Ivan Alexander of Bulgaria

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Alexander_of_Bulgaria

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Jewish-Bulgarian relations intertwined further during the reign of Ivan Aleksandŭr (r. 1331–1371), who took a Jew, Sarah, as his second wife in 1331. Some Jewish writers drew parallels between Sarah (her Christian name was Teodora) and the biblical Queen Esther because of Sarah’s role in saving the Jewish population of Tŭrnovo, but the story is probably apocryphal. Evidence does indicate that Ivan Aleksandŭr convened synods in 1355 and in 1360 to confront Christian heresies and Judaism; however, Tamir argues at length against the synod’s claim that the Jews engaged in proselytism and has criticized other scholars for accepting the claim at face value or for ignoring or denying this episode altogether. Rejecting the claim of proselytizing entirely, she suggests that the Bulgarian Church may have perceived the Jewish queen as a threat in terms of succession to the throne and used the synod to prevent her sons from deviating from religious orthodoxy. Ultimately, these events, coupled with the Ottoman conquest at the end of the fourteenth century, led to the end of the Jewish community in Tŭrnovo, although the murky historical record has so far failed to provide conclusive evidence regarding the reasons for its disappearance. Rosanes and others have claimed that it was the Ottoman sultan Bayezit I (r. 1347–1403) who expelled the Jews from Tŭrnovo, despite the unlikelihood of such a scenario.

Despite the events in Tŭrnovo, Bulgaria continued to serve as a safe haven for Jews fleeing persecution in Western and Central Europe. It received a wave of Jews in the 1370s following their expulsion by Lajos I (r. 1342–1382) of Hungary. A Jewish document from Vidin in 1376 praises the autonomy enjoyed by the community under Bulgarian rule following a brief Hungarian occupation. A number of scholars emerged from the synthesis with these new immigrants, including Rabbi Shalom Ashkenazi of Neustadt, who founded in Vidin the first seminary in Bulgaria. His pupil, Rabbi Dosa Moses the Greek, wrote a commentary on that of Rashi (1040–1105) called Perush ve-Tosafot in 1430. The Ohrid-born Leon Judah ben Moses Mosconi (1328–?) wrote unfinished works on Hebrew grammar and metaphysics, as well as a revision of the Josippon , a tenth-century chronicle. On the eve of the Ottoman conquest, a number of French Jews from Provence also found a refuge in the country. At the same time, the unrest that accompanied the political decline of Bulgaria prompted some Jews to migrate south to Salonica and Istanbul, where they formed congregations that continued to exist after the destruction of the Byzantine Empire; these included the Yanbol and Nikopol synagogues in the Balat district of Istanbul, whose names indicate their Bulgarian origins. Tamir has noted the irony that Ivan Shishman (r. 1371–1395), the last Bulgarian king of an indigenous dynasty, who later became a nationalist symbol of Bulgarian identity, was Jewish in the eyes of the halakha by virtue of his mother, Teodora. His positive treatment of the Jews may have been a factor in their participation in defending the country against Ottoman invasion. According to Kechales, that was why Bayezit I expelled the Jews from Tŭrnovo. The new sovereign found himself presiding over a respected Jewish community with centers spread throughout the country; at the beginning of Ottoman rule in 1396, Jewish communities flourished in Vidin, Sofia, Plovdiv, Nikopol, Silistra, Pleven, Yambol, and Stara Zagora.

Bibliography

Franco, Moise. Essai sur l’histoire des Israélites de l’Empire Ottoman depuis les Origines jusqu’à nos jours (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1973), pp. 212–214.

Hazzan, Baruch. “The Jewish Community of Bulgaria,” in The Balkan Jewish Communities: Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Greece, and Turkey, ed. Daniel Elazar et al. (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1984), pp. 59–63.

Kechales, Ḥayyim. “Dorot Rishonim,” in Enṣiqlopedya shel Galuyyot: Yahadut Bulgarya, vol. 10 (Jerusalem: Ḥevrat Enṣiqlopedya shel Galuyyot, 1967), vol. 10, pp. 25–62 [Hebrew].

———. Qorot Yehude Bulgarya, vol. 1 (Tel Aviv: Davar, 1971) [Hebrew].

Rosanes, Salomon. Qorot ha-Yehudim be-Turkiya ve-Arṣot ha-Qedem, 6 vols. (Sofia: Defus ha-Mishpaṭ, 1930–45) [Hebrew].

Shaw, Stanford. The Jews of the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic (New York: New York University Press, 1991).

Tamir, Vicki. Bulgaria and Her Jews: The History of a Dubious Symbiosis (New York: Yeshiva University Press, 1979).