to launch these revolts. But in the end, you know, there's a lot of adversity forces working against them in, in the Jewish community in an Ottoman borderland in the early 20th century. So they don't, they, they don't last long. But, but what they do while they're there is really interesting.

[McKenna Mezistrano]

For sure, for sure. So coming towards the end of the book now, there is a significant turning point with the 1934 Thrace events which you mentioned way at the beginning of our interview today. So can you just again briefly summarize what happened and how do you interpret those events and this period for Edirnez Jews? And then after that we have unfortunately only about one question left and then we're gonna wrap up. But I think that this 1934 period is really important and it's also kind of the, the, the bookend of the story you're telling. So walk us through that.

[Jacob Daniels]

Yeah, right. Like I said, this was what brought me to the Jews of Virginia in the first place. So 1934 is, you know, 11 years into the Turkish Republic which is founded in 1923. Summary of sort of, you know, the intervening 11 years by and large Christians have been forced out of AD Province. There's the population exchange, the so called Greek Turkish population exchange. There's a sort of little known part of the Armenian genocide back, back in 1915, 1916. People, the Armenians of the Derne province are largely expelled, many of whom are sent to the Syrian desert to die. Bulgarians are largely pushed out. The province has very few Christians by the interwar period, certainly very few compared to how many it had in the early days, the days that we start off with in this discussion. The Jews are still there. The community is diminished because many have moved to Istanbul for more like economic reasons. But there's a substantial Jewish community. And you know, I think what happens. And Riffa Bali talks a little bit about this. The scholar Rifat Bali. There's an attempt, there's hopes that, you know, the Christians in much of the Ottoman Empire were often associated with the bourgeoisie and mercantile roles. And there's talk and hopes that now the Christians are gone, there'll be a Muslim bourgeoisie will be created, that a lot of the mercantile roles that Christians did will be filled by local Turkish speaking Muslims that doesn't really pan out. So Jews end up filling many of these roles. Now there are some important wrinkles here. The state is also for the first time we can speak of something like pro, like something that deserves the word. Industry is developing in a DNA. There are some factories and canneries, there are some like state banks, small time lenders are being replaced by like state banks. And you know, industry is kind of replacing small time handcrafts or what, what have you. And that the real big money work is, is mostly in the hands of Turkish speaking Muslims. Some of these big institutions. That's important context here. But these again some of these traditional Jewish and Christian occupations like being an agricultural middleman, buying crops from the peasants. You know there's this word in Turkish, koelu, it's hard to translate village. It's like villager slash peasant, buying crops maybe through like advanced contracts from peasants and then bringing them to the market maybe to Istanbul or maybe buying like, like milk from dairy farmers and then processing it into cheese in your facility. These become like or continue to be Jewish, common Jewish occupations. And in fact we can see there are these good, speaking of sources, there are these yearly almanacs that tell you supposedly like how many the names of people in like every important profession in like every town. And you can tell by the names almost always what someone's ethno religious background is. And you can see from these registers that in fact like not only did it, did they fail to create this like Muslim bourgeoisie but like it almost kind of backfires. Like Jews are becoming more and more prominent in, in some of these occupations over the course of the 20s and early 30s. And again important context here because you're gonna. So you see in the Turkish language press like sometimes saying it straight out, sometimes they don't say the word Jew, but like there's an article called like those who suck our blood, you know, and it's like they don't say Jews but it's pretty clearly dog whistling, signaling Jews. You'll see all this rhetoric about Jews or those people dominating the economy, having the economy in their hands, dominating the economy. It's important to add some context here that again the big industrial operations and the large banks and financial institutions are all in the hands of leading Turkish speaking Muslims. And also you know, when you read, I read some reports from international Jewish organizations From like the U.S. like the JDC, the joint distribution Committee, you know, they go to like quote unquote Eastern Jewish communities and see if they need Aid or whatever. And their report reports on like the Jews of Adirne are like, oh man, this community is living in poverty, right? Like, this place is basically like, this place is gross. And so you have to like, you have to hold that next to the Turkish newspaper saying like, like the Jewish capitalist has holds the economy in his hands, right? Like, so you gotta, you need some context here. But, but it does seem to be the case that these plans to create like a Muslim bourgeoisie were frustrated in the sense that Jews filled a lot of the positions left by departing Christians. And so that's one really important factor. There's a lot of resentment about that among certain like leaders. And, and there's kind of like again this, we're in the provinces now. I mean Adira is now, I think it's, now it's fair to call it DNA provincial. I think by the time we get to the 20s and early 30s, it's a border town. And you know, in, in these provincial places there's kind of like five guys who kind of really run