Ṣarfati, Isaac (643 words) D Gershon Lewental Isaac Ṣarfati was a German rabbi who settled in the Ottoman Empire prior to the conquest of Istanbul in 1453. He is thought to have been the author of the famous circular letter urging the Jewish communities of Central Europe to immigrate to the Ottoman realms. Although his surname indicates a family origin in northern France (Ṣarfat), Ṣarfati came to the Ottoman Empire from Germany. Soon afterwards, he became a prominent member of the rabbinate of the Jewish community in Edirne (Adrianople), then the Ottoman capital. Rosanes and others have argued that Ṣarfati served as chief rabbi, but this claim seems to be unsubstantiated. Various dates have been proposed for Ṣarfati’s famous letter. Rosanes dated it to 1427, but most others place it in the 1450s, during the reign of Murat II (r. 1421–1451), or, according to İnalcik, of Mehmet II (r. 1451–1481). There are several existing versions of the letter, which was sent to the Jews of Swabia, the Rhineland, Styria, Moravia, northern France, and Hungary. An original copy of the letter, preserved at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, was published by Adolph Jellinek (Zur Geschichte der Kreuzzüge, Leipzig, 1854, p. 14-25). All the versions praise the Ottomans and contrast them favorably with the repressive rulers of Christian Europe. Ṣarfati portrayed the Ottoman Empire as a bountiful land where Jews would prosper. Ṣarfati painted a picture of the Ottoman Empire as a land of bounty, writing: ‘I proclaim to you that Turkey is a land wherein nothing is lacking, and where, if you will, all shall yet be well with you’. He described the freedoms Jews enjoyed under Ottoman and Islamic rule, noted the proximity of the empire to the Holy Land, and conveyed the impression that Jewish life in the empire was secure and tranquil. This letter, which urged, ‘And now, seeing all these things, O Israel, wherefore sleepest thou? Arise! and leave this accursed land forever’ (cf. Psalms 44.23), succeeded in propelling a wave of Ashkenazi immigration from Central Europe in the second half of the fifteenth century. However, it is hard to imagine that one letter had such a sweeping effect. Scholars have questioned whether Ṣarfati sent the letter on his own initiative or at the behest of the sultan. Shmuelevitz opines that Ṣarfati may coordinated his action with the authorities. Hacker argues that the author of the letter was not Ṣarfati but Rabbi Mordecai ben Eliezer Comṭino (d. 1482). In any case, after his death, his descendants continued to hold rabbinical positions in the city through 1722. D Gershon Lewental Bibliography Franco, Moïse. Essai sur l’histoire des Israélites de l’Empire Ottoman depuis les Origines jusqu’à Nos Jours (Paris, 1897; repr. Hildesheim: Olms, 1973), p. 35. Hacker, Joseph. “The Jewish Community of Salonica from the Fifteenth to the Sixteenth Century: A Chapter in the Social History of the Jews in the Ottoman Empire and Their Relations with the Authorities” (Ph.D. diss., Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1978) [Hebrew with English abstract]. İnalcık, Halil. “Foundations of Ottoman-Jewish Cooperation,” in Jews, Turks, Ottomans: A Shared History, Fifteenth Through the Twentieth Century, ed. Avigdor Levy (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 2002), pp. 4–5. Kobler, Franz (ed.). A Treasury of Jewish Letters: Letters from the Famous and the Humble (London: Farrar, Straus, & Young, 1952), vol. 1, pp. 283–285. Levy, Avigdor (ed.). The Sephardim in the Ottoman Empire (Princeton, N.J.: Darwin Press, 1992), pp. 20–21, 53–54, 126, 129. Rosanes, Salomon. Divre Yeme Yisraʾel be-Togarma (Sofia: Ha-Mishpaṭ, 1930–45), vol. 1, p. 12; vol. 5, pp. 392–394. Shaw Stanford J. The Jews of the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic (New York City: New York University Press, 1991), 31-32, 289. Shmuelevitz, Aryeh. The Jews of the Ottoman Empire in the Late Fifteenth and the Sixteenth Centuries: Administrative, Economic, Legal, and Social Relations as Reflected in the Responsa (Leiden: Brill, 1984), pp. 12, 18, 30, 32. Cite this page D Gershon Lewental. Ṣarfati, Isaac. Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World. Executive Editor Norman A. Stillman. Brill Online, 2014. Reference. National Library of Israel. 02 March 2014
Posted on: Sun, 02 Mar 2014 22:50:14 +0000
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