ISTANBUL (JTA) — Dozens of Orthodox Jews piled up on a hill overlooking the Bosphorus Strait.
Above them, protecting the most sensitive of the hill, stood a Turkish military base, and below it the exclusive Ortaköy district of Istanbul. The July 15 Martyrs’ Bridge, connecting Europe and Asia, dominated the view. Narrow was the mosque of Çamlica. However, none of those sites interested the crowd. The hill also comprises one of Istanbul’s main Jewish cemeteries, and those that accumulated (from Turkey, the United States, and Israel) were there to pay their respects to Rabbi Naphtali HaKohen Katz, an influential and prolific seventeenth-century rabbi loyal to the Jewish religion. mysticism and whose yahrzeit, or anniversary of death, fell this year on January 17.
Pilgrimages like this, made through oversized Orthodox teams to the burial places of also respected Jewish figures across Europe, are far from unusual and have given rise to the country’s tourism industry. Among the largest and most publicized is the annual pilgrimage to Uman, Ukraine, which brings tens of thousands of others to the grave of Rabbi Nachman of Breslov every Rosh Hashanah (not on the anniversary of his death). Another consideration is the tomb of Rabbi Elimelech Weisbaum, an early Hasidic leader, in Lizhensk, Poland, in early spring.
Yitzhak Friedman, a Hasidic Jew from Lakewood, New Jersey, who is reading in Israel lately, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that he and some friends took credit for Katz’s yahrzeit to justify a short film to Istanbul.
“It’s reasonable tickets, we hear a lot of smart things, so I did a smart jump for two days,” he said.
Another organization of Orthodox women in Israel said they planned their vacation the same way to coincide with the “hilullah,” using the Hebrew word for such a pilgrimage. Although the pilgrimage to Uman has become a hectic multi-day affair, with the influx of Orthodox Jews renting out as many of the apartments and hotel rooms held in the small town, other pilgrimages, such as the one at Katz’s tomb, have a quieter course and an introspective atmosphere. The crowd paused in prayer to eat at the cemetery synagogue. , circulating whiskey and snacks.
Friedman said he had made several similar trips in the past year alone, adding Dynow, Poland, to the grave of Reb Tzvi Elimelech Spira, one of the early Hasidic leaders. He also spent more than 30 hours traveling to war-torn Ukraine to spend Rosh Hashanah in Uman, a practice that has been strongly discouraged by Israeli and Ukrainian rabbinical and government leaders this year.
Friedman said he had heard that a visit to Katz’s grave had helped others on a variety of things, from finding “the right partner” to recovering young people from illness. He only asked for “happiness” in his prayers.
He also attributed some of the tomb’s effects to it being less visited than Uman’s.
“A tzaddik is known to have very few people come to, his powers are much greater,” said Friedman, the Hebrew word for holy man.
Another of the pilgrims, a Hasidic boy from the Doroger sect in Bnei Brak, Israel, explained that he was a remote descendant of Katz, and that he came here for the first time, came here to accompany his father who had been doing the adventure for 50 years.
Katz was born in 1649, in what is now Ostrovo, Ukraine, and at the age of 14 was captured and sold into slavery through the Tatars, a Turkish Muslim organization in Crimea and other parts of southern Ukraine. He escaped years later and returned to Ostrovo to the rabbi of the community, then transferred to Posen in elegant Poland, where he has become a specialist in Kabbalistic literature.
But his struggles with the Tatars would not be avoided. Later in life, Katz was called to Frankfurt in present-day Germany to serve the community. When a fire broke out in the city in 1711, he was accused of cabalistic incantations to save it from being extinguished through herbs and imprisoned by local leaders. After his release, he fled to Prague, where he quarreled with another Kabbalah instructor loyal to Shabbetai Zevi, a false messiah, and later to Wroclaw.
After a life full of struggles in Europe, Katz attempted to emigrate to the Holy Land, but only succeeded in Constantinople, where he died in 1718 and was buried through the local Jewish network in the Ortaköy cemetery. Since then, the tomb has been a place of pilgrimage, explained Rabbi Mendy Chitrik, an Istanbul rabbi affiliated with the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic movement, and another remote descendant of Katz, who helped repair the tomb in 2005.
“Over the centuries, some leading rabbis would have made the pilgrimage,” said Chitrik, Baal Shem Tov, the founder of Hasidic Judaism, Rabbi Nachman of Breslov and others.
“I accompanied the leading rabbis who came here anonymously to pray at his grave,” Chitrik added. “Some arrive for a day on planes and leave. “
While other people come in the year, the most popular time is the Yahrzeit of Katz, the 24th of Tevet of the Hebrew calendar. In recent years, as many as three hundred more people have come for the occasion, said Albert Elvaşvili, president of the Ortaköy Jewish Network that runs the cemetery.
“For us, as the Ortaköy Ets Ahayim family, it is our duty, from generation to generation, to keep this network alive and to have people from all over the world to host this pilgrimage,” Elvaşvili told JTA. Ets Ahayim is the call of the Ortaköy Synagogue.
“We are a small network and still want the help of each and every one to take care of this site and this foundation, which is a very vital component of the ancient Jewish and Turkish Jewish heritage of the world, however, we expect to see many visitors each and every one. year, even if we are few,” he added.
However, he noted that attendance rises and falls with adjustments in Israeli-Turkish relations, as does overall Israeli tourism to Turkey, which hit a record high this year.
The biggest crisis has occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic, with only a handful of pilgrims arriving in the last two years. Now it turns out that the culture is back in force, with several buses of pilgrims from other countries and sects spending the day. .
“As relations with Israel and the other Jews improve, I think many more will come, and as Turkey becomes much hotter for Jewish travelers and devotees, there will be many more opportunities for others to come. “Chitrik said.
“Not only the kever [grave] of Nephthali Katz on the 24th of Tevet, but also Rabbi Haim Palachi in Izmir in Shevat next month, and Rabbi Yehudah Rozanes on the 26th of Nice and many other rabbis who are buried here in the cemeteries of Turkey.
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