This Izmir Ephesus Jewish heritage tour from Ankara reads the Jewish story of Izmir and Ephesus in two days. This route flies to Izmir, walks the old quarter, then drives south to Selcuk for the night. For island trips, open Greece Tours on the homepage.
Day one covers the flight, the old quarter around Havra Street and the road to Selcuk. Day two covers Ephesus, the road back to Izmir and the evening flight to Ankara. Each card below opens a live GetYourGuide booking page.
How was the Bikur Holim Synagogue built, as seen on this Izmir Ephesus Jewish heritage tour from Ankara?
Salomon de Ciaves, a Dutch-born Jew of Izmir, built the Bikur Holim Synagogue in the eighteenth century. Its hall follows a central plan, a detail met on this Izmir Ephesus Jewish heritage tour from Ankara. Ciaves also paid for its books and ritual objects.
The Bikur Holim Synagogue stands on Ikicesmelik Street. The Jewish district of that name once lay between Kadifekale, Basmane and Havra Street. Single-storey annexes stand in front of the building. Day one on this Izmir Ephesus Jewish heritage tour from Ankara reaches the old quarter before the road south.
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Salomon de Ciaves, who lived in Izmir, gave the building to the Jewish community of the port as a synagogue. He also paid for the books and ritual objects that a synagogue needs. Houses and shops beside the building were tied to the synagogue, so that they produced an income for it.
Bikur Holim is Hebrew for visiting the sick. The basement served as a hospital during one of the frequent epidemics in the city. Plague and cholera are named, and the hospital use is called probable. The congregation took its name from that cellar, a story told on this Izmir Ephesus Jewish heritage tour from Ankara.
Fire that burned the city in the late eighteenth century destroyed the first synagogue that Salomon de Ciaves had built. Manuel de Ciaves rebuilt it at the turn of the nineteenth century. The building is original in everything except its paint. An unstable roof was repaired during restoration, funded by an allowance from the Jewish community.
Bikur Holim is a Sephardic synagogue built on a central plan. Its main hall is two floors high and forms one single volume. Izmir halls stand on a square or rectangular plan. Their upper floors hold the women’s sections, called mehizah. The plan of the hall is read on this Izmir Ephesus Jewish heritage tour from Ankara.
Entry to the main hall runs through an entrance space. The upper part of that entrance is a mehizah. The entrance is laid out as a front synagogue space, a plan also found at two other Izmir synagogues. A modest outer door opens first, then a second door and a midrash lie before the main prayer hall.
The interior is rich in colourful ornament. On the porch of the Torah cupboard, the ark, geometric decoration resembles Greek architecture. Izmir interiors stand out for plasterwork on ceilings and columns and for the woodwork of tevah and ark. Wood or marble covers the floors, details met on this Izmir Ephesus Jewish heritage tour from Ankara.
Columns carry the roof in one Izmir hall type, and four of them divide the interior into nine rectangles. At Bikur Holim the columns form the square around the tevah. The tevah, the prayer platform, stands high and imposing at the centre of the sanctuary. Simple seating around it keeps worshippers close and lets them see one another.
Almost all Izmir synagogues stand inside a courtyard, enclosed by inward-facing walls that hide their character. The courtyards keep a space where a sukkah, a tent, is set up. Walls and gardens hide the synagogues along the alleys of the bazaar. That walled setting shapes how the quarter is read on this Izmir Ephesus Jewish heritage tour from Ankara.
Bikur Holim is one of nine synagogues in Kemeralti, inside the historic bazaar. In the early twentieth century the Jewish community kept seventeen synagogues in the city. Families who moved to wealthier districts later built synagogues with architectural features that differ from the older halls. The older Sephardic plan, with its central tevah, belongs to Bikur Holim.
Who was Theodotion of Ephesus, as met near this Izmir Ephesus Jewish heritage tour from Ankara?
Theodotion was a Jewish translator of the second century, and Irenaeus calls him an Ephesian. His Greek version of Daniel replaced the older Greek text in church use. Readers meet that story near this Izmir Ephesus Jewish heritage tour from Ankara. Manuscripts hold the proof.
Tradition counts Theodotion among three Jewish translators of the Hebrew Bible into Greek. The other two are Aquila and Symmachus. Scholars place Aquila early in the second century and Symmachus in its late years. Early sources place Theodotion at Ephesus, which puts his name near this Izmir Ephesus Jewish heritage tour from Ankara.
More about Ephesus: Izmir Ephesus Jewish Heritage Tour From Istanbul.
Irenaeus names Theodotion the Ephesian beside Aquila, and he calls both of them Jewish converts. Epiphanius, a bishop of the fourth century, says instead that Theodotion came from Pontus. Swete, who wrote an introduction to the Greek Old Testament, trusts Irenaeus on the Ephesian home. Eusebius lists Aquila, Symmachus and Theodotion among the other translators whose works Origen collected.
Swete holds that Theodotion made a free revision of the Septuagint, not an independent version. A note to Eusebius adds that the Hebrew text corrected it. Jerome places him midway among the older translators. That middle path is the revision recalled near this Izmir Ephesus Jewish heritage tour from Ankara. Midrashic expansions of the Septuagint disappear in it.
Swete names his chief defect: he copies Hebrew words into Greek letters instead of translating them. Jerome adds that in plain speech Theodotion does not part from the Septuagint translators. His Job runs longer than the Septuagint Job by a sixth of the whole. His version also includes the Book of Baruch.
