Sephardi culture in Izmir is carried through food, music, language, religious practice, family memory, festive gatherings and craft traditions. It is both local and connected to a wider Sephardi Mediterranean world.
Cuisine
Izmir Sephardi cooking has a strong place in the food culture of western Anatolia. In 2004 six women of the community, Ester Antebi, Sara Enriquez, Lina Eskenazi, Nüket Franco, Ora Gürkan and Jinet Sidi Sarfati, gathered a hundred recipes into a book of Izmir Sephardic cuisine, drawn from their own kitchens and from what they had learned from earlier generations. The dishes range from boyos and burekas to fritada, empanadas and sweets such as mustachudos and mogados.
Music
Music is one of the clearest threads of Sephardi Izmir. The city produced Isaac Algazi, a cantor of the Algazi Synagogue who became one of the major composers of religious, secular and classical Turkish music in the twentieth century. Sephardi song, in Ladino and in the liturgy, continues to be recorded and performed today.
Crafts, festival and memory
Craft and ritual textiles, family stories and public cultural programming all carry the culture forward. The International Izmir Sephardic Culture Festival has become the community’s main public celebration of this heritage.