By Joel Magalnick, Editor, JTNews
Lina Filiba gave a look of surprise when a member of Seattle’s Jewish community greeted her in her native Turkish last week. Filiba, who is the executive vice president of Turkey’s Jewish Community in Istanbul, visited several American cities—including Seattle—to thank them for their outpouring of support in light of the bombings of two Istanbul synagogues that killed 24 people—most of them non-Jews—on November 15.
What made her visit to Seattle special was the large number of people who live here with roots in her native country. While in town, she spoke to several audiences, including the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle and the Jewish Day School of Metropolitan Seattle.
Turkey’s Jewish community, Filiba said, is in a period of uncertainty.
“We are a very active community, very well organized,” Filiba said. “This attack was really very bad for the morale.”
Five days after the first attack, two more bombs exploded at British institutions, killing 27 more. When the second attack occurred, she said, “we realized how big a scheme in the eyes of the terrorists this was. It was not only the case of attacking the Jews, which is, incidentally, something we thought immediately because of the way it happened.
“It was targeting the entourage, the population and everyone.”
An al-Qaeda-linked group took responsibility for both attacks, according to several sources.
Of the 14 synagogues in Istanbul, only four are currently operating because of security concerns. Filiba said two old age homes and a hospital have opened their doors to allow members of the Jewish community to come in and pray.
Before the bombings, Filiba talked about how much the Jewish community in Turkey is like those in the United States or Canada—a minority that, for the most part, coexisted peacefully with its neighbors. The real difference is that Turkey’s majority religion is Muslim.
Though condemnation of Jews and Israel as “the enemy” by the institutions of the Arab world has been well-documented of late, Filiba said that has not been the case in her home country.
“The local police are helping us a lot, the officials are helping, we’re working together with them…until we are able to rebuild our synagogues, strengthen our institutions,” she said. “At least we have the ongoing cooperation of our local police.”
Filiba’s job outside of Turkey has been to show her audiences the current fragile state of her Jewish community, but her demonstrations also showed that people there deal with the everyday frustrations of people here. Like any American executive who might be traveling to give a presentation, she too had trouble getting her state-of-the-art laptop’s operating system to work with the video projector.
Since heading home, Filiba’s job has been to continue working with Jewish spiritual leaders and government officials to bring confidence back to her community.
“We are very much aware it’s going to be a long and painful process until we’re finished,” she said.