the show, right? Because you see these names, they come up over and over again. They're in politics, they're in, they own the factories, they're lawyers, they're politicians, they own or write for the newspapers, right? It's kind of like a few, a small group of notables of Turkish speaking Muslim notables. And they really, at least there's a handful of them I discussed in chapter five. They, they do not love like the local Jewish community or at least they don't love what, what they see as like a frustrated attempt to create a Muslim bourgeoisie. And then meanwhile, so there's, there's this kind of perfect storm. Meanwhile the central government, this is, this is the government of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in Ankara is very concerned about border regions, about minorities in border regions. And they set up these special zones. The first, they call them like inspectorates. And the first one is in the southeast actually in, in a very Kurdish region of the country. They're, they're worried about trouble from actually Iraq in, in the south. And they, you know, they worry about Kurds who live on both sides of the border. They don't trust the Kurds basically. And they set up like they, they designate a special inspector who has kind of like carte blanche to just sort of keep an eye on the Kurds and has the power to like move and relocate. Leaders like certain Kurdish notables ironically get like sent to Adirne or Adirne province because they want to break up some of these notable Families and local leadership structures. And it's a, it's a very, it's been described by scholars as authoritarian. This is the authoritarian side of Kemalism. They do like, all these inspectors do all the things that like authoritarians do. They like work on infrastructure and they like monitor suspect populations and worry about border security. And so they do it in the southeast and then that's deemed like a success. And they say let's set up a similar special zone in the northwest at Dirne. And they send a guy in as an inspector again, his mission is like, it's this weird combination of like infrastructure, like military increase, like the military presence and like you know, keep an eye on potentially like non trustworthy minorities with you know, with the overall concern being like border security and geopolitics. And this guy goes around, meets with like local leaders. Exactly the kind of notables I was just describing. He, this guy from Ankara, the inspector writes a very. And now we can, you know, we really. It's tricky to use the word anti Semitism in the Ottoman period. Usually it's inappropriate I think to use the word anti Semitism despite what the Ladino Press said. Now 1934, you read this guy's report, which it's in, it's in the, the Turkish State Archive. This is anti Semitic. He writes like a very classic, all these anti Semitic tropes about the Jews of this region being like also traitors working with Bulgaria, which may, which might be this kind of weird twisting the fact that there are Ladino speaking Jews in Bulgaria and in Medina on both sides of the border. As I talk about throughout my book, I think he kind of twists that into this thing like oh, the Jews are spying for Bulgaria and the economy is in their hands. They're exploiting the Turkish peasant. Etc, he writes this report and then like a few weeks later in like literally every single town that he visited where he like spoke to the notables, anti Jewish violence breaks out. I think it's fair to say pogroms. There's a lot of debate. Can we call them pogroms? They certainly look a lot like pogroms. They have a lot of the hallmarks of pogroms where in a few days of sort of lawless violence, Jews in many of these towns. And again back to like how we started this interview. Jews are, are quite spread out in this region, right? Living, living in small towns. They're attacked, their houses are robbed, their, their shops are looted. No Jews are killed, which is a noteworthy detail. It doesn't seem to be this sort of just like wild anti Semitism, right? It's more of, you know, I think people got permission. You know, people everywhere are just inherently selfish, right? And people got permission to steal. And I think among the notables, there was a sense that, like, we need to fix this situation with like creating, you know, the, our attempt to create a Muslim bourgeoisie was frustrated by some of these Jews and we need to fix that. And this dovetails nicely with the state's paranoia about border security and all these factors. There are more factors that I discussed in chapter five. I'm giving you the abridged version. All these factors intersect in the summer of 1934. There's a week of violence against Jews. About one fourth of the community immediately flees. So not all, like, immediately flee, but by and large they go to Istanbul. Those who stay will gradually. The community will then gradually peter out. This is the beginning of the end. This kind of. After this event, the community loses its critical mass and it really becomes provincial. I think now, you know, now local Jews feel like they're. They're. Now they really feel like they're living in the provinces. You know, they don't have a sizable Jewish community anymore and there's no more violence like that. But I think it just doesn't feel like the kind of place that Jews like to live. And therefore there's no. They're far from the institutions like, like of. Of the universities and the cultural institutions of the capital in Istanbul. And also, you know, for all the talk about like Jews dominating the economy, I think economic forces were moving against the kind of work that Jews were doing. The small time lender to the peasant is really getting displaced by the Turkish, like state bank. A lot of the kind of agricultural, you know, the farmers that, that the Jews worked with are maybe, you know, getting threatened by larger farms. I think the economic prospects, like, weren't super for that kind of work anyway.

