Friends and family questioned our vacation plans to Turkey, and their reactions made me nervous.
When I told family and friends this year that my wife and I were taking one of our sons to Malta and Istanbul for his high school spring break, the reaction I got wasn't entirely positive.
“Turkey is not my favorite country at the moment,” my oldest friend from Hebrew school told me.
“It's not comfortable being clearly Jewish in Istanbul right now,” one of the brothers said.
I don't live under a rock. We know that Turkey's Islamist president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, is an ardent supporter of Hamas and a fierce critic of Israel. We also know that since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, people across the Muslim world have protested Israel's actions in Gaza, and anti-Semitism has skyrocketed globally.
So I understood their concerns. I myself have been feeling anxious lately. When my younger son heard that police had been called in to quell a pro-Palestinian protest on a college campus, the first question I asked him was, “Do you feel safe?” was.
But their reactions made me nervous, albeit for completely different reasons.
Traveling to other parts of the world and meeting people from different cultures is one of the defining pleasures of my existence, and I am loathe to accept limits to it unless there is an immediate threat to life or limb. is. (I have no intention of going on a trip to eastern Ukraine or Gaza, for example.)
I'm also disgusted with the “us versus them” mentality and the idea that being Jewish means you have to automatically take a defensive stance against a supposedly hostile world. I have. To be sure, President Erdoğan is a populist dictator who taps into an Islamist support base. But why does he think his fellow Turks, especially those living in Istanbul, one of the most cosmopolitan cities on earth, are all fanatical anti-Semites?
Despite this, I found myself doubting our decisions.
My wife and I have tried to teach our children tolerance and tolerance as much as we can. We told them to try not to generalize about large groups. Don't judge others by how they look or where they're from.
But tolerance and faith in humanity aside, isn't now the best time to visit this Muslim-majority country whose leaders call Israel a terrorist state?
I don't know what it means for my brother to be visibly Jewish, but although we don't dress like Hasidim, we don't hide our Jewishness. It is also true. My son's spring break coincided with Passover. I didn't want to feel like I had to lower my voice when talking about the holiday in public, or even talking to my son about Istanbul's Jewish history while walking around town. .
After all, we decided to take him to Istanbul because we ourselves fell in love with the city 15 years ago when we first visited it without kids. We were fascinated by its history, fascinated by its food, and enchanted by its inhabitants. , they were always warm and welcoming. We would have liked to see more of them, ideally while eating more of their delicious food. But what happens when that friendly atmosphere actually turns hostile? What if, as Jews, we really need to keep our heads down and play it safe?
There was no need to worry. We didn't have to censor ourselves in Istanbul and never felt uncomfortable there. Even as pro-Palestinian protesters started running up and down the racetrack, an old Byzantine chariot arena, not far from where we happened to be catching them. Shade under a leafy tree. (To be honest, this protest was much smaller than the last one we witnessed in our hometown of New York City. “It seems kind of lame,” my son said.) In return, we were greeted with the same warmth and hospitality. We've all had strangers strike up conversations with us while eating kebabs or baklava in restaurants or cafes.
If we had shown up wearing Jewish T-shirts and Star of David glitter, might we have been treated differently? It's possible. But I choose to believe otherwise. And I'm glad I didn't let fear deter me from visiting the places I really wanted to go or meeting the people I really wanted to meet. It's a box I don't want to put myself in, and it's a box I don't want my kids to put in either.
Alexander Gelfand
Alexander Gelfand is a freelance writer whose work has appeared on everything from Tablet to Wired.com. He lives in Jackson Heights, Queens.