Daniel holds the Hebrew of chapters one and eight to twelve and the Aramaic of chapters two to seven. Both Greek versions, the older and his, run longer than that text. Each adds the Prayer of Azariah, Susanna and Bel and the Dragon. Those additions mark the Greek Daniel read near this Izmir Ephesus Jewish heritage tour from Ankara.
Jerome writes in his preface to Daniel that the churches do not read the Septuagint text. They use the edition of Theodotion. Apart from the three additions, that edition stays far nearer to the Hebrew than the older Greek does. It proved so popular that it replaced the older version in all but two Septuagint manuscripts.
Two Greek manuscripts keep the older Daniel. Codex Chisianus, once in the Chigi Library in Rome, was the only known copy until Papyrus 967 was found. That papyrus is a manuscript of the third century. Its leaves are kept in Cologne, Princeton, Madrid, Dublin and Montserrat Abbey. None lies near this Izmir Ephesus Jewish heritage tour from Ankara.
Quotations and marginal notes carry his own text, in manuscripts that descend from Origen’s Hexapla. For Jeremiah, Origen used his lines to fill gaps in the Septuagint. Those lines sit in the margin of Codex Marchalianus. In the later nineteenth century Frederick Field gathered the surviving fragments of Origen’s work in an Oxford edition.
Readers find his kind of wording in earlier writings. The Shepherd of Hermas, from the first half of the second century, echoes his wording of Daniel, chapter six. Justin’s Dialogue with Trypho gives a long extract from chapter seven. Scholars call the puzzle the proto-Theodotionic problem, a name to know near this Izmir Ephesus Jewish heritage tour from Ankara.
Henry St John Thackeray, a Septuagint lecturer at Oxford, proposed an earlier source called Ur-Theodotion. Dominique Barthelemy studied a Greek Minor Prophets scroll from Nahal Hever, found in the Judaean Desert. Its revising style is called kaige, after the Greek words for “and indeed”. Barthelemy also proposed that Theodotion was Jonathan ben Uzziel, a view later challenged.
Who was Sabbatai Zevi of Smyrna, as told along this Izmir Ephesus Jewish heritage tour from Ankara?
Sabbatai Zevi was born in Smyrna, son of Mordecai, a poultry dealer who became an English house’s agent. His early life is traced along this Izmir Ephesus Jewish heritage tour from Ankara. Escapa taught him, and Coenen wrote about him.
Smyrna, the old name of Izmir, is the port where he was born in the seventeenth century. The Jewish Encyclopedia gives the day as the ninth of the Hebrew month Av. Wikipedia says he was born there allegedly on that day. Gershom Scholem, a twentieth-century scholar, discussed at length how probable that date is.
Mordecai, the father, had been a poor poultry dealer in the Morea. That was the old name of the Peloponnese, in southern Greece. He then became the agent in Smyrna of an English trading house. That career is noted along this Izmir Ephesus Jewish heritage tour from Ankara. Honesty marked his work for the house, says the Jewish Encyclopedia.
Orah Gadol, his sister, was a learned woman in her own right. Wikipedia adds that the Jews of Smyrna knew her well. The father’s English contacts drew comment from scholars. Heinrich Graetz proposed that they shaped the son’s thinking. Gershom Scholem argued forcefully against that view.
Another page that includes Ankara is Izmir Sardes Jewish Heritage Tour From Ankara.
His father had him study the Talmud. He attended the yeshiva of Joseph Escapa, the chief rabbi of Smyrna. Escapa had earlier headed a yeshiva in Salonica. That teacher belongs to the account read along this Izmir Ephesus Jewish heritage tour from Ankara. Rosh Yosef is Escapa’s commentary on the four Turim of Jacob ben Asher.
Britannica says he steeped himself in the Kabbalah as a young man. The Jewish Encyclopedia says the Kabbalah in the style of Isaac Luria held great fascination for him. Wikipedia adds that he read the Zohar and practised purification exercises called tikkunim. As a boy he inclined to a life of solitude.
Scholem notes that Joseph Escapa ordained him in Smyrna. Leyb ben Oyzer, an Amsterdam notary, says he was eighteen when ordained a hakham, the Sephardi title for a rabbi. Thomas Coenen says he received the title while still an adolescent. Both reports are weighed along this Izmir Ephesus Jewish heritage tour from Ankara.
Coenen was the Protestant minister of the Dutch congregation in Smyrna. A Dutch biographical dictionary places him in the port in the sixteen-sixties and back in the Netherlands in the sixteen-seventies. An Amsterdam printer issued his Dutch book on Sabbatai Zevi in the late seventeenth century.
Leyb ben Oyzer was a beadle and notary of the Jewish community of Amsterdam. He wrote a Yiddish chronicle, Bashraybung fun Shabsai Tsvi, in the eighteenth century. He says he interviewed people who had known Sabbatai in person. That chronicle is the latest source met along this Izmir Ephesus Jewish heritage tour from Ankara.
Jacob Emden printed excerpts of that chronicle in the same century. Jacob Sasportas was a rabbi born in Oran, and he died in Amsterdam. His book of letters on Sabbatai and his followers is titled Tzitzat Novel Tzvi. It was published in Amsterdam in the eighteenth century.
