WHEN KEMAL ATATURK RECITED SHEMA YISRAEL

A Jewish Newspaper published in New York.January 28, 1994
"It's My Secret Prayer, Too," He ConfessedBy Hillel HalkinZICHRON YAAKOV - There were two questions I wanted to ask, I said over the phone to Batya Keinan, spokeswoman for Israeli president Ezer Weizman, who was about to leave the next day, Monday, Jan. 24, on the first visit ever made to Turkey by a Jewish chief of state. One was whether Mr. Weizman would be taking part in an official ceremony commemorating Kemal Ataturk.Ms. Kenan checked the president's itinerary, according to which he and his wife would lay a wreath on Ataturk's grave the morning of their arrival, and asked what my second question was."Does President Weizman know that Ataturk had Jewish ancestors and wastaught Hebrew prayers as a boy?""Of course, of course," she answered as unsurprisedly as if I had inquiredwhether the president was aware that Ataturk was Turkey's national hero.Excited and DistressedI thanked her and hung up. A few minutes later it occurred to me to callback and ask whether President Weizman intended to make any reference whilein Turkey to Ataturk's Jewish antecedents. "I'm so glad you called again,"said Ms. Kenan, who now sounded excited and a bit distressed. "Exactly wheredid you get your information from?"Why was she asking, I countered, if the president's office had it too?* Because it did not, she confessed. She had only assumed that it mustbecause I had sounded so matter-of-fact myself. "After you hung up," shesaid, "I mentioned what you told me and nobody here knows anything about it.Could you please fax us what you know?"I faxed her a short version of it. Here is a longer one.Stories about the Jewishness of Ataturk, whose statue stands in the mainsquare of every town and city in Turkey, already circulated in his lifetimebut were denied by him and his family and never taken seriously bybiographers. Of six biographies of him that I consulted this week, none evenmentions such a speculation. The only scholarly reference to it in printthat I could find was in the entry on Ataturk in the Israeli Entsiklopedyaha-Ivrit, which begins:"Mustafa Kemal Ataturk - (1881-1938), Turkish general and statesman andfounder of the modern Turkish state."Mustafa Kemal was born to the family of a minor customs clerk in Salonikaand lost his father when he was young. There is no proof of the belief,widespread among both Jews and Muslims in Turkey, that his family came fromthe Doenme. As a boy he rebelled against his mother's desire to give him atraditional religious education, and at the age of 12 he was sent at hisdemand to study in a military academy."Secular FatherThe Doenme were an underground sect of Sabbetaians, Turkish Jews who tookMuslim names and outwardly behaved like Muslims but secretly believed inSabbetai Zevi, the 17th-century false messiah, and conducted carefullyguarded prayers and rituals in his name. The encyclopedia's version ofAtaturk's education, however, is somewhat at variance with his own. Here ishis account of it as quoted by his biographers:"My father was a man of liberal views, rather hostile to religion, and apartisan of Western ideas. He would have preferred to see me go to a * layschool, which did not found its teaching on the Koran but on modern science."In this battle of consciences, my father managed to gain the victory aftera small maneuver; he pretended to give in to my mother's wishes, andarranged that I should enter the [Islamic] school of Fatma Molla Kadin withthe traditional ceremony. ..."Six months later, more or less, my father quietly withdrew me from theschool and took me to that of old Shemsi Effendi who directed a freepreparatory school according to European methods. My mother made noobjection, since her desires had been complied with and her conventionsrespected. It was the ceremony above all which had satisfied her."Who was Mustafa Kemal's father, who behaved here in typical Doenme fashion,outwardly observing Muslim ceremonies while inwardly scoffing at them?Ataturk's mother Zubeyde came from the mountains west of Salonika, close tothe current Albanian frontier; of the origins of his father, Ali Riza,little is known. Different writers have given them as Albanian, Anatolianand Salonikan, and Lord Kinross' compendious 1964 "Ataturk" calls Ali Riza a"shadowy personality" and adds cryptically regarding Ataturk's reluctance todisclose more about his family background: "To the child of so mixed anenvironment it would seldom occur, wherever his racial loyalties lay, toinquire too exactly into his personal origins beyond that of his parentage."Learning HebrewDid Kinross suspect more than he was admitting? I would never have asked hadI not recently come across a remarkable chapter while browsing in theout-of-print Hebrew autobiography of Itamar Ben-Avi, son of EliezerBen-Yehuda, the leading promoter of