In The New Republic, in "The Other Secret Jews," Adam Kirsch reviews The Dönme: Jewish Converts, Muslim Revolutionaries, and Secular Turks by Marc David Baer.A number of years ago, a friend in Istanbul mentioned several times that many of his friends and acquaintances in classical music, cinephile, and other high culture circles in the Turkish... Read More

For years, I've been hearing the name "Sibel Edmonds," without being able to make sense out of her story, in part because the U.S. government has been blocking its publication under the State Secrets Act. Now, the London Times has run a long article, "For sale: West's deadly nuclear secrets," about the West Asian-born American... Read More

American politicians and federal officials are still trying to get straight in their heads that confusing Shia vs. Sunni thingie, but it turns out that the Middle East has a whole bunch of living religions that aren't exactly part of Islam, Christianity, or Judaism.Sure, we've all heard of the Samaritans in Israel, the mysterious and... Read More

From the Forward: Shrine of False Messiah in Turkey May Be RazedJay Michaelson | Fri. May 18, 2007Far away from the eyes of the Jewish mainstream, in modern-day Turkey there live hundreds, if not thousands, of crypto-Jews — and today, one of their most sacred shrines is in danger. Article tools This is the hidden,... Read More

The port city at the north end of the Aegean Sea, spelled Thessaloniki since Greece seized it from the Ottoman Empire before WWI, would be a fine setting for an Umberto Eco novel or a Dan Brown knock-off of an Eco novel. Salonika had an appropriately Byzantine social history a century ago. It was the... Read More