[McKenna Mezistrano]

Right. Makes sense. So I know we're coming to the end here, but I found the epilogue of the book quite powerful. And I just want to make sure that we devote just even a couple minutes to touching on that. The epilogue is called Bordering the Holocaust. What is the significance of this chapter for understanding the history of this region and also for understanding your argument in the epilogue.

[Jacob Daniels]

The border saves the Jewish community of Adiranite. So I mean, it's an interesting twist. So During World War II, Nazi Germany will occupy the region, the very northeastern part of Greece, just across the river from the city of Adirne. And for example, the. The Jews in The Demotico will be almost entirely deported to Auschwitz just across the border. Adirne Jews will not be touched by the Holocaust in the sense that Turkey stays out of the war. There's something called the wealth tax, which is this horrible thing that the Turkish government does to Jews and Christians. Jews are probably hit especially hard. It's a, it's like an absurd tax of that, that is a thinly veiled policy of wealth transfer, of taking like the savings, the assets of Jews and you know, taking them as an emergency wartime tax, which really is part, it's a continuation of this idea of building a Muslim bourgeoisie and that money sort of makes its way to I think other, other people who are deemed like the, the kind of people that should be in, in the Turkish bourgeoisie. So that, that is a tragedy, but it's not the Holocaust, right? It's, it's a different, different kind of tragedy. You don't see, see anything like the Holocaust on Turkish side of the border. So you know, the relationship, the relationship between local Jews and the border is a complicated one. There's also, and I'll say actually one more sort of group of Jews that have an important part in the epilogue are Jews from Bulgaria. One day, basically more or less Bulgaria, this is, this is, Bulgaria is a, an Axis power now starts like marching Jews across the border and like dumping them in Adirne. And they say, they say like, oh yeah, these are, these are Turkish Jews. Like they came here from Turkey. Like we're returning them. And Turkey for its part says like, nope, like they're not Turkish citizens. They're like, they're. Even if they were, their, their citizenship has expired. And I, I get into that in, in the book, there's all these reasons that's, that's a whole other story. But the two states kind of play like human ping pong with these, these Sephardi Jews. They send them back and forth across the border from the Turkish side to the Bulgarian side, back and forth. It's wintertime. They're like sleeping in train cars that are like parked at the border and they risk dying of cold. I mean there's stories of girls being violated, this is the word in the sources being violated by soldiers. Ultimately it's the Turkish side that gives in and lets the, the Jews from Bulgaria stay in Adirne. So in either case, I guess the common thread here, whether we, whether this is like Adirne Jews who were saved from the Holocaust by the border or they're sort of less fortunate brethren, if you will, who, who were, were passed back and forth across the border. The, the story, much of this book is about local Jews, like, resisting the logic of the border. Unlike, I claim they're, they're Christian or Muslim neighbors who are sort of forced, if you will, to, to, to give new meaning to the border as they're being like, like ethnically cleansed or, or at least seeing like fellow Muslims or fellow Christians be ethnically cleansed and told. You have to live on this side of the border because you're Muslim. You have to live on that side of the border because you're Greek. You have to live on that side of the border because you're Bulgarian. Right? Such an experience, I think, prompts people to say, okay, okay, I guess that's what a border means now, right? Like, oh, I guess a border is a sorter of ethnicities, which was not always the case. People did not see the border that way for. Right. Much of Ottoman history. And I think Jews resist such an understanding of the border. Local Jews don't see the border that way even when they're in the, the eye of the storm. As I say, in large part because they're not the victims. They're not getting moved, nor are they seeing like an influx of Jewish refugees. And so I think they resist seeing the border that way. And in fact there are ironically, like in times of, in, during some of these wars and chaotic times, they kind of double down on their, on their international cross border. Sephardi identity. Ladino speaking Jewish community. When, when, when things are getting hot and it's very sensitive like, which identity you choose because you could suffer if you choose wrong. When, when, when like a new country takes over. I see in the sources local Jews through, like, individuals in early 1920s sort of saying, like, oh, we're, we're Jewish, like, we're Sephardi. We're, we're part of this, like, Ladino speaking Sephardi community. That's our, you know, quote, unquote, national identity. And they're, they're, they're ironically kind of like ignoring the border precisely as almost everyone else is kind of being forced to give it new meaning. That resistance only lasts so long. And I think in the epilogue, among other things, what I'm saying is, like, there was no more room for interpretation regarding what the border meant. Now Jews too, saw the border as a very real and important thing. Something that could determine life or death, something that could determine, like, what country you have to live in, something that could get you sent to the other side, something that could keep the, the Murderous Nazi regime out or, or if sadly, if you're on the other side, something that. That was your death sentence because you were on the again, quote, unquote, wrong side of the border. So this kind of experience where like living on the again, quote, right or wrong side of the border could mean life or death, could mean expulsion. Jews had resisted or been avoided such experiences for. For decades. And that's by the way, what I mean when I talked about like a conservative yet active politics McKenna, during, during, like the wars, they had sort of actively used some of these conservative strategies like Royal alliance, but as part of a way to like, stay put and again identify with this international, you know, trans border community of Sephardi Jews. Those efforts came to an end, I think, by, by 19 for. By. By World War II, latest when now it seems to me like even, even the Jews. Jews are the last local group to sort of say, okay, yeah, a border, A border has a new meaning now in, in the modern era. And it can mean a difference between life or death and, and it can dictate, like, who has to live where. We, you know, I mean, they're just forced to acknowledge that. And that's kind of the end of the story of local Jews resisting this new logic and meaning of the border.

