Turkish Women Become Empowered by Jewish Education

The following was written by Jenny, one of the two current JDC Jewish Service Corps volunteer living in Izmir, Turkey.

"We know the rituals from our memories, but we were never taught the meaning of why we do things," several Izmir Jewish community members remarked to me during my first few weeks in the country. After hearing several adults express similar thoughts, I bounced the idea of an informal adult education program off of some community members. The response I heard from a number of people was that, "I would be interested, but I'm not sure anyone else is." After hearing this from enough people, I knew I was on the right track. I knew that we could start with at least five members.

Working with two community leaders to structure the program and invite participation, it turned out that we had, indeed, many more than five interested adults. Our weekly seminars generally attract between fifteen and thirty women, and we have had a total of over seventy-five women attend since our initial meeting in January. Community leaders decided to schedule the weekly seminars during the daytime, so by default the adult education became a woman's meeting.

The lack of a rabbi and Jewish day school in Izmir has left a void in Jewish education. The community has tried to fill that void by creating a "Sunday School" for the children, run by mothers who volunteer for the task and are now getting help from my co-volunteer, Evan. But from the beginning I realized that the adults in this community of 2,200 Jews also desperately need Jewish education. I realized that they themselves needed to be empowered to be teachers and transmitters of their Jewish tradition.

I introduced the community to the concept of informal self-education. We designed a format that is part lecture, part discussion, and part chavrutah, traditional partner-study. I wanted the participants to challenge and be challenged by Jewish tradition, to learn and grow as Jews, and to realize that they could, to an extent, educate themselves. These goals continue to be our focal point. Each week the group decides the topic for the following week.

Topics have ranged from "Women in ancient Judaism" to explanations of the Jewish life-cycle rituals, including circumcision and bar/bat mitzvah. We have discussed modern Jewish history and current communal issues, from emancipation in Europe to present trends in assimilation and Jewish education.

Inevitably many discussions lead back to the current state and the future of the Izmir Jewish community. One significant benefit of the program has been that Izmir's Jewish women now have a place to talk about the crucial issues facing their community. Our weekly Seminars have given participants an awareness about the global Jewish community and more confidence in expressing opinions about major Jewish issues. Even while learning about new communities in both the ancient and the modern worlds, our Women's Education Seminar program has instilled pride about the rich Izmir Sephardic tradition, and strengthened the women of the community toward taking responsibility for its future.

As a result of the excitement about this seminar, the men of the community approached Evan and have developed their own Adult Jewish Education Seminar.