The port of his youth was growing as a trade centre. Wikipedia says Smyrna became the centre of Levantine trade. French and British consulates moved there from Chios by the early seventeenth century. Wikipedia’s history of Izmir also dates privileged trading conditions for foreigners to the early sixteen-twenties.
A house near the Agora of Smyrna has long been linked with him. Turkish Wikipedia calls it Sabatay Sevi Evi. It was registered as a cultural asset in the early twenty-first century, and the Izmir Metropolitan Municipality restored it. That place memory is recalled along this Izmir Ephesus Jewish heritage tour from Ankara. Tradition ties it to him.
What does the Miletus theatre inscription say, as read past this Izmir Ephesus Jewish heritage tour from Ankara?
Seat blocks in the Roman theatre at Miletus read “Place of the Jews” and then add a second name. Miletus lies beyond this route, so the block is read past this Izmir Ephesus Jewish heritage tour from Ankara. Deissmann called the text Imperial in age.
On the seventeenth of April, Theodor Wiegand, the dig director, showed Adolf Deissmann inscriptions on the theatre seats. That visit fell early in the twentieth century. Deissmann was a scholar of Greek texts from the Roman world. One block named the Jews, and he printed it in an appendix to Light from the Ancient East.
Deissmann placed the stone in the fifth row from below, in the second block from the west. He gave its breadth as four feet. He thought their shapes partly recall a Jewish text from Corinth.
The Greek letters sit past this Izmir Ephesus Jewish heritage tour from Ankara. Topos opens the line, a word for a place or seat. Eioudeon follows and means of the Jews. Two small words, ton kai, join a second name. Deissmann rendered the line as a place for the Jews, who also bear the name God-fearing.
Deissmann wondered why the carver had not cut a line meaning the Jews and those called God-fearing. He decided that the second name is a title of the Jews themselves. He called the form very remarkable, and he saw no separate group of sympathisers in the block.
Ephesus also features in Ephesus Sardis Jewish Heritage Tour From Izmir.
Deissmann judged the line doubtless Imperial in age. Biblical Archaeology Review calls it a second-century text, met past this Izmir Ephesus Jewish heritage tour from Ankara. Catalogue entries for Greek club texts date the whole set of seat labels from the second century to the fifth. The dates overlap, so the line belongs to the Roman period.
The same catalogue lists other seat labels in this theatre, and each is brief. Their wording reserves places for goldsmiths, for victorious goldsmiths, for emperor-loving goldsmiths and for younger men. One more block seems to read blue Jews, though the reading is marked uncertain. The editor reads blue as supporters of a team that wore blue.
The Jewish seats sit low in the bowl, seen past this Izmir Ephesus Jewish heritage tour from Ankara. Hamburg excavators say inscriptions in the lower seating zone testify to a Jewish community in late imperial Roman times. The catalogue puts these reservations on seats in the first, second and fourth sections of the first level.
Deissmann’s drawing came from a squeeze, a reverse copy of an inscription made with damp paper. August Frickenhaus made it in the year after the visit, at Wiegand’s request. The Miletus inscription volumes number the line 940. The Corpus of Jewish Inscriptions, whose second volume appeared in the middle of the twentieth century, lists it as 748.
Louis Feldman took the block as evidence, weighed past this Izmir Ephesus Jewish heritage tour from Ankara. Feldman wrote that before the third century the term was not limited to gentile sympathisers. A journal article of the early twenty-first century offers another reading. It sets the Jews inside a wider group that followed the Highest God.
Deissmann called the stone an original document proving a Jewish colony in the town. Miletus lies past this Izmir Ephesus Jewish heritage tour from Ankara. Carving on the stone is imperfect, and Deissmann read in it a community that was not very wealthy. A later reading calls the benches an example of integration inside a Greek civic institution.
How was the Algazi Synagogue built, as seen beside this Izmir Ephesus Jewish heritage tour from Ankara?
Timber floor, ceiling and roof make up the Algazi Synagogue, dated to seventeen twenty-four. Havra Street holds it beside this Izmir Ephesus Jewish heritage tour from Ankara. Four columns divide its ceiling into nine sections.
Algazi is a Sephardi surname borne by rabbis from the seventeenth century into the early nineteenth. Ishak Algazi of that family commissioned the synagogue, and an inscription at the entrance gives the date as seventeen twenty-four. That places the building in the eighteenth century. The family produced important religious scholars of its time.
The hall lies in Kemeralti, the old bazaar quarter, beside this Izmir Ephesus Jewish heritage tour from Ankara. Shalom Synagogue stands to the south-west of it, and Signora Giveret Synagogue lies to the north. The lane is Havra Street, also called Street 927, a name that means Synagogue Street.
The hall has a single storey, yet after Beth Israel it is the largest synagogue in Izmir. In the twentieth century the plan changed under Italian influence, and the Mehizah, the section where women worshipped, was removed. The building has no separate area for women.
Thick, tall courtyard walls face Street 927. Inside, the floor and the ceiling are made of timber, and the roof is a timber construction too. Four columns divide the ceiling into nine sections, a plan met beside this Izmir Ephesus Jewish heritage tour from Ankara.
Tevah, the reading platform, stands beneath the columns in the centre of the hall. Four steps raise it, and a green prayer rug with ornament covers it. In Izmir’s old synagogues the bimah sits in the centre between four columns, which split the hall into nine parts.
