The Divergence of Judaism and Islam: Interdependence, Modernity, and Political Turmoil

3. “Zeal and Noise”: Jewish Imperial Allegiance and the Greco-Ottoman War of 1897

3 “Zeal and Noise” Jewish Imperial Allegiance and the Greco-Ottoman War of 1897 Julia Phillips Cohen This chapter explores how Ottoman Jews’ manifestations of patriotism during the empire’s 1897 war with Greece affected their relations with their neighbors, both Christian and Muslim. It does so by examining the cases of two Ottoman port cities situated in the eastern Mediterranean basin, each with a sizeable Jewish population.1 The first section of the chapter concentrates on the Jewish community of Salonica, an Ottoman city perched at the top of the Aegean, where—by a number of accounts— Jews constituted the single largest demographic group in the urban fabric .2 The second section shifts the focus to Izmir, also an Aegean port city, with a Jewish population about a third the size of Salonica’s Jewish community.3 There, Jews found themselves living as a minority in a city with much larger Muslim and Christian populations.4 Needless to say, these demographic differences made the circumstances each community faced distinct. Yet the backdrop of an Ottoman state framework lent the Jewish communities of Salonica and Izmir many structural similarities as well. In part because they considered their empire an Islamic state, Jews in both places came to express a pronounced sense of identification with local Muslims and even with Islam per se during the late Ottoman era, a trend that intensified as hostilities erupted with Greece in the spring of 1897. Although this occurred as a result of both strategic and spontaneous acts of self-positioning, ultimately, as war beckoned and tensions grew in the early months of 1897, the Jewish 30 · Julia Phillips Cohen leaders of each city found themselves confronting similar challenges, many of which they had not anticipated. The Case of Salonica In late April 1897, local Jewish journals marveled that the recently announced war between the Ottoman Empire and Greece had not led to any disturbances in the nearby Ottoman port city of Salonica, despite the city’s proximity to the theater of war and its intimate involvement in the conflict.5 Although it housed the depot for soldiers departing for and returning from the front on a daily basis, Salonica had somehow managed to remain free of the violence besetting the nearby countryside. Reports spoke with admiration of the “perfect calm” that reigned in the city while battles raged not far away. One article published by the Jewish-run Journal de Salonique just a few days after the outbreak of hostilities explained the situation thus: “The incidents occurring on the [Greek-Ottoman] border have not damaged in any respect the excellent relations maintained . . . between all of the different [religious] communities.”6 The fact that general order had been maintained in a city that housed Jewish, Muslim, Greek Orthodox, and other Christian groups was impressive , especially because spontaneous urban conflicts between Ottoman Muslims and Christians were recorded elsewhere in the empire in 1897.7 In these other areas, local Muslims and Christians appeared to be reenacting on their own streets the war between the Ottoman and Greek states with whom they identified or were identified by others. What was different, then, about Salonica that had kept its inhabitants quiet and cooperative , as the city’s journalists noted with great pride? As it turns out, the situation was not entirely as peaceful as the local press made it out to be. Moving beyond the newspapers’ claims of peace and quiet, a variety of sources also point to other, unwritten stories of intercommunal relations during the war, stories that can help us to piece together a more complete picture of underlying patterns of socialization and conflict in Salonica around the turn of the twentieth century. Tensions or conflicts of any sort, however, were touchy subjects for the journalists and communal leaders trying to mold the image of their community according to their own ideal vision.8 For this reason, they preferred to focus on those acts that fit this vision or could be used to further it. Without a doubt, most of the patriotic displays offered by Salonican Jewish Imperial Allegiance and the Greco-Ottoman War of 1897 · 31 Jews during the war matched the hopes of their communal leaders perfectly and were featured prominently in their publications; most were organized and orderly acts of patriotic sentiment that met with the approval of all authorities and evinced Ottoman Jews’ positive identification with the state. This positive...