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A Turkish Jewish Profile: Maurice Amado

Maurice Amado (1888 to 1968) was born in Izmir, Turkey and came from a Sephardic Jewish family that lived for several centuries in the Old Ottoman Turkish Empire, following their ancestors’ expulsion from Spain in 1492. Amado emigrated to the United States from Turkey in 1904 where he settled in New York and, upon his retirement, resettled in Los Angeles in the 1950’s.

October 5, 2009
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The 517-Year-Old Journey of Turkish Jews from the Iberian Peninsula to the Present

Sultan Bayazid II's offer of refuge gave new hope to the persecuted Sephardim.

By Naim Guleryuz*
At midnight on August 2, 1492, when Columbus embarked on what would become his most famous expedition to the New World, his fleet departed from the relatively unknown seaport of Palos because the shipping lanes of Cadiz and Seville were clogged with Sephardic Jews expelled from Spain by the Edict of Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand of Spain.

October 5, 2009
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First Chief Rabbi in Istanbul: Rabbi Moshe Capsali

Rabbi 0shak Haleva (2002-Present)

In 1453, when the Turkish Sultan Mehmed II conquered Istanbul from the Byzantine Empire, he selected Rabbi Moshe to guide the affairs of all the Jews living in the vast Ottoman Empire, most of whom were Greek-speaking Jews known as Romaniotes. This was thirty-nine years prior to the Sephardim’s arrival in Turkey after the Spanish Expulsion of 1492.

October 5, 2009
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"The Ottoman Mentality Was Always An Educated One"

One of Dangoor's remarkable pieces of work is still on the wall of The Center for Jewish History building.

At the end of lunch, the old guy looked into the young man’s eyes and told him: “You have to do it.” The young man couldn’t turn the older one down and he accepted his offer by saying,“Yes, I have to do it.” The old man, Leon Levy, who served as president from 1982 to 2001, convinced David Dengoor to become the fifth president of American Sephardi Federation in 2003.