Izmir synagogues can also show a triple arrangement of the Torah ark. Sephardic styles from medieval Spain shaped this heritage, and at its peak the city held thirty-four synagogues. Nine of them lie in the Kemeralti quarter, Algazi among them. Conservation and restoration of these nine fall within the Izmir Jewish Heritage Project.
For more on Izmir, see Izmir Sardes Jewish Heritage Tour From Istanbul.
Solomon Nissim Algazi was born in sixteen ten, probably in Bursa, into a distinguished rabbinic family. His teachers included his father, Abraham Algazi, and the poet Joseph Ganso. He also studied in the yeshiva of Meir de Boton in Gallipoli. In sixteen forty-six he moved to Smyrna and founded a house of study there.
His books range from sermons to law, as listed beside this Izmir Ephesus Jewish heritage tour from Ankara. Yabin Shemuah comments on an earlier work on Talmud method. Hamon Rabbah indexes the Bible passages quoted in the Midrash Rabbah. Gufe Halakot sums up the principles of law. His clear method of study gave him lasting influence.
Other Algazis worked in Smyrna in the same century. Moses ben Abraham, a brother of the elder Solomon, wrote notes on a work by his grandfather. Hayyim ben Menahem, a pupil of Solomon, became rabbi of Rhodes and Smyrna. His book Bene Hayyai follows the order of the Arba’ah Turim, and his pupil Meir Danon edited it.
Israel Yaakov Algazi grew up in Smyrna, as told beside this Izmir Ephesus Jewish heritage tour from Ankara. Teachers named Hayyim ben Jacob Abulafia and Isaac Rapoport guided his studies. He later moved to Jerusalem, where he headed a yeshiva. Hayyim Isaac Algazi, chief rabbi of Smyrna in the late eighteenth century, left three books, published after his lifetime.
Isaac Algazi was a cantor of the same family, as traced beside this Izmir Ephesus Jewish heritage tour from Ankara. Cantors filled his line, since his grandfather and his father held the post before him. His father taught him liturgical music, and Shem Tov Chikiar taught him Turkish classical music.
What do the tomb texts of Hierapolis record, as read around this Izmir Ephesus Jewish heritage tour from Ankara?
Tomb texts of Hierapolis name Jewish families, trade guilds and a community archive. The stones bar outsiders, and their fine clauses name who collects. Glykon’s sarcophagus rewards a reader around this Izmir Ephesus Jewish heritage tour from Ankara, Wagener’s find of the nineteenth century.
Glykon’s sarcophagus is a limestone coffin that measures about 239 by 93 by 135 centimetres. Its letters stand four centimetres high. The stone lies on the hillside of the eastern necropolis, in an isolated spot. Scholars date the text between the second half of the second century and the middle of the third.
Wagener found the Glykon stone in the middle of the nineteenth century. The Jewish Encyclopedia lists his publication among its sources. The text names two owners, Publius Aelius Glykon Zeuxianos Aelianus and Aurelia Amia, daughter of Amianos. Their family tomb joins the stones read around this Izmir Ephesus Jewish heritage tour from Ankara.
Bequests on the stone pay for festivals. The interest on the first goes to the purple-dyers at the festival of Unleavened Bread in the seventh month. The interest on the second goes to the carpet-weavers. Half is paid at the Kalends on the eighth day of the fourth month, and half at Pentecost.
A last line records that the copy of the text was stored in the archives. The Jewish Encyclopedia, written in the early twentieth century, calls it possible that the purple-dyers’ guild was a Jewish body. Family tombs tied to guilds recur in the stones read around this Izmir Ephesus Jewish heritage tour from Ankara.
Marcus Aurelius Diodoros Koreskos, also called Asbolos, owns a sarcophagus on the west side of the northern necropolis. His text leaves a sum to the council of the presidency of the purple-dyers. The interest was to pay for incense on the customary day. If the dyers neglected that duty, the rest passed to another guild.
Scholars date it from the late second century to the middle of the third. Ramsay numbered it four hundred twelve, and it was found on a tomb outside the city gate. Its fine clause names the holy treasury and the sacred council of elders, the gerousia. That pairing is read around this Izmir Ephesus Jewish heritage tour from Ankara.
Aurelius Zotikos, son of Epikrates, owns a third sarcophagus, though both names are uncertain on the broken stone. The text leaves a sum to the nail-makers’ guild for an annual crowning of the grave. If that guild fails, the coppersmiths’ guild takes over. If both fail, the purple-dyers oversee the grave. A copy was deposited in the archives.
Izmir Ephesus Tour By Flight From Ankara covers Ankara too.
One Jewish stone names Aurelia Augusta, daughter of Zotikos, her husband Glykonianos and their children. Burial by anyone else brings a fine payable to the settlement, katoikia, of the Jews in Hierapolis. A further payment goes to whoever reports the breach. The community’s archive held a copy, a fact read around this Izmir Ephesus Jewish heritage tour from Ankara.
Aurelia Glykonis, daughter of Ammianos, and her husband Marcus Aurelius Alexandros Theophilos, also called Aphelias, own a second Jewish stone. It sends the fine to the people, laos, of the Jews. The coffin stands on the east side of the street in the northern necropolis. One copy of the text was deposited in the archives.
