40 · Julia Phillips Cohen
customs do not suit us, we would be well served to imitate the Turks, re-
moving from our midst various European customs which we enact only
awkwardly and which bring us great moral and material harm,” it ex-
plained.^41 By offering this interpretation, El Meseret used the occurrence
of regular disturbances to offer its readership a moral and political lesson:
Ottoman Jews were to be made aware, if they were not already, of their
special affinities with their Muslim neighbors and thus to consciously
strengthen these connections as a result of their reading.^42
Expressing the editors’ gratitude to those responsible, subsequent re-
ports indicated that the campaigns against the ill-advised drunken strolls
were proving successful. By March, however, a new problem had arisen,
“an even dirtier wound,” the paper reported, “worse than the earlier-
mentioned outings.” Now, apparently, the Sabbath excursions were be-
ing undertaken by “newly Europeanized Jewish youths” who rent boats
and conduct themselves in such a manner that they almost invariably
end up overturned.^43 The message was clear: those involved were told
that they were lucky to have ended up with only a bath, but that they
were behaving irresponsibly and risking their own lives as well as those
of the people who came to their aid.
Although the story itself did not sound wholly unfamiliar, in sharp
contrast to the case of the drowning Greek man saved by a Jewish youth
some months earlier, the news this time did not bring with it a message
of a city blind to communal boundaries. Now, as the tables had turned
and Jews were in need of rescue from the city’s waters, the paper’s stance
had changed radically. Not only did it acknowledge that communal di-
visions were important elements of the local landscape, the article also
declared that the shameful actions on the part of some local Jews would
have repercussions for the city’s Jewish community as a whole. The jour-
nal’s editors were attempting a balancing act, it seems, as they sought to
reinforce their ideal of intercommunal harmony as well as their sense of
obligation to respond to the reality of Izmir’s streets. Calls to halt embar-
rassing and disgraceful behavior of Izmir’s Jews continued in the follow-
ing months, evincing an underlying anxiety about the place of the small
Jewish minority within the larger social fabric of Izmir.^44
These coincided, however, with exuberant accounts of Jewish patrio-
tism and identification with the Ottoman Empire as war approached.
Jews in the city and its outlying areas held special ceremonies for their
military and prayed for its rapid and total victory. They also gave public