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A historic moment in Turkey
An ancient Jewish community ceased to exist this week, and Gili Nir was there to tell the story.
INN, 27 Shvat 5783. (18.02.23)
Gili recounts: “You need a lot of determination, and also a lot of luck (what I call siyaeta deshamia). After all, you can open 300 search holes and find nothing. The assumption was that they were in bed, and indeed that’s where the woman’s body was found. The husband apparently managed to get up and go out into the hallway, and there They found him. After they located them, a moving, chilling funeral ceremony was held there. The family members said: The people of Israel came all the way for us.”
The couple was taken from there for burial in Istanbul, and a piece of history was buried with them. “Their daughter lives in Israel, the son lives in Istanbul. Shaul’s brother, Ezra, told us at the end of the ceremony: That’s it, I’m the last Jew in Antioch and I’m leaving. This community is over, no one will ever come back here. We were here from 300 BCE until today, And that’s it.”
__Town was called Antakya after the Greek Antioch.
The Teimani community was older. And it still exists in Yemen (in tiny numbers for the last 20 years.)
I thought all the remaining Jews in Yemen left since the civil war
First of all, you’re off by 1000 years – you probably meant 2460.
Second, jews today there are Sphardic, not native Antochians. The natives were killed / expelled by the Christians in the late 300’s. They mostly moved further west (Italy etc..) where the persecution of the church was less. The expelled Byzantine jews founded / joined early European communities. They wrote the Yotzros / Piyutim that Ashkenazim use to this day.Benjamin of Tudela found barely 10 Jews in Antioch
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