Nikotimos Lykidas, son of Artemisios, buried his wife Apphias on one side of a reused coffin. Aurelius Heortasios Julianus, a Jew from Tripolis living in Hierapolis, owns the other side. That side dates after the middle of the third century. Its fine goes to the holy synagogue, as read around this Izmir Ephesus Jewish heritage tour from Ankara.
How did Hebrew printing begin in Smyrna, as told across this Izmir Ephesus Jewish heritage tour from Ankara?
Abraham Gabbai opened a Hebrew printing house in Smyrna in the seventeenth century, with part of his father’s Leghorn equipment. Across this Izmir Ephesus Jewish heritage tour from Ankara, Escapa’s law commentary leads the list of printed books.
Izmir was one of three printing centres of the Ottoman Empire, after Constantinople and Salonika. Behind its first press stood a father. Jedidiah Gabbai set up the first Hebrew press in Leghorn, active in the middle of the seventeenth century. He acquired the Bragadini type and decorations, and the press issued important works.
Abraham, son of Jedidiah, took part of the equipment and staff of that press to Smyrna. His printing house there existed until sixteen seventy-five. Across this Izmir Ephesus Jewish heritage tour from Ankara, Gabbai counts as the first Jewish printer of Izmir. He himself spent a number of years as a printer in Constantinople, from sixteen sixty.
The first book from the Smyrna press was Rosh Yosef by Joseph Escapa. It is a detailed commentary on the Arba’ah Turim, an important code of Jewish law by Jacob ben Asher. A second part, on the Hoshen Mishpat division, was printed up to chapter seventy-six. Law opened the Smyrna list.
Escapa was a rabbi of Izmir. He is named after Skopje, a town then in the Ottoman Empire. Across this Izmir Ephesus Jewish heritage tour from Ankara, David Conforte says he saw Escapa aged about one hundred. Escapa’s responsa were printed later at Frankfurt on the Oder.
Gabbai also printed two books in Spanish, set in Latin letters. One reissued a work by Manasseh Ben Israel. The other was a translation of an English apology. These two titles stand apart from the Hebrew-letter list and show a printer who worked in more than one script.
Four sonnets by Isaac Moron and Daniel de Sylva are printed in a unicum, a work known from one copy. Abraham Gabbai issued it in sixteen fifty-nine at the Kaf Nahat press in Smyrna. Across this Izmir Ephesus Jewish heritage tour from Ankara, Moron’s sonnets are set among the consuls and travellers of Smyrna.
Gabbai printed sixteen books in sixteen seventy-five. Later he left Izmir, and printing in the city stopped for a long stretch. The next press, in the eighteenth century, belonged to Jonah ben Jacob, who was born in Zalocze in Galicia. He came to Turkey and settled in Constantinople.
Across this Izmir Ephesus Jewish heritage tour from Ankara, Jonah opened a branch of his press in Smyrna. His partner there was Rabbi David Hazzan. The branch closed before the middle of that century. In 35 years of work in both cities he printed 125 books, among them a Bible and a prayer book.
Judah Hazzan and Jacob Valensi founded another Hebrew printing house in the third quarter of the eighteenth century. A Greek printer, Osta Maragos, ran a press of his own in the same period. Printing in Izmir then ceased for a long span, for reasons the sources do not know.
Ankara comes up again in Istanbul Jewish Heritage Tour By Flight From Ankara.
Across this Izmir Ephesus Jewish heritage tour from Ankara, Judah Samuel Ashkenazi’s sons ran a house in the eighteen fifties. Benzion Benjamin printed on its equipment after the house closed. A printer named Roditi reached 71 books by eighteen eighty-four, among them the religious work Me-Am Lo’ez.
Ephraim Melamed ran the leading printing house of the first quarter of the twentieth century. Hebrew books kept appearing in Izmir until the nineteen fifties. The printers produced more than 400 books, across biblical, talmudic and rabbinic literature. Local scholars were among the authors. Smyrna’s nineteenth-century presses sent out rabbinical works but no copies of the Talmud.
Which cities does Josephus name in his decrees, as read amid this Izmir Ephesus Jewish heritage tour from Ankara?
Halicarnassus, Miletus, Laodicea, Pergamon and Delos each have a letter or decree in the fourteenth book of Josephus’s Antiquities. Amid this Izmir Ephesus Jewish heritage tour from Ankara, Cratippus, Memnon and Sopater appear by name. The texts record Sabbath rules and prayer houses.
Josephus wrote the Antiquities of the Jews in twenty books, and book fourteen holds official letters about Jewish communities. Scholars questioned these documents because Josephus tells one side only, but they are judged largely authentic. Amid this Izmir Ephesus Jewish heritage tour from Ankara, Whiston’s English gives the spellings of the names.
The people of Halicarnassus passed a decree on the proposal of Marcus Alexander. Memnon, son of Orestidas and adopted by Euonymus, was priest. The text names the month Aristerion, but the day appears as a gap in the English version. The Pergamon and Delos texts date themselves by an officer’s name too.
The decree lets Jewish men and women keep their Sabbaths and perform their holy offices. It lets them make prayer houses at the sea-side, following the customs of their forefathers. Anyone who hinders them owes the city a fine. Amid this Izmir Ephesus Jewish heritage tour from Ankara, proseuchae is Whiston’s untranslated Greek word for them.
Publius Servilius, proconsul and son of Publius, of the Galban tribe, writes to the people of Miletus. A Milesian named Prytanes, son of Hermes, had come to him while he held court at Tralles. The matter was that the Milesians forbade the Jews to celebrate their Sabbaths.
