Mile by mile, tweet by tweet, Rabbi Mendy Chitrik traipses through Turkey on the ultimate back-to-roots Jewish journey
Turkey has long been the undeveloped land of antiquity, the treasure chest of history that for some reason remains off the list of explorers and pilgrims. It’s the land of Mount Ararat where the Teivah came to its final rest, the place of the well where Yaakov met Rachel, and the site of many Talmudic stories. It’s a country awaiting a publicist. And Rabbi Mendy Chitrik has been spending the past month ably filling that job.
Mile by mile, tweet by tweet, the rabbi of Turkey’s Ashkenazi community has been documenting his discoveries as he nears completion of the month-long road trip through the countryside. One day it’s the village of Netzivin, mentioned in the Gemara as the site of Rabi Yehudah ben Beseira’s famed yeshivah, and then on to ancient familiar names such as Lydia, Antioch, or Cappadocia (Kaputkaya in the Gemara, mentioned in connection to lighting Shabbos candles). Some of these place still have beautiful shuls, others contain an arch rising over an empty field to mark the former site of shul or beis hachayim.
“Turkey has so many historical sites,” said Rabbi Chitrik, a Chabad chassid and Turkey’s Ashkenazic chief rabbi who in 2019 took over the chairmanship of the Alliance of Rabbis in Islamic States, “and many of them have not been excavated. Even a place like Charan was never touched by archaeologists. People still live on top of the hill, with their sheep and ancient style huts. Seeing that really brings you back to the days of Yaakov and Lavan.”
Best of all, his trip is an all-expenses paid one.
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