Jewish Life in Twenty-First-Century Turkey: The Other Side of Tolerance

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Acknowledgments The following fellowships and institutions generously supported research for this book: Fulbright-Hays, National Foundation for Jewish Culture, Maurice Amado Foundation for Sephardic Studies, Eastern Consortium of Persian and Turkish, Mellon Foundation, Institute of Turkish Studies, Barnard College Alumnae Fellowship, and Brown and Stanford Universities. A fellowship at the Center for Jewish History allowed me regular access to the archives of the American Sephardi Federation (ASF), which holds an invaluable collection of documents relating to the American Branch of the Quincentennial Foundation; special thanks is due to Randall Belinfante, ASF librarian/archivist. A Cahnman Publication Subvention Grant of the Association of Jewish Studies supported the completion of this book. At Indiana University Press, Janet Rabinowitch and Rebecca Tolen helped bring this book to publication, with editorial assistance from Brian Herrmann and Maureen Epp. Matti Bunzl and Michael Herzfeld, editors for the New Anthropologies of Europe Series, as well as Matthias Lehmann and Harvey Goldberg, editors for the Series in Sephardi and Mizrahi Studies helped locate this book in its appropriate milieus. Harvey Goldberg and Esra Özyürek offered useful feedback on an earlier version of this manuscript, for which I am most grateful. My training in anthropology began at Barnard College (Columbia University) and at Ben-Gurion University, where I learned the trade from outstanding mentors such as Marco Jacquemet, Paula Rubel, Abraham Rosman, Morton Klass, Lesley Sharp, Elaine Combs-Schilling, Fran xvi Acknowledgments Markowitz, and Aref Abu-Rabia. I would never have ended up in an anthropology class were it not for my theater professor, Mark Sussman— himself a student of Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett—who recognized that my interest in performance lay in its deeply social aspects. A special debt is owed to the faculty members with whom I worked most closely at Stanford University: Carol Delaney, Aron Rodrigue, Miyako Inoue, and Penelope Eckert. My education at Stanford was also enriched by the teaching of Paulla Ebron, Ian Hodder, Sylvia Yanagisako, Renato Rosaldo, Hayden White, and Ann Stoler, and by friendship with students in my cohort. Colleagues at Brown University, especially those who have participated in the Judaic Studies faculty seminar and in our informal anthropology writers’ group, have helped me refine many of the ideas in this book. Because I am a faculty member in two departments (Judaic Studies and Anthropology), acknowledging the individuals with whom I work daily would be very long indeed, but I hope you know that talking and thinking with you has made my job more enjoyable. At Brown, I also enjoyed the camaraderie and intellectual stimulation of fellows at the Cogut Center for the Humanities. Writing dates with Ruti Ben-Artzi, Paja Faudree, Jessaca Leinaweaver, and Pauline Jones Luong made the scribbling process a bit less lonely. My work has thus far enjoyed a multi-disciplinary audience of peers in various forums, including the annual meetings of the American Anthropological Association, the American Ethnological Society, the Israeli Anthropological Association, the Middle East Studies Association, the Association for Jewish Studies, and the World Union of Jewish Studies. Unique opportunities for dialogue also came in the form of invitations to present talks at the Sorbonne (Paris), King’s College (London), the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor), and the University of California (Los Angeles), as well as at the Frankel Institute for Advanced Jewish Studies Early Career Workshop and the Modern Jewish Studies group at the Association for Jewish Studies meetings. I especially thank Julia Cohen for her extended notes on the historical questions raised in an earlier version of my introductory chapter, circulated at the Modern Jewish Studies Workshop in 2009. It has been a special pleasure to have an ongoing dialogue with ethnographers of Jewish life in the form of the Council for the Anthro- xvii Acknowledgments pology of Jews and Judaism, a group of the American Anthropological Association, which I have co-chaired with Matti Bunzl since 2007. Although the list of participants over the years is too long to list here, it is this group’s unique tenacity and dedication to the study of contemporary Jewish life that buoys many of my intellectual pursuits. Mersi to friends made during my fieldwork research, including, in no particular order, Izzet, Lusi, Reni, Beki, Emil, Rahel, Murat, Luiza, Shila, Sinto, Lina, Shayna, Ilene, and so many others. Our ongoing relationships , whether online or face to face, are a constant reminder of why I love anthropological fieldwork. Thanks to Baruh Pinto, for sharing...