The proconsul ruled that the Jews were not to be barred from their own customs. A scholarly article identifies this Servilius with Servilius Isauricus, proconsul of Asia from forty-six to forty-four BC. Amid this Izmir Ephesus Jewish heritage tour from Ankara, Tralles figures only as the seat of the court.
The magistrates of Laodicea wrote to a consul whom Whiston calls Caius Rubilius. A scholarly article reads Gaius Rabirius, probably Rabirius Postumus, proconsul of Asia in forty-seven BC. Sopater, envoy of the high priest Hyrcanus, had delivered a letter from the consul. It concerned leave for the Jews to keep their Sabbaths and sacred rites.
Trallians who were present spoke against it. The magistrates say they will keep the consul’s order. Their letter was to be laid up among the public records. Encyclopaedia Judaica adds that they wished to avoid the displeasure of the authorities. Amid this Izmir Ephesus Jewish heritage tour from Ankara, Sopater remains the envoy named.
The Pergamon decree opens with a date. Cratippus was prytanis, on the first day of the month Desius, when the praetors of the city passed it. Envoys of Hyrcanus are named with their fathers. They include Strato son of Theodatus, Apollonius son of Alexander and Eneas son of Antipater.
The senate’s decree, quoted in that text, lets the Jews export goods out of their own harbours. The praetors resolve to do everything they can for the Jews. The text adds that ancestors were friendly to the Jews even in the days of Abraham. Theodorus asked the praetors to send Hyrcanus a copy.
The Delos item is dated to the twentieth day of Thargeleon, with Beotus as archon. The praetors answer while Marcus Piso the lieutenant lives in their city. No one is to disturb the Jews about going into the army. A scholarly article calls it no true decree and says Josephus added the title in error.
A related page on Izmir: Istanbul Jewish Heritage Tour By Flight From Izmir.
Julius Caius writes to the Parians after Delian Jews protested a Parian decree. A scholarly article dates his letter to about forty-four BC. It lets the Jews bring in contributions and hold common suppers. Amid this Izmir Ephesus Jewish heritage tour from Ankara, Phanius writes to Cos. The Jewish envoys wanted the senate’s decrees.
What do the old stones of ancient Smyrna say, as met through this Izmir Ephesus Jewish heritage tour from Ankara?
Greek stones of ancient Smyrna name Jews in a donor list for city works and the tomb text of Rufina. Scholars date the list to the early second century. Rufina’s stone, read through this Izmir Ephesus Jewish heritage tour from Ankara, belongs to the second or third.
The donor list is cut on a slab of white marble, about 157 by 54 centimetres. Its letters stand up to two centimetres high. Scholars date the text to the early second century, in the age of Hadrian. The Smyrna volumes of inscriptions number it 697.
The text lists pledges and names each giver. Claudius Bassos directed the Nemesis festival contests and promised to pave the basilica. Through this Izmir Ephesus Jewish heritage tour from Ankara, Bassos stands first among the donors, ahead of an Asiarch. A study links that place to the weight of his office.
Chersiphron, the Asiarch, promised gardens in the palm grove. One study reads another pledge as a temple of Tyche in the same grove. The stone thus lists a paved basilica, gardens and a temple among its city works. Both Bassos and Chersiphron appear with their offices.
The list also names a group in Greek as hoi pote Ioudaioi. Like the other donors, the group made a pledge. Scholars read the phrase in two ways. One reading, from the late twentieth century, takes it as people formerly of Judea, who became Smyrnans. It rests on the sense of the words.
A study of the late twentieth century argues that the Greek word pote is never used so with places. On that view the phrase means former Jews. A reviewer of a later book reports another sense: leaving the Jewish community. Each reading, met through this Izmir Ephesus Jewish heritage tour from Ankara, starts from one short line.
The stone has a second part. It credits Antonius Polemon with winning a second decree from Hadrian. It also records a sun-room for the gymnasium, supplied by Sextos, a high priest. The group stands in a list beside a contest director, an Asiarch and a high priest.
Rufina’s tomb text sits on a smaller marble slab, about 36 by 26 centimetres and two centimetres thick. Her Greek lines name her as Rufina, a Jewish woman, and give her title, archisynagogos, head of the synagogue. Through this Izmir Ephesus Jewish heritage tour from Ankara, Rufina built a tomb for her freedmen and slaves.
No one else had the right to bury a body there. Anyone who dared had to pay fines, one to the holy treasury and one to the Jewish people. The Greek word for people is ethnos. The text ends with a note that a copy was deposited in the archives.
The stone itself is known only from a facsimile made in the late nineteenth century. Salomon Reinach published that copy in the Revue des etudes juives. Its title means Greek inscription of Smyrna: the Jewish woman Rufina. Through this Izmir Ephesus Jewish heritage tour from Ankara, Reinach first put the text before readers.
For centuries interpreters judged the title impossible, since they assumed ancient Jewish communities never had women leaders. In the early twentieth century, scholars knew no other woman with the office. Since the late twentieth century, they have gathered other inscriptions that name women in leading roles of the community.
One argument calls hers the only known tomb of antiquity made only for the enslaved and freed of a household. Her wealth is inferred from the long text and her household. Through this Izmir Ephesus Jewish heritage tour from Ankara, epitaph wording stays plain, since only ordinary Greek formulas appear.
