Spanish and Portuguese Citizenship for Sephardi Jewish Descendants: An Oral History Collection

Interview with Raşel Meseri – Highlights

Raşel Meseri:  My name is Raşel. I was born in Izmir. I am 60 years old and am currently engaged in writing children’s novels.

Dalia Kandiyoti:  Thank you.  I am now going to ask you to elaborate on this a bit. Where were you born, where did you grow up, what kind of education did you receive, which languages do you speak, how did you learn these languages?

Meseri:  Sure; let’s go step by step. I was born in Izmir. My parents are from Izmir as well. As far as I know, our roots go back a few hundred years. The only thing is, on my mother’s side, my grandfather went to Italy and lived there for a while. I am not sure why and under what conditions. My mother knew this. Other than this, Spain….  I know a little Ladino to express myself. I know a little English and a little Hebrew because I lived in Israel for a year and a half. So, other than these one and a half years, I have pretty much lived all my life in Izmir. As for my education, I studied Cinema and Television at the School of Fine Arts. I worked in advertising for a long time. After my advertising career ended, I started making documentaries, two of which were about Izmir. One is about the area of Karataş, where most of the Jews live, and it is called İzmir Deniz Çocukları (“Izmir Children of the Sea”). The other one is about an important formation in Izmir, intergenerational family homes. It is about kortejos [kortijos], and it is called Ve Sadece Adı Kaldı Elimizde: Kortejolar (“And We Are Left Only with the Name: Kortejos”). Then I started writing novels for children and plays. My first nonfiction book is Türkiye’de Yahudi Olmak, Bir Deneyim Sözlüğü (Being Jewish in Turkey, an Experimental Dictionary). In February, my first novel for adults will also be published.

Kandiyoti: Really? Congratulations! What is the name of your new novel?

Meseri: Köpekbalıklarının Kayıp Şarkıları (The Lost Songs of the Sharks).

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Kandiyoti: Could you please tell us more about your family’s Sephardic roots? How far can you go back, their history, the places they lived, where they were before Izmir?  

Meseri: I may not be able to answer this question very clearly, Dalia, as my parents have always considered themselves to be from Izmir. They always felt typical, like others did, as Spanish Jews. Where Ladino was spoken at the house as a cultural language, as a mother tongue… Because my mother had a beautiful voice, she liked singing Ladino songs. In that sense, culturally, yes… I have a cultural identity.  I feel that I am in a Ladino culture.

Kandiyoti:  So, do language and culture tie you to your Sephardic identity? Or do they tie you to your Jewish identity? 

Meseri: This is a question I need to answer from different perspectives and layers. Belonging can be about how one feels as much as about how people see you are as well. This is why I don’t feel belonging as a Jew in terms of Judaism, but I have a lot of affection for Sephardic culture, from its food to its music.   The Ladino idioms, jokes, curses, slang… I mean, I can feel myself there and I exist there, but religiously, no, I don’t feel anything like that, and frankly, I don’t look at it too warmly. But being a Jew in Turkey, as the book [the nonfiction volume referred to above] also talks about, is as much about how you feel as what you are made to feel. What you are made to feel also contains a Jewish identity. So, there’s an interaction [, good or bad, between these two. What this interaction is…that too is very multi-layered and asks to be examined extensively.

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