[McKenna Mezistrano]

Yeah. Well, I want to thank you so much, Jake, for joining us today. I think there are so many fascinating stories in this book that I think people who listen will get a great taste of. But I really encourage everyone to read the book. I think, again, one of the remarkable things for me is it's actually quite a compact period of time that you narrate and there are so many things that happen. I mean, on the world stage, this was a turbulent moment in this region, but also for the Jewish community that you study, and the way that they weathered this period, the way that they adapted, changed, imagined the future, imagine the present in.

[Jacob Daniels]

Is all.

[McKenna Mezistrano]

Is all detailed wonderfully in the book. So I really hope that everyone will take a moment to check it out. So thank you again for joining us today.

[Jacob Daniels]

You know, one of the most rewarding things about writing a book is hearing the ideas like stated back to me like that. That's such a beautiful articulation of the themes of the book. Thank you. Thank you, McKenna.

[McKenna Mezistrano]

Of course, once again, I am McKenna Miserano, and this was Jacob Daniels on his new book, the Jews of Edirne. The End of Ottoman Europe and the Arrival of Borders.

[Jacob Daniels]

And Doug, here we have the Limu Imu in its natural habitat, helping people customize their car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual. Fascinating. It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug.

[McKenna Mezistrano]

Uh, limu. Is that guy with the binoculars watching us?

[Jacob Daniels]

Cut the camera.

[McKenna Mezistrano]

They see us.

[Jacob Daniels]

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[McKenna Mezistrano]

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[Jacob Daniels]

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