Readers interested in Ankara can open Izmir Ephesus Biblical Cities Tour From Ankara.
What does Philo say of the Jews of Asia, as read by this Izmir Ephesus Jewish heritage tour from Ankara?
Philo writes that Jews lived in every city of Asia and Syria. A letter in his Embassy to Gaius lists Asia Minor as far as Bithynia. Both passages are taken up by this Izmir Ephesus Jewish heritage tour from Ankara, Agrippa’s letter first.
Philo was a Jewish philosopher who lived in Alexandria, in the Roman province of Egypt. His dates of birth and death are unknown. The consensus places him between the end of the first century BC and the middle of the first century AD. His brother Alexander served as chief customs tax administrator in Alexandria.
Philo received a thorough education in Greek philosophy, Jewish literature and Hellenistic culture. He was more fluent in Greek than in Hebrew and read the Scriptures in their Greek translation. His works are mainly allegorical readings of the Torah, and about fifty survive. Those texts are studied by this Izmir Ephesus Jewish heritage tour from Ankara, Torah commentary first.
Philo wrote an account of the embassy that Alexandrian Jews sent to the emperor Gaius, also called Caligula. His life is known mainly from his own works and from Josephus. The embassy is the only event that can be dated. The account first ran to five books, and only part of it survives.
The Embassy to Gaius holds a letter supposedly from Agrippa I to the emperor. It fills sections two hundred seventy-six to three hundred twenty-nine. Scholars agree that the letter as it stands is Philo’s own work. The text is met by this Izmir Ephesus Jewish heritage tour from Ankara, Gaius as its addressee.
Agrippa writes a petition because fear keeps him from speaking to the emperor. He names Jerusalem as his homeland, the seat of the temple. His ancestors, he says, were kings, with high priests among them. He claims that his nation yields to no people in Asia or Europe in prayers, offerings and sacrifices.
Agrippa calls Jerusalem the metropolis of Judaea and of the colonies sent to neighbouring lands. His list names Egypt, Phoenicia, Syria, Pamphylia and Cilicia. Next comes the greater part of Asia Minor as far as Bithynia, and the far corners of Pontus. Asia Minor is another name for the peninsula of Anatolia, and Izmir stands on its Aegean coast.
In Europe the list names Thessaly, Boeotia, Macedonia, Aetolia, Attica, Argos and Corinth, with the richest districts of the Peloponnese. The islands Euboea, Cyprus and Crete follow, and beyond the Euphrates the list reaches Babylon. Section two hundred eighty-three adds that a favour for Jerusalem reaches ten thousand communities in Europe, Asia and Africa.
Philo says Jews were scattered through every city of Asia and Syria. Agrippa quotes Augustus, who orders the governors in Asia to let Jews assemble in synagogues. The letter calls the meetings orderly, and the first fruits go each year to the temple. Such letters are noted by this Izmir Ephesus Jewish heritage tour from Ankara, synagogue meetings first.
In the third century the whole corpus was brought to Caesarea, which became the main centre of its transmission. The Church Fathers kept the Greek of the larger share of the works. Other works survive only in Armenian, and fewer survive in Latin. One study counts twenty-two manuscripts from seven families for De gigantibus.
Since Turnebus’s edition of the sixteenth century, De opificio mundi has stood first in nearly all collections of Philo’s works. Cohn and Wendland began the Berlin edition in the late nineteenth century, with six volumes and an index. Those editions are consulted by this Izmir Ephesus Jewish heritage tour from Ankara, Wendland’s volumes first.
How did Jewish schools grow in Izmir, as told within this Izmir Ephesus Jewish heritage tour from Ankara?
Schooling in Jewish Izmir grew in the nineteenth century through the Talmud Torah and Alliance classrooms. Abraham Enriquez founded a Talmud Torah there, and Alliance schools for boys and girls followed. That story unfolds within this Izmir Ephesus Jewish heritage tour from Ankara, Enriquez first and the Alliance after.
Teaching in Izmir is older than the Alliance. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the community founded large yeshivot and schools. Jacob b. Na’im headed a large yeshivah that sent out graduates. Yeshivot offered higher religious study and stood beside synagogues. Rabbis taught in them, and rabbis taught in the Talmud Torah too.
The Talmud Torah gave religious teaching to children from six to thirteen. Abraham Enriquez founded one in the nineteenth century. By the early twentieth century it held 500 children, as told within this Izmir Ephesus Jewish heritage tour from Ankara. Gemillut Hassadim, an association, ran a lottery that supplied part of its income.
For more on Ephesus, see Sardis and Ephesus Tour From Izmir.
A group of French Jews founded the Alliance Israelite Universelle in the middle of the nineteenth century. Its hope was to improve the education of Ottoman Jewry. By the early twentieth century it had seventy-one boys’ schools and forty-four girls’ schools. Alliance teacher-training schools in Turkey and France educated teachers for its classrooms.
In Izmir the Alliance opened a boys’ school in the later nineteenth century, and a girls’ school followed. By the last decade of that century Izmir had four Jewish boys’ schools with about 2,500 students. Two Jewish girls’ schools taught roughly 500 pupils. Those figures are told within this Izmir Ephesus Jewish heritage tour from Ankara.
