The nationalist outlook of the Turkish state since the beginning of the Republican era in 1923 targeted uniform identity formation. While Turkey did not recognize the existence of ethnic identities as long as they were Muslim, non-Muslims were challenging this ideal. During this social engineering, the religious minorities and the state had very turbulent relations based on mistrust, resulting in many discriminative legislations. The Republican story of the Jews provides significant insight to highlight the difficulties and challenges encountered in the formation of the Turkish Republic as well as the changes in the Turkish public with the new nation state in effect. Following the Second World War, a new state was established in the Middle East. During the Cold War, the Soviet threat led Turkey to recognize the State of Israel, established as a Jewish state. The main reasoning of Turkey in recognizing Israel was to be accepted to the Western camp. While the bilateral relations of Turkey and Israel increased gradually, a surprisingly high number of Turkish Jews, nearly 40 percent of the Jewish community in Turkey, immigrated to the new country. This book is an attempt to investigate the establishment of the State of Israel, Turkey’s recognition of the Jewish state and its repercussions on the Turkish public between the years 1936 and 1956. It explains the establishment of the State of Israel and the first three decades of the Turkish Republic. It includes the religious minorities of Turkey, with a special focus on the Jewish community as it is one of the major links between Turkey and Israel. It combines Turkish public reaction to the establishment and recognition of the State of Israel, shedding light on the reasons of the mass Jewish immigration, which is at the same time the second biggest immigration out of Turkey after the labor immigration to Europe starting from the 1960s.

The presence of Torah is a key element in all early childhood Jewish programs. Morah, Morah, Teach Me Torah is a wonderful complement to a teacher's Jewish library. It is an additional tool that will help families engage in Torah for living and learning. --Mary Lou Allen, Early Childhood Jewish Educator and Consultant

This handbook, the first of its kind, provides a rich overview of the socio-political issues and dynamics impacting Turkey’s diasporic groups and diaspora policymaking. Turkey constitutes an important case study in the field of diaspora studies with a diaspora population of around 6.5 million. This handbook therefore brings together emerging and established scholars to explore the central issues, actors, and processes relating to Turkey’s diasporic groups and diaspora outreach. Taken together, the historical and contemporary analyses presented in this volume provide readers a multi-lens perspective on the trajectories of Turkey’s diasporic communities and diaspora policymaking in a wide range of regional contexts, including Europe, North America, and Oceania. The handbook comprises six analytical parts: Contextualising Turkey’s diasporas: past and present Localisation, transnational belongings, and identity Governing diasporas Micro-spaces and everyday practices Cultural production, aesthetics, and creativity Country-specific perspectives The volume offers insights into the debates and processes that structure each of these thematic clusters, but also provides a comprehensive overview of the dynamics shaping Turkey’s diverse diaspora populations today. The contributions encompass a range of disciplines, including anthropology, history, human geography, political science, international relations, and sociology, and the volume will be vital reading for anyone interested in Turkey, the Middle East, and diasporas.

This book examines domestic and regional geopolitical dynamics behind Turkish-Qatari relations from the past to the present. Utilizing arguments of practical geopolitical reasoning, Özgür Pala and Khaled Al-Jaber situate their analysis of evolving relations in the contexts of Ottoman-British geopolitical rivalry in the Persian Gulf, the Turkish Republic’s fluctuating relations with the Middle East until the 2000s, the AKP governments’ opening to the region and finally the Arab Spring and its aftermath. Contextualizing the trajectory of Turkish-Qatari relations within the larger Middle East and the Gulf Arab region, the authors argue that material interests and identity politics have generally determined relations until the turn of the millennium. Under Erdogan and Sheikh Hamad’s assertive leadership and ambitious foreign policy, Turkey and Qatar came to witness various foreign policy convergences on critically important regional issues. Pala and Al-Jaber argue that these convergences, coupled with their geopolitical and security goals, facilitated a political alignment between Ankara and Doha throughout the Arab Spring. They argue that despite facing major geopolitical setbacks, Turkey and Qatar were able to chart a much deeper cooperation, which later evolved into a strategic partnership in various areas.

Jewish studies has been a vibrant academic discipline for many decades, and since the establishment of the Association for Israel Studies in 1985 to engage in research on the history, politics, society, and culture of the modern state of Israel, the two disciplines have worked along parallel tracks in universities. This book focuses on the vibrant academic field of Israel studies and its complex and dynamic relations and intersections with its “older sibling” Jewish studies. Scholarly contributions from around the globe illustrate that the ongoing and growing interest in Israel studies, in particular since the early 2000s, must be analyzed and understood in its relationship to Jewish studies. Only this will allow scholarship to reflect on not only the intersections between the two fields but also on the prospects of cross-pollination between the disciplines for research and teaching. This will become ever more vital in an increasingly globalized world with shifting concepts, borders, and identity concepts.

This is volume one of a two-volume study of a war and moon god religion that was based on the Mideast moon god religion of Sin.

When young attorney and mother Brek Cuttler finds herself covered in blood and standing on a deserted train platform, she has no memory of how she got there. For one very good reason. She’s dead. But she doesn’t believe it at first. Trapped between worlds, Brek struggles to get back to her husband and daughter until she receives a shocking revelation that makes her death no longer deniable: She’s been chosen to join the elite group of lawyers who prosecute and defend souls at the Final Judgment. With each dramatic trial conducted in a harrowing courtroom of eternity, Brek discovers how the choices that she and others made during their lives have led her to this place. She realizes that if she’s to break the chain, she must first face the terrible truth about her death. But before Brek can do that, she suddenly finds that she herself has been called to stand trial…and that her first client in the afterlife holds the secret to her fate.