the revival of spoken Hebrew in late19th-century Palestine. Ben-Avi, the first child to be raised in Hebrewsince ancient times and later a Hebrew journalist and newspaper publisher,writes in this book of walking into the Kamenitz Hotel in Jerusalem oneautumn night in 1911 and being asked by its proprietor: " 'Do you see thatTurkish officer sitting there in the corner, the one* with the bottle ofarrack?' "" 'Yes.' "" 'He's one of the most important officers in the Turkish army.' "" 'What's his name?' "" 'Mustafa Kemal.' "" 'I'd like to meet him,' I said, because the minute I looked at him I wasstartled by his piercing green eyes."Ben-Avi describes two meetings with Mustafa Kemal, who had not yet taken thename of Ataturk, 'Father of the Turks.' Both were conducted in French, werelargely devoted to Ottoman politics, and were doused with large amounts ofarrack. In the first of these, Kemal confided:"I'm a descendant of Sabbetai Zevi - not indeed a Jew any more, but anardent admirer of this prophet of yours. My opinion is that every Jew inthis country would do well to join his camp."During their second meeting, held 10 days later in the same hotel, MustafaKemal said at one point:"'I have at home a Hebrew Bible printed in Venice. It's rather old, and Iremember my father bringing me to a Karaite teacher who taught me to readit. I can still remember a few words of it, such as --' "And Ben-Avi continues:"He paused for a moment, his eyes searching for something in space. Then herecalled:" 'Shema Yisra'el, Adonai Elohenu, Adonai Ehad!'" 'That's our most important prayer, Captain.'" 'And my secret prayer too, cher monsieur,' he replied, refilling ourglasses."Although Itamar Ben-Avi could not have known it, Ataturk no doubt meant"secret prayer" quite literally. Among the esoteric prayers of the Doenme,first made known to the scholarly world when a book of them reached theNational Library in Jerusalem in 1935, is one containing the confession offaith:"Sabbetai Zevi and none other is the true Messiah. Hear O Israel, the Lordour God, the Lord is one."It was undoubtedly from this credo, rather than from the Bible, that Ataturkremembered the words of the Shema, which to the best of my knowledge heconfessed knowing but once in his adult life: to a young Hebrew journalistwhom he engaged in two tipsily animated conversations in Jerusalem nearly adecade before he took control of the Turkish army after its disastrousdefeat in World War I, beat back the invading Greeks and founded a secularTurkish republic in which Islam was banished - once and for all, so hethought - to the mosques.Ataturk would have had good reasons for concealing his Doenme origins. Notonly were the Doenmes (who married only among themselves and numbered closeto 15,000, largely concentrated in Salonika, on the eve of World War I)looked down on as heretics by both Muslims and Jews, they had a reputationfor sexual profligacy that could hardly have been flattering to theiroffspring. This license, which was theologically justified by the claim thatit reflected the faithful's freedom from the biblical commandments under thenew dispensation of Sabbetai Zevi, is described by Ezer Weizman'spredecessor, Israel's second president, Yitzchak Ben-Zvi, in his book onlost Jewish communities, "The Exiled and the Redeemed":'Saintly Offspring'"Once a year [during the Doenmes' annual 'Sheep holiday'] the candles areput out in the course of a dinner which is attended by orgies and theceremony of the exchange of wives. ... The rite is practiced on the night ofSabbetai Zevi's traditional bithday. ... It is believed that children bornof such unions are regarded as saintly."Although Ben-Zvi, writing in the 1950s, thought that "There is reason tobelieve that this ceremony has not been entirely abandoned and continues tothis day," little is known about whether any of the Doenmes' traditionalpractices or social structures still survive in modern Turkey. The communityabandoned Salonika along with the city's other Turkish residents during theGreco-Turkish war of 1920-21, and its descendants, many of whom are said tobe wealthy businessmen and merchants in Istanbul, are generally thought tohave assimilated totally into Turkish life.After sending my fax to Batya Keinan, I phoned to check that she hadreceived it. She had indeed, she said, and would see to it that thepresident was given it to read on his flight to Ankara. It is doubtful,however, whether Mr. Weizman will allude to it during his visit: The Turkishgovernment, which for years has been fending off Muslim fundamentalistassaults on its legitimacy and on the secular reforms of Ataturk, has littlereason to welcome the news that the father of the 'Father of the Turks' wasa crypto-Jew who passed on his anti-Muslim sentiments to his son. MustafaKemal's secret is no doubt one that it would prefer to continue to be kept.wa-(A)llaahu-aa'lam.