Vocational teaching reached girls too. A second vocational school for girls, with thirty-four students, opened in the late nineteenth century. The Alliance in Izmir also ran an industrial school for men, called the Apprenticeship School, and a merchant school. Across its network, apprentice schools taught crafts that needed bodily strength or paid well, and avoided trades already overcrowded.
Alliance schools were French-medium schools. Ladino was never a language of instruction. Wealthy Jewish families in Izmir sent their children to the French St. Joseph School, and other families used public schools. French shaped schooling within this Izmir Ephesus Jewish heritage tour from Ankara. Poorest children were the only ones taught free, and richer parents paid for places.
Alliance teaching gave Hebrew a prominent place beside Jewish religion and history. Geography, history, arithmetic and science filled out the timetable. The Alliance sent its brightest students to be trained in Paris. Its network grew from thirty-four schools to ninety-four in the last two decades of the nineteenth century. Donations from Baron de Hirsch mainly paid for that growth.
The Alliance brought modern changes into the Talmud Torah’s traditional programme. That reform is told within this Izmir Ephesus Jewish heritage tour from Ankara. Baron Edmond de Rothschild gave money toward building a Talmud Torah in the early twentieth century. A Hebrew grammar in Ladino was printed in Smyrna in the middle of the nineteenth century.
Jewish pupils also studied in Catholic and Protestant schools, as told within this Izmir Ephesus Jewish heritage tour from Ankara. Agricultural training came with Or Yehuda, a school the Alliance founded near Izmir. Its apprentice schools worked in twenty-eight places in the East and Africa.
From the early nineteen thirties the Alliance gradually handed its schools to the local communities. The old Talmud Torah ended in the late twentieth century, and its remaining students moved to the local American school. On this route, day one centres on the old quarter around Havra Street, so these schools are told as history.
Which cities does the Roman letter in First Maccabees name, as read alongside this Izmir Ephesus Jewish heritage tour from Ankara?
Sparta, Delos, Samos, Rhodes, Cos and Cyrene all received copies of the Roman consul’s letter. The first book of Maccabees, chapter fifteen, names them. Readers meet that list alongside this Izmir Ephesus Jewish heritage tour from Ankara, Cyrene closing it.
Numenius carries the letter. The first book of Maccabees, chapter fifteen, tells how he arrived from Rome with companions. They bring letters for kings and countries. The text then names the sender and the first reader. Lucius, consul of the Romans, greets King Ptolemy. Verse fifteen holds the arrival, and verse sixteen holds the greeting, one short line.
Lucius gives his reason next. Envoys of the Jews have come to Rome as friends and allies. The high priest Simon and the people sent them. They bring a gold shield weighing one thousand minas, and Rome accepts it. Read alongside this Izmir Ephesus Jewish heritage tour from Ankara, Simon is the named sender.
The letter then turns to its requests. Verse nineteen carries these orders. Kings and countries are told not to harm the Jews, their cities or their land. They are not to ally with those who fight them. Any fugitive from Judea who reaches their lands is handed to Simon, who deals with the case under Jewish law.
The same message goes to the kings Demetrius, Attalus, Ariarathes and Arsaces. Study notes in an American Catholic Bible place Attalus the Second at Pergamum and Ariarathes the Fifth in Cappadocia. Both ruled in the second century BC. Verse twenty-four adds that Rome sends a copy of these letters to Simon the high priest.
For more on Ankara, see Ephesus Pergamon Tour From Ankara.
Verse twenty-three turns to the places that received copies of the letter. It opens by addressing all the countries, then names Sampsames, the Spartans, Delos, Myndos, Sicyon, Caria and Samos. Pamphylia, Lycia, Halicarnassus, Rhodes, Phaselis, Cos and Side follow. Aradus, Gortyna, Cnidus, Cyprus and Cyrene close the list.
Caria, Lycia and Pamphylia are regions, not single towns. Caria is a region of western Anatolia along the coast from mid-Ionia south to Lycia. Pamphylia lies in the south of Asia Minor between Lycia and Cilicia. Placed alongside this Izmir Ephesus Jewish heritage tour from Ankara, Mycale marks where the Carian coast begins.
Translations of that list differ in one place. The American Catholic Bible reads Phaselis where the Brenton English translation of the Septuagint reads Aradus. Brenton therefore gives Aradus twice. The two lists otherwise agree in order. Brenton writes Lacedemonians for the Spartans, Delus for Delos and Rhodus for Rhodes.
Who Lucius was is not settled. Notes in the American Catholic Bible name two possible consuls. One is Lucius Caecilius Metellus, the other Lucius Calpurnius Piso. Both held office in the second century BC. The same notes tie the letter to Simon’s first years. Seen alongside this Izmir Ephesus Jewish heritage tour from Ankara, Metellus is one candidate.
The book keeps copies of official papers. The closing section, from chapter fourteen, verse sixteen, holds the consul’s letter. Certain critics doubted that section, but the trend of opinion favours the unity of the book. Heard alongside this Izmir Ephesus Jewish heritage tour from Ankara, Seleucid kings and Roman officials both write to the Hasmoneans.
The Hebrew original is lost, and the book survives in Greek. Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Alexandrinus carry that Greek text, while Codex Vaticanus does not. Older Latin, Syriac and Armenian versions exist. A Hebrew translation came in the eleventh century. Readers meet that text alongside this Izmir Ephesus Jewish heritage tour from Ankara, Makkabaion A being a Greek title.